The thing about a good twist ending, though, is that it doesn't spoil rereading the story later. If it was really well done, you will find clue after clue that escaped you the first time through.
... aaaand you just summed up the difference between Early M. Night and Later M. Night.
You can watch The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable over and over again, and they're still solid narratives that hold up even when you know the twist. In fact, I went back to see The Sixth Sense just a couple of days later in the theaters, and watched ALL THE CLUES PILE UP. It turns into a completely different movie, but one that's just as engaging.
With his later movies, knowing The Twist just makes you kinda roll your eyes when you watch them again. "Really? Oi!"
(All of this is just more evidence supporting my Shyamalan Theory: two movies into his directing career, he got saddled with being "the Next Hitchcock" -- and he didn't want to be. So the increasingly-cheesy quality of his "suspense" films are his way of rebelling against that.)
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But he did kind of overplay that card later, didn't he...
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"What a tweest!"
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You can watch The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable over and over again, and they're still solid narratives that hold up even when you know the twist. In fact, I went back to see The Sixth Sense just a couple of days later in the theaters, and watched ALL THE CLUES PILE UP. It turns into a completely different movie, but one that's just as engaging.
With his later movies, knowing The Twist just makes you kinda roll your eyes when you watch them again. "Really? Oi!"
(All of this is just more evidence supporting my Shyamalan Theory: two movies into his directing career, he got saddled with being "the Next Hitchcock" -- and he didn't want to be. So the increasingly-cheesy quality of his "suspense" films are his way of rebelling against that.)
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