Given the choice, take a sharp stick in the eye

Rating: 3/10 (26 June 2001)

I can just hear the suits who produced "The Sixth Sense" after it shot into the box office stratosphere, licking their chops, clapping M. Night Shyamalan on the back with their cloven hooves, crowing, "Hey, my man, you are king of the world! What other scripts you got laying around the house?"
At which point Shyamalan thinks really hard and sort of recalls something he wrote in high school, something called "Unspeakable" or "Unthinkable" or something like that, it's been so long. And he can't remember exactly where it's buried. In the back of the bedroom closet? In the attic? Garage? Doesn't matter, he'll find it. "You bet I've got another script!" Shyamalan says. "And it's the one I really wanted to do in the first place."
"Great!" the suits cry in unison. "Consider it green-lighted right now!"
CUT TO: 10 months later, the same suits sitting in a screening room as the lights come up. They've just seen "Unbreakable." Sweat beads their brows. Throats clear. Eyes do not meet. How could this be? "Sixth Sense" was so good!
The studio head stands and faces the room. The suits sink into their suits. "Just who," he says, "is responsible for this?"
Fingers sprout from cloven hooves and point at each other in a furious hand ballet. Denials at SurroundSound decibels. M. Night Shyamalan, on hands and knees, has almost made it undetected out the rear door.
Ain't Hollywood grand?