The quickest way for me to explain why, as a Shyamalan hater, his movie's don't work for me, is that most of them expect me to contend with their human element. Like Spielberg, he expects us to recognize our own humanity in his characters, their families, their reality. But Shyamalan, not even remotely, does not understand how to articulate any of these things. He never offers any proof that he is anything but an alien observing us. He understands people as much as a 'keep hanging in there' cat poster understands the human condition. So when he lifts all of his influences from a Spielberg film, he only thinks to crib the most surface elements of the characters in them. Maybe, if I could engage with his work as camp, or as some kind of demented fever dream, or with at least a sense of humor at what a weirdo he is, I could give his early movies a pass. But from my perspective, only a movie like The Happening gives me this option of watching it from an emotional distance. I feel I might have permission to laugh at it (actually, probably not, but it's so weird and stupid I am taking that right for myself)
I agree with you that The Village probably isn't that much worse than Sixth Sense or Signs. I don't know why it gets excluded from their company by fans of those two much more popular films. In my eyes, they are about the same.
But, also from my eyes, all three are pretty bad movies. Regardless of the technical craft he frequently shows off, I just cringe when I watch them. They make me want to revoke his citizenship to this planet.
I agree with you that The Village probably isn't that much worse than Sixth Sense or Signs. I don't know why it gets excluded from their company by fans of those two much more popular films. In my eyes, they are about the same.
But, also from my eyes, all three are pretty bad movies. Regardless of the technical craft he frequently shows off, I just cringe when I watch them. They make me want to revoke his citizenship to this planet.
It's funny you make the Spielberg comparison because I think I may actually just be the flip side of your coin. I really loathe Spielberg for how much I feel like he overdoes "the human element". I find the rest of his filmmaking usually excellent, obviously, but I always find his sentimentality (and I don't just mean when the emotion is sentimental, I mean his sentimentality in portraying characters) nauseating. One of the things I like so much about Shyamalan's better work is the way he reigns in his actors to get quiet, measured performances that actually feel much more genuine to me than what Spielberg does. To me, getting subtlety out of Mel Gibson is a near-miracle. Honestly, until I saw Phoenix in Signs I hated him as an actor for his overracting (IMO). But Shyamalan got something believable out of him to me.
Just thinking as I type though, I think the reason that I liked Bridge Of Spies so much was that I got this overwhelming feeling that Spielberg/Hanks wasn't actually overdoing it for a change (a feeling I also got from Fiennes in Schindler's and of course Scheider/Shaw/Dreyfuss in Jaws before Spielberg was really putting his stamp on everything). It felt like there was genuine human subtlety to the characters and the performances instead of the usual Spielbergian toomuchery. Which unfortunately has come to define the work of so many other filmmakers.
Again, I'm meandering here but you've made me think as I hadn't really compared the two before and I'm certainly NOT saying that Shyamalan is better than Spielberg so let's just get that off the table completely, but would I rather watch performances in Shyamalan movies than Spielberg movies? With a few exceptions, yeah, absolutely.
I certainly like your point that The Village isn't significantly worse than his "best" films even if you think his best films are total crap.
My days of defending Shyamalan are long over but my days of defending a specific subset of his films will likely never end.