M. Night Shyamalan

Manoj Nelliyattu was born 6th August 1970. He is known as M. Night Shyamalan, known for making movies with supernatural plots with twisted endings and filming around the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area.
He directed movies such as:
· Praying with Anger (1992)
· Wide Awake (1995, released 1998)
· The Sixth Sense (1999)
· Unbreakable (2000)
· Signs (2002)
· The Village (2004)
· Lady in the Water (2006)
· The Happening (2008)

Sixth Sense and Signs were among the only few films that received financial success and good/ mixed reviews. Most of his films did not become popular and were categorized as failures financially. Critics label Shyamalan as a ‘one-trick’ pony, always having the ‘twist’ element in his screenplays. He is also seen as a better director than he is a screenwriter, being told to perhaps hire a screenwriter to translate his ideas to be better suited as a film.
His excuse for creating twists and having horror elements within his movies is that he wants to have a spiritual and emotional perspective.
His parents were the associate producers for the film Wide Awake and it was filmed in Shyamalan’s old school. It was nominated for Best Drama and for Cross Best Performance in the 1999 Young Artist Award.

Shyamalan is known for directing thriller movies- something that our group is not doing. We are specifically looking at horror films and conventions but some of Shyamalan's ideas could be used to influence our ideas (twists etc.) for our opening because the horror and thriller genres are closely related. Our film opening differs from the thriller genre because it involves more gore- not hints of it- and the movie doesn't particularly focus on 'playing with the mind' as typical thrillers do.