Unbreakable

The cold reception M. Night Shyamalan’s film met in 2000 came from its marketing, not the film. He wanted it sold as a comic book picture and the studio refused. By his own account the reasoning was blunt: nobody, he was told, would turn out for a movie about a comic book. It was advertised instead as a supernatural thriller, like his hit from the year before. The outcome was foreseeable. Audiences arrived wanting a fright, did not get one, and dismissed it. Shyamalan summed that reaction up years later by asking who had ever promised them something scary. The story was always an origin, with the three part comic structure mapped out and only the opening part filmed. What waits at the end of one hundred and six minutes is a stopping point more than a resolution. Angles chosen with cinematographer Eduardo Serra imitate the comic panel, staging scenes inside doorways, mirrors and reflections so the frame gains a border. Cutting within a scene is almost absent. Colour carries information too, green gathering around David and purple around Elijah, sorting the sides before dialogue does. Who it’s for: anyone choosing the near total absence of cutting inside scenes, and a man weighing his own body instead of fighting. Who it’s not for: viewers waiting on a detonating final reveal.