Shyamalan's tales of the unexpected

By Victoria Lindrea
BBC News Online Entertainment staff

Bryce Dallas Howard plays a courageous blind girl in The Village

Five years since his critically acclaimed thriller The Sixth Sense, M Night Shyamalan ranks among Hollywood's best known directors. BBC News Online joined him at the UK launch of his new film, The Village.

Since his stunning debut in 1999, the 34-year-old film-maker has written, produced and directed three further films, Unbreakable, Signs, and The Village, which opens across the UK on Friday.

An old-fashioned ghost story, set in a 19th Century village, it follows a community who live an uneasy existence trapped by the creatures that live in the woods surrounding their village.

Shyamalan drew his inspiration from another "scary, gothic story", the classic Emily Bronte novel Wuthering Heights. Like Shyamalan's The Village it centres on a "knotted romance" between newcomer Bryce Dallas Howard and Joaquin Phoenix.

Huge debut

For the 23-year-old actress it marked a huge debut, only compounded by the pressure of having a famous father in the industry - Oscar-winning director Ron Howard.

Village co-star Joaquin Phoenix also starred in Shyamalan's Signs

"Honestly in many ways I feel like I'm doomed," said Howard, who followed The Village with a role in Lars Von Trier's forthcoming film, Manderlay.

"The film-making experience is very satisfying, and can be with a lot of different film-makers. But to work with a director who is an angel, it'll be hard to equal that," said the actress, referring to her experience working with Shyamalan.

For Shyamalan, film-making is an on-going "dance between art and commerce". His name increasingly prefixes the movie title, promising big box office. But he bemoans how his audience has become preoccupied with the encumbent twist in his story-telling.

The definition of fear is what you do not know M Night Shyamalan

For him, the twist isn't about plot revelation, it's about peeling back the layers of the story to understand its "true emotional motivation".

"When I write it's a very emotional process. It's a serious expression of things that are important to me," says Shyamalan, who calls the screenwriting process "eight months of torture".

Ticking clock

Nonetheless, the Indian-born film-maker has yet to direct another person's script, preferring to "go for the thing that's risky" and deliver the entire package himself.

He cites Stanley Kubrick and Peter Weir among his favourite directors, Kubrick for his formalism and Weir for his humanity.

"For me, the ability to judge a director is from their tone.

"My particular accent that I speak in is suspense. If two people are having a conversation, my mind will immediately go to doing it in a way that creates a little ticking clock inside you."

Director M Night Shyamalan on set with Village star Adrien Brody

"It's about defying expectations. The actress delivers a line in a way that you did not expect, the music comes in at a time you did not expect, the camera moves in a way you did not expect," he explains.

"That's why I find it so hard to put humour in.

"I really want to do humour more, but I find it empties that tank of tension and I have start all over again."

Shyamalan adds: "Fear is the unknown. The definition of fear is what you do not know.

"We feel scared of the woods because we are not familiar with it."

He believes his success in making a powerful thriller "comes from making things that are familiar, unfamiliar to you".

And how long he can continue to defy expectations is anybody's guess.

The Village is showing at cinemas across the UK.