Dear M.,
Fuck you.
You made me wait 19 years for…this?
Now I know what Star Wars fans felt in 1999 when The Phantom Menace first debuted. Confusion. Resentment. Betrayal.
And here’s the thing, M., I actually consider The Sixth Sense to be your fourth-best film, behind Signs, Unbreakable and Split.
You know what that means? That means I’ve actually watched The Village, Lady in the Water, The Happening, The Last Airbender (truth be told, I fell asleep, but I bought a ticket) and After Earth. Five consecutive turkeys over a nine-year span.
That also means I was one of the faithful who championed The Visit because it was an incredibly taut thrill ride, and a genuine return to form for you, right up until that lame epilogue.
And I actually stood up in the theater and cheered when Unbreakable's David Dunn was revealed at the end of Split — because I was truly shocked and completely stoked to realize that you had a plan all along.
Split was your masterstroke, your greatest twist, a secret bridge that created a shared universe where Dunn and Elijah Price and Kevin Wendell Crumb (one of your greatest creations) could co-exist and eventually collide in an epic super-powered finale.
I walked out of the theater beaming like a kid who didn’t expect to receive a present and instead got the greatest gift of all.
I couldn’t shut up about how awesome you were, about how fans never should have doubted you, about how you were living up to the lofty expectations that your early success generated.
Now I know what it must feel like to get ghosted online, to have someone trick you into believing that they’re not just too good to be true, but that they are for real, right before they break your heart.
It’s been two days since I saw Glass. Two days since I read the disclaimer that you must have asked to be included on the big screen for the audience to read before the movie began. The same disclaimer where you expressed such appreciation to fans for allowing you to complete this trilogy, and the one where you asked that no one spoil any of the surprises we were about to see since it had taken you 19 long years to finally make good on the promise of Unbreakable.
What surprises should I not spoil, M.?
The fact that you built up expectations to a boiling point and then seemingly lost interest when it mattered most?
The fact that you seemingly lied about loving these characters as much as fans? At least that might explain why you couldn't come up with a single defining moment, your own "We have a Hulk" moment, even after nearly two decades
The fact that Glass completely falls apart in its third act?
The fact that you spend the better part of two hours offering a debate about the merits of comic books, about the sanity and sanctity of people who want to believe that humans with extraordinary abilities might be real, and then you pull not one, but two, famous M. Night Shyamalan twists in the last 15 minutes — and they’re both awful, but worse, they seem designed specifically to support Dr. Ellie Staple’s theory that the people who believe that strongly in something are the delusional ones.
It’s like you invited all of us into your home for a lovely, intimate dinner and then carefully climbed up on the table to casually shit on each and every plate.
It’s hard to accept that we’ve been duped. It hurts to realize that you’re no better than Harold Hill, a fake and phony music man whose gift of deception is his defining ability.
It might be different if Glass was just simply a bad movie, but it’s not.
Once again, you have given James McAvoy a center-stage showcase to further prove that his talents as an actor, his ability to summon forth so many distinct personalities in a matter of seconds, shows that he really is super-human. Every moment he is on screen, minus the woeful third act, where he just runs around flexing and screaming, is a marvel.
Once again, you have given Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson an opportunity to reprise beloved characters, and they both deliver, minus the abominable mess that is their final showdown.
Once again, you have gone to painstaking lengths to prove your detractors right by making not a bad movie, but a wholly disappointing film experience.
It might be easier if I was just breaking up with you, M. At least then, with time, this bruise on my heart might heal.
But you made me believe — in the power of signs as simple as a little girl hoarding half-empty water glasses for no discernible reason, in the potential to see ghosts, in the hope that a man who can’t be hurt might meet his greatest foe in the form of a human for whom the slightest touch could disintegrate his bones.
Fuck you, M.
Sit on that and twist for a while.
John W. Allman has spent more than 25 years as a professional journalist and writer, but he’s loved movies his entire life. Good movies, awful movies, movies that are so gloriously bad you can’t help but champion them. Since 2009, he has cultivated a review column and now a website dedicated to the genre films that often get overlooked and interviews with cult cinema favorites like George A. Romero, Bruce Campbell and Dee Wallace. Contact him at bloodviolenceandbabes.com, on Facebook or on Twitter.
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This article appears in Jan 17-24, 2019.