Once, not too long ago, Manoj Shyamalan was regarded as the voice of the chills kingdom in America. As Indians, we felt very proud of him when The Sixth Sense in 1999 was hailed as a pioneering shiver-giver. It was a courageous spine-chiller which spawned many rip-offs and imitations, some of them sadly emerging from Shyamalan’s own tired repertoire. How will Shyamalan ever know he is slipping off the wall when no one tells him?
When was the last time we saw a Manoj Night Shyamalan film which scared the hell out of us? Split in 2016, perhaps. It had a certain amount of thrill value inherent in the actor James McAvoy’s multiple-disorder act. Everything else before or after Split was degrees of dreadfulness.
So, when did the maker of The Sixth Sense dive into the sick sense?
Manoj Night Shyamalan likes to be called Night. It could’ve something to do with the dark, eerie supernatural thrillers that he specialises in. There’s certainly no night-like quality in his sunny, smiling, positive personality.
This writer spoke to Night spoke to in 2008 when his eerie aura had dimmed. Had the momentum in his career been lost thereafter? “No! What you’ve just said is something I’ve not heard abroad for seven years. I hear this a lot in India. It feels like everyone is five years behind. You can’t judge my career by the box office alone. If you’re talking about Oscars, that’s just 500 of my peers. The myth that you’ve portrayed about my movies was disproven by my very next film after The Sixth Sense. Unbreakable is actually my most resonant movie. I feel I surpassed my previous film myself as a movie-maker over here, although it was my lowest-grossing movie for a while. That was an irony for me. And time has proven that it was wrongly received. It’s my personal favourite.”
Night started his career with a very introspective, semi-autobiographical film, Praying With Anger. What took him into this long-lasting romance with the supernatural? “I never had an agenda. The agenda is that I never had an agenda. All my movies are conversations about faith. The supernatural element just happened. I think my life illustrates a shift in culture where I may be American. But at heart, I remain very Indian. I grew up in America, but my first movie was based in India. And when I was surrounded with all these American girls, I chose to marry an Indian girl.:
Night was happy that The Sixth Sense remains the most ripped-off film. “When I see films like I Am Legend, I feel good about the fact that I was making an inspiring supernatural film, although mine was different. At the end of the day, we’re all borrowing from one another. I was ripping off Steven Spielberg anyway. No, seriously. I even told Steven that. After I finished my latest film, The Happening, I watched Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. The opening credits of both films are the same! It just happened.”
