It would be fair to say that despite working in a similar genre and having a propensity for making cameo appearances in many of his movies, filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan is no Alfred Hitchcock. That’s not to denigrate Shyamalan; he’s made some entertaining pictures, but he’s unlikely to reach the exalted status of the ‘Master of Suspense’, despite his best efforts.
Like Hitchcock, Shyamalan has also ventured into scripted television with the short-lived Wayward Pines (2015-16) and the current Apple+ psychological horror series Servant, which is picking up some of his best reviews to date.
To an extent the director is the victim of his own success, as the popularity of his breakthrough movie The Sixth Sense led him to attempt a version of its twist ending in almost all of his following pictures. Some have worked, others less so.
Critics have a point when they say that a fair few of the director’s films would work better as shorts or 30-minute TV episodes, as some feel a trifle overextended.
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