While the most recent offerings from M. Night Shyamalan have been met with scorn (including his latest release, After Earth), we attempted to find the strengths in his filmography, particularly related to the ideas of faith and belief. Those themes are indeed heavily ingrained in his past works, but the concern of secrecy is also prevalent, in part due to his (perhaps now fading) obsession with twists. This all hit a fascinatingly absurd peak with a promotion for his 2004 film The Village.
Commissioned by Sci-Fi Channel, producers had “documentary” filmmakers Nathaniel Kahn and Callum Greene hit the set of his film to discover a “buried secret” regarding the filmmaker (fake spoilers: that he actually died for 35 minutes after drowning in a frozen pond as a child, giving way to supernatural abilities) and the results are brazenly entertaining. As far as viral stunts go, studios rarely put this much effort in and get Johnny Depp to play along, so, as the filmmaker toils with the long-rumored Unbreakable 2 (which is “getting closer”) and his next work, a micro-budget film about forgiveness, check out the feature-length film below for some purely ridiculous fun.
Life would be boring without secrets — don’t you think?