The sorrow and the pity

Rating: 8/10 (12 January 2001)

One mighty branch of the horror tree has always derived its power from sympathy. From Whale to Polanski, the masters grounded their best work in pathos: the monster more human than the people, the tenant in the wrong building. The way was lost in Hollywood during the 1970s and 1980s, when a succession of formula films sent horror off to summer camp. For two decades, American audiences were taught that horror is only the game of murdering banal teenagers -- a culture's revenge on its own emptiness, maybe.
Shyamalan is a savior of the sub-genre of compassionate horror, at least as it is practiced here. His "Sixth Sense" was a small revelation, a notice that the poetry is *still* in the pity.
"Unbreakable" is possibly even better. About the surface, there's no doubt it's lovely. Underneath, however, is where the action is. The theme of the outsider is handled superbly, but what grabbed me most was his treatment of the burdens of duty, justice, honesty, fragility (both in the emotional sense and, as the title implies, a peculiar, creepy physical one), and, everywhere, the redemptive possibilities of love. Then there is a very cool homage to comic books. All this and it will unnerve the hell out of you, too: for even more than in the "Sixth Sense," Shyamalan has smuggled into a mainstream film imagery and texture usually found in the work of exiled directors like Lynch and Gilliam.
It bears mentioning that, along with Gilliam, Shyamalan is the best thing to happen to the mid-life career of Bruce Willis, who keeps revealing depths that were invisible before. Will there be more collaboration?