In 2017, Universal announced that they would be working on a new world of gods and monsters with The Mummy. There hadn’t been so much as a movie yet to prove this viability, but the confidence of Alex Kurtzman was enough to make us care. Every movie was lined up with great actors like Javier Bardem and Johnny Depp. Angelina Jolie was going to direct a remake of The Bride of Frankenstein (1933). It was such a confidence ploy that you can’t help but admire them. Whereas Marvel Cinematic Universe took its time getting to the big picture, there was an impatience to The Dark Universe’s flamboyant debut. Sure, you had Tom Cruise and Russell Crowe, but what else did you have?
With a gross of $410 million internationally, many believed that the film underperformed. There was no reason to go on. Even with some believing that Dracula Untold (2014) was the real starting point, this franchise was dead in the water. Was The Invisible Man (2020) the backdoor reboot that we didn’t know we needed? It’s hard to really say, but one thing was clear. If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. Kurtzman was naïve enough to believe that he could have a franchise without so much as a track record to speak of. As a result, Dark Universe t-shirts have become trendy for those who ironically celebrate its hubris.
In a decade where everyone wanted their own cinematic universes, the Dark Universe was the most noteworthy failure. Most weren’t as bold or flagrant with their claim. Even Lionsgate’s similar MonsterVerse didn’t make a big deal about their King Kong vs. Godzilla antics until Kong: Skull Island (2017) became a modest success. Basically, it was a decade where every studio played trial and error with these worlds. As much as you want to believe that there’s excitement on the horizon, it’s not often the case. There are too many threads to connect for any one story to be all that satisfying.
But do you remember what the first flop of the 2010s was? It was around the time that Iron Man 2 (2010) was finally setting up Marvel’s bigger plan. Nobody had really caught on to the potential of this narrative trick, though those familiar with trilogies will be familiar with what M. Night Shyamalan had in store. As one of the premiere genre filmmakers, he was theoretically on top of the world, his name synonymous with cinema. He could do anything and get an audience to come out. You loved The Sixth Sense (1999), Signs (2002), and The Village (2004), and that clout was enough to keep him going.
What was his big plan? It was “The Night Chronicles.”
Much like how we now watch The Mummy and see a world that will never be, “The Night Chronicles” is fascinating in its hypothetical. Shyamalan was planning on making a trilogy of films centered around supernatural screenplays that he wrote. These would be given to various directors as an opportunity to raise their profile. After all, who wouldn’t want to be associated with one of the most acclaimed filmmakers of his generation?
This is where it gets complicated.
The Village has, at best, a divisive reputation. As his fourth film in the spotlight, he had formed a track record as the filmmaker who loved twists. Those who liked it had no problem continuing to hail him as a genius. Everybody else began to turn slowly on him. As the records show, every film he’s made since has been both less critically acclaimed and brought in a smaller box office. The Happening (2008) received so much criticism that Shyamalan came out and suggested that it was an intentional b-movie. By that point, his goodwill had been leaking and anyone who considered him a genius needed to clarify their stance.
Then The Last Airbender (2010) hit. While his biggest hit since The Village, his take on the beloved Nickelodeon series was met with certain vitriol. Those who loved the series were frustrated with how it crammed an entire season into one film while others complained that the action sequences were too jerky. Add in a ton of stuff about problematic casting regarding race, and you get a film that was festering with bad opinions. When he suggested that he wanted to make a sequel, it was met with overbearing backlash.
It wasn’t the only unrequited love of a proposed trilogy that Shyamalan had in store from 2010. There was The Night Chronicles’ premiere entry Devil (2010). Whereas The Last Airbender was Shyamalan’s project through and through, Devil was only his story. The direction was given to John Erick Dowdle (his brother Drew executive produced). The Dowdle Brothers had recently made the acclaimed Quarantine (2008) and Shyamalan wanted to give them a chance to break out. This was the master moving into the position of mentor, and it makes perfect sense.
Until that trailer dropped.
I don’t know that there ever has been an experience like watching the Devil trailer in a theater for the first time. It made sense to pair the marketing with Inception (2010). After all, it was director Christopher Nolan’s first big film after The Dark Knight (2008) had become the new definition of comic book movies. There was no better place to profile the biggest projects of the Fall. Given how cryptic the Inception marketing was, you felt obligated to show up on the opening night and be the first to discover its weird twisted world. While some of the allure has faded, there will be nothing like consuming Inception media during that summer, doing everything in your power to understand just what this story meant.
The same cannot be said with Devil. Inception had premiered in July and would dominate the entire summer. I remember sitting there in a theater with my friends when that trailer first played. We were all packed in, ready for the magical bliss of Nolan. And then, there was this trailer where everything appeared upside down. It was a horror film about a bunch of people trapped in an elevator. It wasn’t a terrible premise, but we had no choice but to keep watching.
If you took out the middle chunk of this trailer, it’s doubtful that it would’ve been a misguided masterpiece of marketing. With it, the film became something surreal. The cards, in a muted red on a pitch-black backdrop, it read:
From Universal Pictures
That’s not really all that controversial. In fact, that’s boilerplate for marketing going back decades.
Comes a new nightmare
Okay, given that this is a horror film, you would expect the language to be more flamboyant. Still, nobody was ready for what the final card read…
From the mind of M. Night Shyamalan
I’m not kidding. With those seven words, the room had a unified cry of disappointment. Everyone let out a defeated cry. You’d think that Shyamalan murdered their dog with how sad that room sounded. Was it because any of us expected the film to be great in anyone else’s hand? Was it this perverse form of sarcasm? It’s hard to tell, but it was a moment where we all had our own inside joke. I saw the film again that opening weekend and the disappointment lingered through the room when that moment came. Even with the additional laughter at how much we were overreacting, it was telling how we all thought of the famed director during the summer of 2010.
That is the pros and cons of advertising it as a Shyamalan movie. On one hand, you immediately have name recognition. The audience will go in having an idea of what sensibility this film has. However, it threw The Dowdle Brothers under the bus. What should’ve been their breakout moment was now an early form of a meme. Everybody who saw the Devil trailer remembers those cries, especially when reading the phrase “a new nightmare” not out of anticipation but dread.
We all were used to nightmares from Shyamalan. While they meant something like The Sixth Sense, most were probably thinking about The Lady in the Water (2006), where he had used up all of his narrative tricks and was grasping at straws. Robot Chicken did it best when suggesting that he was this aloof man who did wacky things for the sake of wacky things before saying “What a twist!” He was the twist man. Unlike Chubby Checker, nobody wanted to twist again like we did last summer, especially with The Last Airbender being the nadir of his entire career. Also, using Shyamalan and Devil in the same sentence was a bit melodramatic.
I’ll be totally honest, the good part of this marketing was that it made you more interested than saying “From the director of Quarantine.” What was Quarantine? I still haven’t seen it. However, my friends and I saw it in large part out of this curiosity. How do you make a tale of claustrophobic horror into something worthwhile? It involves the devil and a whole host of things going wrong. Still, there was that part of you who had to laugh that it was the Shyamalan getting trapped in an elevator movie. What is so cinematic about that? If you thought pixies hanging out in a pool was dumb, prepare for something even less inspired.
Plain and simple, it was good. I liked it and think the film has a bad rap because of that trailer. Still, I think I was too arrogant at the time to not appreciate what this could’ve brought with it. While everyone could suggest that he was on a downward track, Shyamalan was on the verge of entering one of his most interesting decades. It was the humbling comeback narrative, and that could’ve started with Devil.
Imagine if the film did well. Imagine if Devil was more of an acclaimed horror film. Part of its flaw was that it was released during a time when horror wasn’t widely praised. Beyond that, the news of Shyamalan’s name being toxic probably sank the chances of seeing that sequel, even on a decreased budget.
This is especially disappointing because of what laid beyond Devil. The second film, Reincarnate, had so much promise. According to M. Night Fans:
Reincarnate is centered on a jury that is deciding the fate of an accused murderer, while also being haunted by supernatural forces that hold the key to the case.
Okay, it’s not the highest art ever made, but the idea of Shyamalan writing a courtroom drama sounds exciting. Add in that it was based on an idea that would’ve been Unbreakable 2, and it becomes clearer where the concluding chapters of the Eastrail 117 trilogy came from. Also, it was to be directed by Daniel Stamm, who was coming off of the excellent found footage film The Last Exorcism (2010). To be honest, it had everything in place to make another loopy horror film on the road to exploring humanity through supernatural forces.
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If there’s anything that makes the Devil trailer resonate, it’s this sense that it predicted just how tough the road ahead was for Shyamalan. The 2000s will always be seen as his glory days. However, the fact that The Night Chronicles couldn’t extend his brand showed that people had tired of him, and quickly. Hearing that laughter during the trailer only reaffirmed how much of an image lift he needed. There is a reason that he would end the decade making independent films, forcing himself to limited budgets that required him to be creative again. He’s even claimed that it revived his career.
It also helped to humble him. He was trying to make cinema in a different mold. One could only wonder what life would be if he never got that moment of backlash. Would he have ever reassessed things and found a better career path? There are so many variables that still play when looking at Devil. It was the moment when they took the auteur to task for not living up to his expectations. It may have been more brutal than just about any other original creator in Hollywood this century, but it leads him to a more interesting path at the same time.
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