Every M. Night Shyamalan Movie Ranked From Worst To Best
11. Lady In The Water
After The Village received mixed reviews from critics and audiences alike, Shyamalan followed up with Lady in the Water, which began to sound alarm bells for the filmmaker's fans that he may have lost his knack for quality suspense pictures.
You can't really blame the director for trying to make something completely different to his prior efforts - a supernatural thriller in which a Philadelphia apartment superintendent (Paul Giamatti) attempts to return a water nymph (Bryce Dallas Howard) trapped on Earth to her own world.
Sadly despite the talented actors involved this is a flat, oddly uninteresting mess of a film, unaided by both Shyamalan casting himself in the role of the saviour author (seriously), and the groan-worthy inclusion of a snooty film critic character (Bob Balaban) who, of course, dies horribly.
As a result the film feels less like an attempt to tell a compelling fantasy story than the filmmaker thumbing his nose at anyone who didn't blindly fawn over his prior movies.
It also ended up being his first total commercial failure, only barely recouping its $70 million budget.