We Ranked Every M. Night Shyamalan Movie

With Shyamalan's surprisingly good new movie Split, we took the occasion to rank every one of his movies from very bad to very good.
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M. Night Shyamalan's newest movie, Split, is opening to positive reviews and hella cash. Critics are calling it a return to form for the embattled filmmaker, seemingly forgetting all about 2015's wild The Visit and a strong horror-thriller TV series in Wayward Pines.

Still, there's no doubt M. Night's seen his fair share off unsavory press in the last decade. Split looks to be his biggest, most talked about project in a long time. It's fun, fast, and anchored by a perfect, off-the-wall performance from James McAvoy, who loves to get weird. It's undoubtably pure entertainment, but will inevitably divide audience thanks to its... let's say liberal interpretation of dissociative identity disorder, as well as perhaps the ballsiest ending twist the filmmakers has attempted to pull off yet.

So where does Split stand in the all-time Shyamalan rankings? Here's how all the filmmaker's efforts stack up so far, from the near-perfect, to the utter shit.

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Let's Guess the Twist of M. Night Shyamalan's New Movie

So... which of these characters is secretly a ghost the whole time?

11. The Last Airbender
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 6%

I have not seen this one. But neither have you.

10. After Earth
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 11%

To be fair, it was always going to be hard to make a movie starring Will and Jaden Smith navigating a CGI wasteland good, but making it boring too? Unforgivable.

9. Wide Awake
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 40%

Did you know M. Night Shyamalan directed a movie about a kid questioning his faith that also stars Rosie O'Donnell? Well, now you do.

8. Lady In The WaterRotten Tomatoes Score: 24%

A true, weird, boring-ass misfire. This was Shyamalan's "passion project" in which he himself plays a genius writer who's destined to change and better the world with his art. Surprisingly, this did not end up actually coming true.

7. The Happening
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 17%

Perhaps, in hindsight, not deserving of the merciless derision it received on release in 2008. M. Night's significant B-movie chops seem at odds with his delusions of artistic grandeur here. In all honesty, I'd like to see him take another shot at this now that he's fun-stupid and not bad-stupid.

6. UnbreakableRotten Tomatoes Score: 66%

The stealth-superhero movie that firmly established Shyamalan as "that guy who loves to do twist endings." It hasn't aged well from an aesthetic perspective, and the performances are shaky, but man is it a cool experiment in genre.

5. The Visit
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 64%

The 2015 movie that kicked off the mini-Renaissance (Shyamalaissance?). Funny, unsettling, and mercifully short, The Visit plays its audience like a fiddle for both belly laughs and long stretches of fist-clenching tension. This dude's still got it, guys. All it took was roughly a half-dozen turds to wake him up.

4. The Village
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 43%

Again, a movie that benefits much better in retrospect. It's a neat, well-structured parable with great acting, great horror, with a crazy twist that unfortunately dominated the conversation surrounding it.

3. Split
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 78%

Just... a blast. Anya Taylor-Joy does what she can with a good but underwritten protagonist, but this is obviously the James McAvoy Show from start to finish. Never have a filmmaker and his actor had so much fun. Split is a bolstering sign for things to come from Shyamalan, with an ending that not only shocks and delights, but recontextualizes the entire story, and genre, you've been watching.

2. The Sixth Sense
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 85%

Bruce Willis. Ghosts. Good.

Hands down Shyamalan's most successful movie to date, putting him on the map as a serious talent way back in '99, and earning him a handful of Oscar nominations (including Best Picture and Best Director). Once again, the "Shyamalan Twist" is what most remember it for, but in the 100 minutes leading up to the iconic ending, it's an affecting, thrilling piece of art that resonates to this day.

1. Signs
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 74%

The absolute quintessential M. Night Shyamalan movie, showcasing every facet of his talents. It's a dark, sinister, terrifying story that plays with expectations from start to finish. Hollywood loves aliens, but rarely are they this effective or this scary. In an industry of giant invasions and movies that end with apocalyptic CGI sky beams, the story about a family protecting their isolated farm from an otherworldly siege is more affecting, and more universal than a big sci-fi movie has any right to be.