#NIGHT BOOK MOVIE MOVIE#

(Will Smith’s emotionally distant character is named … Cypher.) And on top of that, the movie felt like a cruel rejoinder to anyone who’d ever believed that the once-red-hot Shyamalan could right the ship. After Earth is overrun with sentimentality and groaningly bad stabs at dramatic profundity. Where father and son were quite compelling in The Pursuit of Happyness, here they’re dull nonentities. Kitai must find help for his injured father, which requires going on a perilous journey - and also requires the audience to spend a lot of time with Jaden Smith. The plot gets going when a brave intergalactic soldier (Smith) and his remote son Kitai (Smith’s own son Jaden) crash-land on a now-hostile Earth. Based on an idea by Will Smith, After Earth looks ahead 1,000 years in the future, during a time in which humanity is being hunted by frightening aliens who track them down by sensing their fear. So where does his latest, Knock at the Cabin, rank among his all-time best? We promise our list doesn’t end with a surprise twist.įunny to think that, in retrospect, After Earth was actually early on the whole “horror movies based on the five senses” trend that gave us A Quiet Place and Bird Box in 2018. It’s a legacy that he’s struggled with in recent years - sometimes fascinatingly - but with 2017’s Split and 2019’s Glass, he regained some of his old commercial mojo. (Plus, seriously, man: Stop acting in your movies.) Not only isn’t he the next Spielberg, it’s fair to say he’s probably doomed to be remembered as a filmmaker who peaked with his early hits The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs. Of course, his storytelling trademarks quickly became a crutch, leading to diminishing returns and a sense that Shyamalan was painting himself into a narrative corner. And never forget that his cockiness has always been part of his appeal: Shyamalan is a showman who loves to enrapture you with a good yarn and then floor you with a killer twist. At his best, he’s managed to say something meaningful about mortality, childhood, and all the things that go bump in the night - all the while pushing the boundaries of ghost stories, superhero flicks, and sci-fi thrillers. Night Shyamalan this: He’s never given up on himself, even when others have loudly mocked his pretensions to being a mass-appeal filmmaker who’s tried to inject soul and thematic depth into his blockbusters. Yes, he is probably never going to live down (or up to) that 2002 Newsweek cover proclaiming him “The Next Spielberg.” But grant M.

This previously published article has been updated to include Knock at the Cabin. Photo: Buena Vista Pictures, Universal Pictures and Touchstone Pictures

Night book movie