“The Crappen–”…nah, it’s too easy

I’m not an M. Night Shyamalan fan.

I remember when “The Sixth Sense” came out and everyone started saying he was the second coming of Hitchcock. What a TWIST! Everybody was so damn impressed with the twist ending that they forgot to notice that the rest of the movie was…well, a little bland. In my not-so-humble opinion, it could have been much creepier if there had been more dead people for the kid to see. The whole part in the middle when he sees Mischa Barton’s ghost puking and then solves her mysterious death seemed like a pilot for a series on ABCFamily.

But it was a pretty good movie. I liked it okay enough.

Until I saw the DVD commentary and he revealed that the color red in scenes with Bruce Willis denoted his ghostiness.

What. The. Hell?

Ugh. The pretentiousness, it burns.

So then “Unbreakable” came out, and M. Night was still riding high on the goodwill from “Sixth Sense.” And it was utterly, utterly unmemorable. Seriously. Do YOU remember what the movie was about? Something about super heroes and Bruce Willis and I think Samuel Jackson did something or other in it. But critics adored it, M. Night’s fans continued to worship him, and he got the green light for “Signs.”

Ah, “Signs.” How I wanted so much to like that movie. I really did. Despite my deeply held belief that M. Night is a douche, I wanted to love a movie about crop circles and alien invasions. And the movie started out so promisingly, with creepy sounds on the baby monitor and big crop circle arrows directing the aliens to “ATTACK HERE!” and that footage of the alien at the birthday party. Good stuff. Even I’ll give him that.

But then…

But then M. Night decided that the whole “show don’t tell” adage when it comes to movie-making is a bunch of crap, because he decides to move all of the action of the movie OFF the friggin SCREEN! Okay, yes, I know the emotional center of the movie is a man trying to defend his family and recover his faith; yeah, that got shoved far enough down my throat for me to get it. But come on…at least throw us a bone and show us some of this stuff happening all around the world by flashing some news footage or something. It reminded me of a stage production of “Dracula”–all the characters talking about really cool, scary stuff that ALREADY HAPPENED to them.

I won’t even get into the whole water thing. Seriously, M. Night. Water? After dropping that anvil in your glorified cameo about having a “feeling” that they don’t like to be around water, you actually went there and made THAT the thing that defeated the aliens? At least in “Alien Nation,” it was salt water that the aliens couldn’t take.

But even then…I can watch “Signs” when it’s on TNT and see bits of it that I really like. The “last supper” scene, for example. Mel Gibson, for all his failings and flaws as a person, can act his ass off when he wants. I can see moments of the movie that it could have been.

So after “Signs,” I was obviously ripe for the picking. I saw “The Village” at the theater.

That was when I was convinced that M. Night was so full of shit he squeaked.

I loved the idea of monsters terrorizing a village. I loved the idea of being afraid to go into the woods or out of the boundaries of the village because “they” would get you. I loved the idea of the monsters randomly rampaging through the village to pick off the easy prey. All that stuff would have made a really good movie.

But,  of course, M. Night had to have his damned TWIST. Oh, no…you sillies! It’s not really monsters terrorizing the village! It’s just people dressed up like monsters! And it’s not really an 18th century village! It’s just a really elaborate historical theme park stuck in the middle of Pennsylvania! Ha-ha! Gotcha!

While watching the movie, I figured the twist might be something like that…but I thought it would be much cooler, like Brice Howard would come out of the woods and discover that the rest of the world had been destroyed in a nuclear war. Not that a bunch of over-protective hippies decided that the old ways were better and went off to churn butter in an animal preserve.

Argh. I vowed at that moment to never–and I mean NEVER–go to the theater to see another one of his movies.

So when “Lady in the Water” was released, I wasn’t suckered into it. I’d read the book, The Man Who Heard Voices, and I pretty much knew what kind of cinematic crap to expect. Again, he could have done something really cool–a mermaid-ish creature from another world? Monsters coming after it to drag it back? Sounds good to me!–but he didn’t deliver. Of course, how could he, when he had to create his own character as a writer who becomes the savior of mankind through his brilliance?

“Lady” flopped like a goldfish dumped onto a tile floor, which didn’t surprise me. In fact, it vaguely gratified me to see that people were finally getting wise to M. Night. Of course, it wasn’t his fault that the movie bombed. Audiences just weren’t mature or enlightened enough to understand his deeply philosophical film.

Uh-huh. That’s why. Not because of stilted dialogue or cutesy characters or overbearing egotism on the part of the writer/director/star-in-his-own-mind. Okay. Sure.

When the trailers for “The Happening” first started popping up, I’ll admit I was intrigued. I’m a sucker for an end of the world movie, and the vague, ominous threats in the previews looked interesting. The fact that M. Night wrote and directed it made me wary, but then again…end of the world, people! Sure, the title looked better suited for a freakazoid, psychedelic ’60s hippie-fest, but the poster, with its abandoned cars and empty road, got my attention to the point where I considered breaking my vow and going to see it when it was released.

Thank God, my better sense prevailed. I read the reviews after “The Happening” opened. Of course, die-hard M. Night fans liked it, but since I’m not one of their number, my hackles went up. I read more reviews. All of them were bad. Any director who tries to make the whispering of the wind in the trees ominous needs, obviously, to think long and hard about what kind of movie he’s making.

I can’t comment on “The Happening,” because I haven’t seen it yet. I might rent it when it comes out on DVD. Actually, I’ll Netflix it, so I don’t feel like I’m actually shelling out money to see it. I have a bad feeling I’ll have that same sense of “Oh, God…why?!?” that I felt when watching “Signs.” So much potential to be good, ruined by so much undeserved ego.

M. Night Shyamalan’s biggest failing as a director is that he got too much too soon. His first movie was such a big success that it set an impossibly high standard for every other movie that would follow. He was too praised, too rewarded at too early a stage in his career. I firmly believe in the whole “paying your dues” ethic, and he got a free pass (although one could say that he’s paying them now).

I’m not saying that he’s not a capable director. He has moments of brilliance, and he has created some truly memorable scenes. But he’s bought into his own hype. He’s paying too much attention to the fans who think he can do no wrong and not enough to the critics who know better. A little hubris goes a long way, and he’s got enough for the entire graduating class of UCLA’s film-making department.

He might be getting on the right track now, though, since he’s not going to be writing his next film, “The Last Airbender” (which sounds like a euphemism for a fart, but maybe that’s just me). He needs to step away from the word processor and concentrate on the aspect of his career in which he actually shows promise. Just direct the movies, M. Night. Put down the keyboard and nobody’ll get hurt.

And get over your damn self already.