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While I was watching The Sixth Sense for the first time, I was aware that writer-director Shyamalan was reworking two other films I'd seen, The Other (1972) and more specifically Jacob's Ladder. So there are no surprises in The Sixth Sense for me, and I think people over-rate it. In fairness, if you haven't seen the two earlier films, The Sixth Sense probably packs quite a wallop. On the positive side, Shyamalan won me over with his grasp of the power of suggestion, his visual style, and his reliance on the emotional lives of his characters. I like the calmness of the film, of all his films. Calm is his tempo. or maybe his tempo is calm. I didn't know where Unbreakable was going at first, but it quickly won me over, too. A very smart, wise film that brought comic heroes down to earth and I'm convinced has been strong influence on the genre films that followed it. Water plays an important part in that story too; he's got water on the brain. After the carefully sustained build-up of Signs, it was very hard to come up with the right ending. The ending just doesn't work. Maybe it's how the alien was portrayed. Maybe it should have been played as a faster harder-to-beat insect or something,

Doc Dynamo wrote:

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Maybe he should direct somebody else's screenplay.

Maybe he should. Or maybe he should adapt somebody's elses novel or short story. His more recent stories don't feel consequential enough.

I started a thread somewhere on this forum "does the power of suggestion still scare you?" I think the fact that now that audiences have seen everything done in terms of explicitness and grossness that many people no longer know how to receive subtlety. Personally I really value a talent like Shyamalans'. Perhaps he should apply his considerable talents and judgment to more commercial stories?

Richard

Siouxsie Sue wrote:

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I'm not sure if I'd call it calm so much as moribund. I wonder if I'm being unfair.

Moribund?
Did you say moribund?
There you go again, showing off your vocabulary.
Do you mean moribund as in "being in the state of dying; approaching death" or moribund as in "being in a state of inactivity or obsolescence" ?
A case could be made for both definitions applying to Shyamalan's films because of the genre he works in, i suppose, but personally I find his films more optimistic -- dare I say life-affirming? -- than the genre films of other practitioners. Maybe his films need to be darker, rougher, edgier, more tragic to connect with people. Maybe he needs a fetish, like Tim Burton, who operates on nothing else.

Aren't all horror films moribund? Isn't that what attracts us to them?

Siouxsie Sue wrote:

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I'm as down on visual overkill as anyone. But I got nothing special from what I saw; except that I can see how some aspects *might* seem good compared to the usual rubbish. But I'm not comparing. I actually think he strives like all hell to BE commercial but fails so badly that you might well think he's doing something else entirely. But what? A convincing answer to that might make me look again. I have to say, if this really was the best example of 'art' that could be offered for modern horror, the genre's sunk. Any number of cheap B horrors of the past kill this stuff dead.

Shyamalan reminds me of some old-school dramatists I know. His stories are character-driven. It's all about character; every decision he makes, from set design to set-ups, comes out of his characters, develops his characters. I see this as a virtue. Most horror film makers have no interest in character. Character is beyond them, unless they're recyclying. Compare Shyamalan to the team of Val Lewton and Jacques Tourneur, who are his biggest influences. He has grasped the power of suggestion, of building suspense and tension, like Lewton and Tourneur. But what's he doing wrong that they did right?

I think his films would be much stronger if they were 10-15 minutes shorter. Not shorter by cutting, but by picking up the tempo. His deliberation is fine, just too slow for mass ADDO sensibilities in the modern times.

Richard

Siouxsie Sue wrote:

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Amidst my rambling, I am sitting and wondering, 'Is there a failing on my part to respond to something here?' It's all personal taste but I guess understanding the mechanics interests me. I don't like to imagine my taste is completely crass and unsophisticated. Hmmm.

He's not Gothic.
Shyamalan isn't working in the Gothic mode, not pictorially or thematically.
Maybe that's all it is.
Give us an example of what seduces you visually.
What else do you watch.