Worst Director EVER! (Nominations)

[Locutus of Bored]

Shyamalan can write, but he should let someone else direct.

I think it's the opposite, myself. Shyamalan can craft genuinely suspenseful scenes and create an air of menace quite well, it's just that his scripts start to fall apart after the first act, and he's way too dependent on inserting some faux-profound message into his stories or throwing all logic out the window in order to support the build-up to a big twist ending.

Even in one of his worst films, The Happening, the first act where people are committing suicide en masse and no one knows why is unsettling as hell. Unfortunately he then has to insert the message that hurting nature is bad, mmkay, and will come back to bite you in the ass. Which is fine in and of itself, and has been explored in many films, but it's not exactly as groundbreaking or profound as he thinks it is, nor is it well-executed when the consequences come back in the form of a killer ficus and characters are running away from a light breeze.

M. Night Shyamalan should direct a superhero movie, like darker DC or Marvel.

Did you ever see Unbreakable?

 

[Taylirious]

^ I haven't but I will.

 

[the G-man]

Shyamalan can craft genuinely suspenseful scenes and create an air of menace quite well, it's just that his scripts start to fall apart after the first act, and he's way too dependent on inserting some faux-profound message into his stories or throwing all logic out the window in order to support the build-up to a big twist ending.

Complete agreement.

 

[Mojochi]

Shyamalan can write, but he should let someone else direct.

I think it's the opposite, myself. Shyamalan can craft genuinely suspenseful scenes and create an air of menace quite well, it's just that his scripts start to fall apart after the first act, and he's way too dependent on inserting some faux-profound message into his stories or throwing all logic out the window in order to support the build-up to a big twist ending.

I was going to say the same thing. His skill behind the camera isn't the problem, which is why he still works. After Earth, for example, is not that bad of a directorial job. The story on the other hand... (Which is partly Will Smith's fault, apparently)

It feels like Shyamalan has just run the well dry on writing ideas. In fact, as a writer, he might've been a one trick pony

 

[Mudd]

Roberto Orci, for not even getting to the point of shouting "Action!" on day one.

 

[Australis]

Yep, this. Thanks, fanbois!

 

[the G-man]

It feels like Shyamalan has just run the well dry on writing ideas. In fact, as a writer, he might've been a one trick pony

Yeah. Maybe at this point, he'd be best served by some sort of cable TV anthology or mini-series adapted from someone with compensatory chops as a writer.

 

[BigJake]

I'm going to go ahead and nominate Harmony Korine (of Gummo, Trash Humpers and Spring Breakers fame).

He's my pick because his movies are emblematic of the kind of faux-profound, cod-nihilistic auteurism that seems more or less explicitly designed to bait middlebrow film school undergrads into describing them as "deep" and "subtle" -- you know, because there's nothing very interesting happening on the surface, you got to drill down to find the embedded critique of consumerism and/or trash art and/or suburban ennui. I'm not hostile to movies with an intellectual agenda (Dancer in the Dark is a personal fave, for instance), but Korine manages to suggest such an agenda by sheer stylistic contrivance without actually showing any sign of one.

As such Korine's movies are something worse than just bad and mediocre in and of themselves. They're actually the kind of movies that confirm and reinforce philistine opinion about all that art-house stuff, and that make it harder for other, more subtle and more interesting art-house movies to get a fair viewing by their very existence. Korine makes the world worse for experimental film-makers, and thus for the potential range of film as a whole, in (sort of) the same way that Richard Dawkins makes the world worse for atheists.

Ed Wood made bad movies... but he made them with an infectious enthusiasm for film as a medium that renders him ultimately a sympathetic and enjoyable part of cinematic history. Harmony Korine's movies are technically better-made than Ed Wood's... but mostly bespeak outright contempt for their audience.

 

[Taylirious]

I might not do a voting now. There are alot of names and it is nice the discussion is ongoing.