The Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan

Good in concept, poor in execution, "The Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan" was plagued by terrible acting, amateurish directing, and the easy comparison to "The Blair Witch Project" which did a similar type of promo on the Sci-Fi network. The 3-hour (!!) "mockumentary" was nothing more than a giant infomercial for Shyamalan's body of work and his new movie "The Village". The worst part of the film was the acting. The old woman who supposedly knew Night as a child came off like one of those old ladies you see in commercials trying to sell you life insurance. The real estate agent overacted so badly that I can't believe she wasn't recast. The believability factor of the script was also quite low. Why would the director talk to a pizza guy about M. Night Shyamalan? Why would anyone care if Johnny Depp was considered for the lead in "Signs"? If electrical equipment strangely stops working around Shyamalan, how does he work around all that equipment on a movie set? I could go on, but you get the idea. Perhaps if this movie was shorter and perhaps if the acting and script were better, this could have been a decent "horror" film along the lines of a "Twilight Zone" episode. As it turned out, it was about as scary as "Manos, the Hands of Fate".

Although a total fraud this was still a fun watchable 3 hours on a rather boring M night. Having been in the film biz for more than 25 years,I'd like to explain. There is a scene in the early morning in a field which has a sub-title,"ONE HOUR BEFORE CREW CALL". There in the field we find M NIGHT walking in the field with a dozen or so black crows for company. For anyone in the industry a director never arrives at the time of the crew call let alone one hour before. Also if this was one hour before crew call it would have been 5:00am and still dark. ON a film such as THE VILLAGE the director would arrive 2 to 3 hours after crew. Also if M NIGHT was against this from airing he would never have appeared nor any scenes from his films to be allowed. This was a very smart gimmick to raise interest for the opening of THE VILLAGE.Many people will think this to be real. For those as jaded as I it was just one 3 hour long commercial, with added commercials for THE VILLAGE. This has really made me loose respect for a director I had admired in the past. Should THE VILLAGE not stand on its own then my days of seeing anything by M NIGHT are over. SIGNS was bad enough. UNBREAKABLE even worse.Another failure this early in his career would be the end of wasting my money on this publicity hound.

A real documentary on Shyamalan would have been interesting, unfortunately this is nothing more that a badly done parody of some of Shyamalan's work feeding into the 'mysticism' of his movies. Fine for what it is but it's sad that SciFi passed this off as a real documentary instead of a commercial for the Village/Shyamalan (but I guess that is on par for a channel that passes off that fraud John Edwards as anything more than a bad circus act.)

Think 'This is Spinal Tap' without any of the wit, humor or even decent acting.

(3/10)

This "documentary" reminds me of Andy Kaufman. Night is amusing himself at our expense. It goes without saying that Manoj (never knew what the M. was for, what a melodic name) can tell any story and scare the beJesus out of you. This time he also p***es you off or cracks you up. I had both emotions during the film.

I was looking forward to seeing what he is like, how he works. I must admit that I was a little disappointed that I wasn't going to find out anything real about him. But soon I just flowed with it and saw my first spooky documentary. By the end I was completely creeped out!

I just love the way his mind works, he always hits you from a perspective you would never expect. So unique in the movies today, to have at least half a brain be required, and to make us all aware that what we think is happening can be completely and jolting wrong.

Night man, you can make anything scary! Do spooky laundry day next! LOL Seriously, I adore your work. Can't wait to see The Village.

From a documentary director who was nominated for an Oscar, I expected a little more in two hours. I admit it was entertaining, but there were just too many interviews on the streets, especially the ending of the piece. No one cares about those people, we want to see the actors and Night play along with this fake film, that's what makes it funny. Should have been more controversy at Sci-Fi with Mark Stern as well as the set of the Village. The only thing that made it last was the Johnny Depp interview. After watching the first ten minutes, its obvious the people are actors, so maybe hire improv actors next time so maybe they'll play along a little better with the story.