Trap, The Watchers, and a summer of three Shyamalans

The father changed the way American filmmakers tell stories. One daughter is having a breakout year as a director, and another daughter is having a breakout year for her singing career. It’s a big year for the Shyamalan family. Of course M. Night Shyamalan is an auteur in a small league of directors that includes Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Wes Anderson, and the Coen Brothers. First, you either love or hate each creator’ signature style. But their works are unmistakably their own. Shyamalan’s impact to modern film can’t be overstated. You can look at films before and after his surprise hit The Sixth Sense and see a shift toward films that require that surprise at the end. That trademark is now an integral part of cinema, even though it has been used as a story tool throughout the history of film and storytelling. But his use of this, his success from it, made everyone else jump on the bandwagon. Each of his films has something new to say, but his approach is unique compared to his peers.

This year his latest movie is Trap, another twisty showpiece, this time featuring a rock concert where his daughter Saleka Shyamalan (Signs, Old, Servant) as Lady Raven is the featured musical act, attended by a father and daughter played by Josh Hartnett (Halloween H20, Pearl Harbor) and Ariel Donoghue. Someone is the target of a raid. Meanwhile his daughter Ishana Shyamalan is following in her dad’s footsteps, writing and directing The Watchers, a horror movie starring Dakota Fanning (War of the Worlds, The Equalizer 3) and Halo and The Tourist’s Olwen Fouéré, which looks a lot like The Ring.