In 2005, an episode of Adult Swim animated series “Robot Chicken” featured a segment parodying the films of M. Night Shyamalan, who had then just released critical failure “The Village” the previous year. Titled “The Twist,” the sketch depicts Shyamalan as a screeching jokester with a heavy Indian accent (that detail, and the mocking of his last name, dates the segment aggressively to the edgy mid-2000s comedy world) who reacts to everything that happens to him and his family by turning to the camera and exclaiming “What a twist!” For many people, that sketch sums up Shyamalan’s public persona: He’s a man who loves his twist endings.
Born in India and raised in Philadelphia, Shyamalan directed a handful of films before 1999’s “The Sixth Sense,” but it was that cultural phenomenon — and the now legendary twist ending that closes it — that introduced him into the popular consciousness. A macabre drama starring Bruce Willis as a child psychologist working with a young boy (played by Haley Joel Osment) who can communicate with the dead, it introduced all the elements we think of when we think of a Shyamalan film: A twist that changes how we view the story, a focus on tension and supernatural horror, dialogue that isn’t necessarily the most naturalistic in the world, and a prevailing earnestness and love for his characters that shines through the darkness he puts the characters through. Shyamalan is more than just the superficial elements of his fil.