21 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
the best director of the last ten years, 1 Mar 2003
This review is from: The Shyamalan Collection: Signs, Unbreakable and The Sixth Sense [5 Disc Collector's Edition] [DVD] [2002] (DVD)
M. Night Shyamalan is one of the most important people in films nowadays.
He directs excellently with the cold atmosphere he creates in his films to make them as scary and as interesting as possible, while also being probably today's best scriptwriter.
Shyamalan, in the three films in this collection, shows outstanding story-telling skills, where he leads you down the main part of the story while giving you clues that you don't pick up on until the end, and then at the climax it all fits and makes sense.
The best part about endings like these, where there's always a twist, is because thw twist is there all along in the film but you just don't know it, and when Shyamalan reveals it your shocked, and you take a completely different view from the film your watching, and makes it better film for it.
Shyamalan just pulls these stories out from his head, and is a promising hope now in the world of cinema, with films around his being mostly sequels (Final Destination 2, Terminator 3, and soon to be Spider-Man 2 and Die Hard 4), modern day versions of old films (The Time Machine, 13 Ghosts, Gone In 60 Seconds, Vanilla Sky), or adaptions from comics or books (Spider-Man, Lord of the Rings, Daredevil, Harry Potter).
The other side of Shyamalans class in his ability to write well, and in playing small but relevant roles as an actor in his films, is his ability to direct superbly.
He creates dark and cold atmospheres in The Sixth Sense, the way he films 'Unbreakable' with such a dark atmosphere to show you the turmoil and hurt of Samuel L. Jackson's character, while contrasting it with Bruce Willis's character who leads a dark life but with hope.
He also makes not so usually scary scenes in 'Signs' quite scary with his excellent use of shadows, lighting and music.
There is a particular scene when there is a news broadcast saying an alien had been accidentally filmed at a kids birthday party in Mexico-and its just the way the director uses the music, the shadows and the kids screams to make it a really haunting atmosphere, building up to where an alien is seen.
Another good scene is when the main characters are in the basement and its dark and the aliens are trying to get in while the family of four people are trying to keep them out, and there is only two torches and when things happen the torches are dropped and all you see is darkness, but the music and the screams and the noises leave it to the imagination of what kind of thing is taking place.
A top line of Hollywood's finest actors also join forces for these amazing films, in top names like Bruce Willis, Mel Gibson, Samuel L. Jackson and Jacques Pheonix making leading appearances.
Just to quickly say what the particular films are about; the first film (The Sixth Sense) is a dark thriller/horror about a boy who can "see dead people" as his sixth sense, and the only person to who listens to him is his physiatrist who tries to help him confront, and solve why the dead people can communicate with him; the second film (Unbreakable) is about a man who survived a train crash where he came out unscratched while everyone else died, provoking an obsessed comic book collector to believe he has superhuman powers, just like the people he reads about his comics; and finally the third film (Signs), which is also my favourite film of the three, is about an ex-Priest who after losing his faith in God after the death of his wife in a car crash six months earlier, notices strange crop circles in his fields, and later as UFO's are spotted across hundreds of cities across the world ready for an invasion, it all builds up to a mesmerising ending.
'The Usual Suspects' was a pretty good film overall, and has a pretty good and thoughtful climax, but these films just blow it away.
From the five discs in this set, there are two discs of extras for 'The Sixth Sense' and 'Unbreakable', with the other three discs being the actual films.
For great storytelling, originality, excellent direction, great acting and mind-blowing endings, you'll need to add these three films to your collection.
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2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A maverick Director in the making.....?, 29 Oct 2003
This review is from: The Shyamalan Collection: Signs, Unbreakable and The Sixth Sense [5 Disc Collector's Edition] [DVD] [2002] (DVD)
Shyamalan is a Genius....
Buy this collection, you won't be disapointed.
Switch off the lights, close the curtains, send the kids to bed, open a beer, watch all three films back to back. I did, and didn't get to be to nearly five in the morning.
Absoloutley brilliant, 'Sixth Sense' leaves you scared to death, 'Unbreakable' leaves you in shock, 'Signs' finishes you off with a terrific spin on the familiar aliens on Earth theme.
This box set was well worth the money !
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