10 Films That Saved Directors From 'Movie Jail'

There is an argument to be made that after the success of his first film The Sixth Sense - which was nominated for six Oscars, became the second-highest-grossing film of the year and received universal critical acclaim - M. Night Shyamalan's career could only go downhill.

Like Orson Welles peaking with his directorial debut Citizen Kane, Shyamalan's following films were still met with a positive reception, but were always in the shadow of his first film. Eventually, after coasting on this good will for nearly a decade, three consecutive atrocities (The Happening, The Last Airbender, and After Earth) brought everything crashing down. It appeared that, alongside the rapidly declining quality of his films, cinemagoers had finally tired of the director's reliance on plot twists.

Shyamalan's diminishing returns at the box office meant that studios were unwilling to fund his next project. This forced the director to invest $5 million of his own money into what would become found-footage movie The Visit.

By returning to his roots of small budget thrillers, the director managed to get his first good reviews and box office success for a long time, which allowed him to make his universal comeback with 2016's Split.

While his follow-up sequel Glass was met with a more polarised reception, Shyamalan has since found further acclaim with his work on Apple TV+ series Servant, which firmly re-established his name.