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Showing posts with the label shyamalan

DEVIL - REVIEW

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Shyamalan produces this first instalment of his "Night Chronicles" and surprisingly creates an entertaining, if uninspired, horror tale. After a truly engaging Hitchcockian first half the film unfortunately chooses to go down the familiar path of every silly supernatural horror film ever made and pick off its characters one by one only to build up towards a hammy revelation which doesn't really make sense. It's a shame because Devil really didn't need to be a supernatural horror. Had it stuck with its original premise and gone for a more Speed / Phone Booth -style thriller it could have been a genuinely tense and clever film. Alas, Shyamalan's head-explodingly naive religious message and childish take on the horror genre boils down an otherwise decent outing to a very watchable but flawed first attempt. One hopes the silliness is either kept quiet or full blown to its maximum in further instalments.

THE LAST AIRBENDER - REVIEW

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Climbing back up the hill after cult classic cinematic catastrophe The Happening was always going to be a tough one. With The Last Airbender, Shyamalan takes a small step in the right direction but still falters on so many levels making this last effort better than his Mark Wahlberg turkey but just about. M Night Shyamalan's de-evolution as a filmmaker could be traced back to when he really became Shyamalan the "auteur" with Lady in the Water . The latter had its merits and was wrongfully underrated upon release but it was flawed, clunky and uneven like no other Shyamalan film had been before. Even a lesser effort like Signs felt focused and acutely paced and executed compared to it. One can only conclude that M Night is just not a good screenwriter. The naivity and annoyingly juvenile undertones of his ideas just fly through his script pages like concords cancelling all senses of danger, suspense or darkness from the finished material. A horror film like The Happeni