Review of Unbreakable (2000) by Xander S — 06 Oct 2014

This is a good concept for a psychological thriller--a man's obsession with finding his opposite--ruined by blunt, baroque direction. Apparently, in order to sufficiently explain his twist ending to audiences, M.

Night must make those audiences see all of the "subtle" clues leading up to it! He did that (and harder) in "The Sixth Sense," too. "Unbreakable" also has the same muted emotional depth--the characters only emote when something very, very bad is about to happen.

And maybe not even then. The cinematography is busy, self-conscious and bland--though M. Night still finds a way to use color to poorly foreshadow coming events. And in a last gasp of unnecessary frankness, he ends with awkward text tags explaining what happened after the ending.

How this filmmaker got praised for making these first two thrillers--both of which suffer from shallow, unearned emotion and a leaden directorial touch--is beyond me. But Hitchcock is in no danger of being dethroned.