M. Night Shyamalan’s freak movie endings reassessed, for the ‘Sixth Sense’ 25th anniversary

While nothing is ever a totally sure bet, you can feel pretty safe assuming that M. Night Shyamalan’s movies will always pack a wallop of a finale.

While nothing is ever a totally sure bet, you can feel pretty safe assuming that M. Night Shyamalan’s movies will always pack a wallop of a finale. Ever since “The Sixth Sense” chilled moviegoers to the bone in 1999 with a conclusion that brought new life – or rather, death – to what was possible with a plot twist, audiences have come to expect the unexpected from Shyamalan. Even when the result – or sometimes the entire movie before it – can feel half-baked, you’re usually happy you went along for the ride, as seems to be the case with his latest release “Trap,” which NPR called “dumb” but also gleefully entertaining. On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of “The Sixth Sense’s” release on Tuesday – which also happens to be Shyamalan’s 54th birthday – here is a list of the filmmaker’s twisty movie endings, from ridiculous to incredible. Needless to say, this roundup packs considerable spoilers.* Unlike Shyamalan’s signature style, both the start and end of this list will be supremely predictable. This baffling misfire infamously includes a middling Mark Wahlberg pleading for mercy from a plastic houseplant, and is inept at making viewers care by the time it’s revealed that it was the trees all along. Granted, that revelation doesn’t even come at the very end of the movie, but later meditations on similar concepts – notably 2018’s “Bird Box” – fare better than “The Happening.” After a fairly good run, “Lady” was more of a misstep for Shyamalan, with a nonsensical story that struggled like a fish out of water in spite of an impressive cast led by Paul Giamatti. Shyamalan himself appears in an ultimately pivotal, but bizarre, role. And don’t even get us started on Bryce Dallas Howard as the… something in the water. “Old” was a movie that packed one of the most intriguing concepts and marketing campaigns, and one that never came even close to that impressive in its execution. The menacing beach location where people become trapped and age at hyper-accelerated rates buries murky secrets that lead nowhere, amounting to a movie whose worst crime is being boring.