All M. Night Shyamalan Movies, Ranked From Worst to Best

M. Night Shyamalan used to be the golden boy of Hollywood, producing hit after hit and raking in the goodwill. Now, his filmography is a lot more polarizing and mixed, making it the perfect candidate for us to rank all of his movies from worst to best!

Ranking Every M. Night Shyamalan Movie

M. Night Shyamalan is a director with a very inconsistent filmography, to say the least. When he’s good, he makes some truly compelling narratives that are made better by the twists that completely upend their stories. However, Shyamalan has also delivered some truly terrible movies, with some of his oeuvre being regarded as some of the worst movies of all time. His name has been dragged through the mud, sometimes for good reasons, but it’s important to remember that when he’s good, he’s damned good.

So that’s why, in celebration of the release of his most recent movie, Trap, we’re ranking all fourteen of his movies from worst to best. For the record, we’re only considering movies he has directed, not projects he produced like Servant or The Watchers. Also, while most of his movies feature twists, we’re not going to rank these films based on the quality of their twists, otherwise, good movies that have bad twists will be brought down rather unfairly. With that, here’s our ranking of every M. Night Shyamalan movie from worst to best!

14) Avatar: The Last Airbender (2010)

Calling Avatar: The Last Airbender a bad movie is a severe understatement. Not only does it completely fail to understand the source material it’s based on, but even as a summer blockbuster it fails to deliver on virtually every element. The special effects are awful, the casting is poor, the story is truncated to hell and back, and the needless 3D that was forced into the movie to capitalize on the success of the other Avatar film hurts more than it helps. You know this movie sucks, I know this movie sucks, let’s move on.

13) The Happening (2008)

Yes, The Happening is a strange movie in a lot of different ways, epitomized by Mark Wahlberg infamously trying to talk to a plant, but it’s also highly entertaining because of it. No one behaves like an actual human being in this film, leading to bizarre scenes and dialogue that rarely make any sense. It’s an absurdly silly movie that takes itself super seriously, coming across like a B-movie that would appear on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Make no mistake, The Happening is still a bad movie, but at the very least, I could understand why a person would watch this movie, even if it’s to laugh at how awful it is.

12) After Earth (2013)

People often forget about this Will Smith sci-fi blockbuster, and for good reason. This was during the era when Will Smith was trying desperately to make his son, Jaden, into a movie star, forgetting that Jaden wasn’t/isn’t a good actor. To be honest, because this is such a Smith family vehicle, M. Night Shyamalan’s inclusion as the movie’s director feels almost incidental. His directorial presence doesn’t add anything of value to the film and, instead, just serves to remind audiences why he should stay far away from special effects-driven blockbusters. This is easily M. Night Shyamalan at his most forgettable.

11) Glass (2019)

Glass could have been a great movie. Serving as the conclusion to M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable trilogy, there was a lot of potential in seeing Bruce Willis, James McAvoy, and Samuel L. Jackson all reprise their roles from their earlier films, but it never came together. The film feels so lifeless and its plot is so conventional that anyone could see the ending coming from a mile away. Glass was a disappointment not because it’s a disaster but because it’s so unimpressive in its ambition and execution.

10) Lady in the Water (2006)

Even after all these years, I still don’t really know how to describe Lady in the Water. It’s a bizarre movie, but one that I find fascinating in how strange it is. M. Night Shyamalan was able to assemble a cast of heavy hitters like Paul Giamatti, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Jeffrey Wright, but their performances are limited by a surreal and pretentious script that seems designed to make them come off as wooden as possible. Lady in the Water really underscores how Shyamalan lost the ability to write dialogue and stories that are coherent for a time, but I have to admit that the weird subtext of the film makes it at least fun to dissect. Just don’t expect Shyamalan to direct anyone here well.

9) Knock at the Cabin (2023)

I wouldn’t call Knock at the Cabin a bad movie by any stretch of the word, but it’s a film whose premise is overbearing. In a way, that’s a positive change of pace for M. Night Shyamalan, who, for a time, tried to make his movies as complex and overwritten as possible. Here, the premise is simple yet effective, showcasing what happens when a family has to make an impossible choice or face the end of the world. The problem is that, for a premise that’s as broad and wide-reaching as that, the film is actively resistant when it comes to explaining anything related to its concept, making the film a frustrating sit at times. It’s not a terrible movie, but it could have used just a little more time in the oven.

8) Signs (2002)

I really should like Signs more than I do. Watching an alien invasion is nothing new, but seeing it from the perspective of a single family, one that is dealing with its own emotional issues, offers a somewhat intriguing execution of the premise. I don’t think it holds up as well as some of his earlier movies, mostly thanks to Shyamalan’s inconsistent writing and a twist that is so idiotic that it actively hurts the movie. I know that I said I wouldn’t be factoring in a movie’s twist in my assessment of the film, but the twist in Signs is so bafflingly handled that it completely undermines the tension of the alien invasion when you learn what it is. Still, it’s an alright movie.

7) The Village (2004)

The Village may not have had the warmest critical reception upon its release, but its Puritan-era atmosphere holds up more than I thought it would. Learning about this isolated community beset by monsters that live in the woods offers up some compelling mysteries, especially when we start to learn more about the nature of the village. Its ending can be a bit predictable, but it reveals a new layer of intrigue that justifies watching the film a second time to see all of the clues present. It may not exactly be very logical, making the film an early indicator that M. Night Shyamalan was more interested in twists than crafting meaningful narratives, but the end result is still a horror movie worthy of its cult status.

6) The Visit (2015)

I’m pretty sure The Visit is Shyamalan’s simplest film to date, but that simplicity really helps to elevate it. The premise is straightforward — two kids spend the weekend with their grandparents, but they start to get the impression that something isn’t right with them. The tension is present, and as far as horror movies go, it gets the job done, especially when the shoe drops and we see what’s actually going on at their grandparent’s house. It’s a return to form for a director who had failure after failure over the course of a decade, even if it isn’t exactly a home run. Sometimes a simple horror movie is good enough.

5) Trap (2024)

As M. Night Shyamalan’s most recent film, what makes Trap work, much like The Visit, is how simple it is. It’s a thriller with a solid setup, placing Josh Harnett’s Cooper, a father who moonlights as a serial killer, at a concert that has police officers crawling all around the venue with the sole intent of capturing him. It leads to some tense situations as we follow Cooper and see the gears turn in his head as he tries to find some way, any way, to escape before he’s caught. While this film is good in its own right, Josh Harnett steals the show and elevates it above The Visit solely due to the strength of his performance.

4) Old (2021)

There’s something unsettling about the concept of Old that really gets under your skin. The film follows a group of people on vacation who are stuck on a beach that is causing them to rapidly age, leading to some moments that are immensely uncomfortable and unsettling in just the right ways. You feel for all of the people stuck on this beach, and you’re hoping they can find some way to escape the rapid aging they’re undergoing. It’s a cool concept for a horror movie, one that leads to a lot of great, if goofy, moments. The only thing holding it back is its somewhat unsatisfying ending and, again, how goofy it can get at times. But the end result is still a surprisingly good movie from someone who most people had written off by 2021.

3) Split (2017)

If there’s one genre that M. Night Shyamalan should only do from now on, it’s thrillers. Split, again, offers a simple premise — a group of women are kidnapped by a serial killer with multiple personality disorder and have to find some way to escape him and all of his personas. While the tension is solid, the movie is dominated by James McAvoy, who pulls heavy-duty shifting between a plethora of personalities on a dime. It leads to a film that is a white-knuckle thriller at points as we learn more about the monster that McAvoy plays and the monster inside of him that all of his personalities are afraid of. And thanks to a surprise twist that Split is a stealth sequel to Unbreakable, you have a thriller that still stands strong even after its sequel botched the landing.

2) Sixth Sense (1999)

This is the film that put M. Night Shyamalan on the map. The Sixth Sense was a phenomenon when it came out, with people calling it one of the best thrillers of 1999. It was nominated for six Academy Awards, and it’s hard not to see why. Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment are great, with the film featuring smart writing that didn’t draw any attention to its masterfully handled twist ending — an ending that has become iconic. So why isn’t this film number one among Shyamalan’s movies? Because once you know the twist, repeat viewings become less interesting. The problem with making a twist such a fundamental part of your narrative is that, once you know it, you can never repeat that first experience, and the impact of the twist lessens. That’s not to say the film isn’t still incredible in its own right, but it’s one that is ever so slightly less impressive the more you watch it.

1) Unbreakable (2000)

In an era where superhero movies are all the rage, we need more movies like Unbreakable. A story of a man discovering that he has superpowers should be a grand adventure, but Unbreakable instead offers a deconstruction not only around superheroes and how they’re portrayed in movies but the iconography associated with them and their representation of concepts like good and evil. It’s a fascinating watch, one made even better by Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson’s performances, and it proved that M. Night Shyamalan wasn’t just a one-hit-wonder. Add in some top-notch cinematography and a clear love of the medium he’s examining, and you have a movie that I feel comfortable calling the best M. Night Shyamalan movie.