M. Night Shyamalan

Like a lot of little kids, M. Night (born Manoj—he changed it in college) Shyamalan grew up wanting to be a director, and he had a big cinema crush on Steven Spielberg from, like, day 1. He started playing around with a home movie camera when he was pretty young, and then went to NYU's Tisch School of the Arts to firm up his moviemaking chops. And if you know anything about film schools, you know that Tisch is definitely the place for that.

The Sixth Sense was Shyamalan's first big-budget feature and first hit. But he made a couple of smaller budget movies before all that, starting with 1992's Praying with Anger, a semi-autobiographical tale of an Indian dude who grew up in America and then discovered his roots. And then there was Wide Awake (1998), an airy comedy about a young boy's religious quest, which Shyamalan shot at his old school. (Source)

Shyamalan pulled double-duty on both of these films, taking charge of both the direction and the writing. That's been a pretty consistent trend in his career: if he directs the film, you can bet you'll find his name under "Writers," too.

Of course, the reverse hasn't always been true. There are a couple of cases in which he wrote a film without directing it, like 1999's Stuart Little. Which is a little disappointing, isn't it? Just imagine a Sixth Sense vibe in E. B. White's kid-friendly tale? Can you say "cult classic"?

We kid, of course. As you can probably tell from even just the brief resume we've just given you, Shyamalan's got some diverse tastes and interests beyond the horror and fantasy stuff that's become his signature. But if you look closer, you can definitely see the seeds of his later films in the early works. Wide Awake and Praying with Anger both have coming-of-age themes, and the former has a kid going through a spiritual crisis. Sound like anyone you know?

Yep, Shyamalan definitely seems pretty interested in having us see situations through kids' eyes. Because kids don't typically understand what's happening in situations where ghosts or aliens are making an appearance, there's an emotional immediacy and honesty about their reactions. Shyamalan's early films, while not really fantasy or horror, definitely had some of the same threads and themes that ended up in his later supernatural works.

And while we're on the topic of themes and "threads," we just have to note: Shyamalan is a very deliberate, thoughtful director with a very deliberate, thoughtful style. In The Sixth Sense and beyond, it's definitely clear that he thinks a lot about things like color, symbols, themes, and motifs, and he repeats the same elements throughout a lot of his films.

What, you want examples? Fine.

In his films, you're likely to find the following:

• Kids in turmoil and/or danger
• The color red
• An emphasis on horror, sci-fi, or the supernatural
• A directorial cameo
• Water
• Car crashes
• Glass breaking
• Religion

And that's just a sample. It's no surprise that one of Shyamalan's favorite directors is Alfred Hitchcock, who infused his films with a consistent style and loved to cameo. Shyamalan definitely has some qualities of an auteur, which is what film scholars call directors who have a distinctive style and exercise oodles of control over their films to make sure that style is evident.

So his films have a lot in common. What they haven't all had is critical and box office success; that's been a little more of a mixed bag. The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs were all pretty well received among viewers and critics alike, but the rest—not so much. In fact, Shyamalan went from getting Oscar noms with Sense to earning several Razzies and—we kid you not—a "Worst Sense of Direction (Stop them before they direct again!)" award for Lady in the Water.

Womp.

Of course, in 2016, he was nominated for the Razzies' "Redeemer Award," so maybe things got back on track with Split.