Every M. Night Shyamalan Movie Ranked From Worst To Best
Running down Shyamalan's insanely inconsistent filmography.
There are few filmmakers working today more fascinating - or frustrating - than M. Night Shyamalan.
The release of his new horror-thriller Old - which is included on this list - marks his 14th feature film project over the last 30 years, and once again confirms Shyamalan to be one of the most unpredictable and inconsistent genre film directors that there ever has been.
From his early origins as a low-budget indie filmmaker to his surprise mainstream success, big-budget failures, and more recent comeback, the quality of the director's output is all over the map, such that the reception to any new Shyamalan movie basically feels like it's determined by a coin flip.
But how exactly do his movies stack up to modern eyes? Do his most prominent successes still hold up to contemporary scrutiny, and do any of his more divisive or even maligned movies actually deserve a critical re-evaluation?
Dig in, then, as we rank all 14 of Shyamalan's feature films from very worst to absolute best, revisiting the director's stratospheric successes, cataclysmic failures, and those many head-scratching curios that sit somewhere in-between...
14. The Last Airbender
You won't find many arguing against the assertion that Shyamalan's $150 million live-action adaptation of the hit animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender is his worst film to date.
Avatar often feels like a student stage production with a colossal budget - the acting is amateur, the dialogue painfully wooden, and the action executed without even a shred of artistic flair.
It's painfully clear that the film was hacked up and stitched together in post-production, resulting in a scarcely coherent experience for newcomers to the IP, let alone fans of the source material.
Shyamalan was clearly completely out of his depth here, providing the ultimate proof that he's much better-suited to more modestly budgeted projects.
Despite sweeping the Razzie awards, though, it somehow managed to gross $319.7 million at the box office, which is presumably why Shyamalan was allowed to make another glossy tentpole just three years later. Speaking of which...