How Marketing Hurt 1 Of Shyamalan's Most Controversial Movies According To The Director

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by Anna Munhin Feb 5, 2023 News
How Marketing Hurt 1 Of Shyamalan

The negative reactions to The Village were caused by marketing, according to the director. The story of the movie revolves around a village trying to protect its people from monsters in the woods. The Village got mixed responses after it was released.

There was a lot of controversy after it was revealed that there were no monsters in the woods. Village elders lie about the presence of the creatures to prevent people from leaving. In an interview with Yahoo Entertainment, he said that marketing ruined expectations for the movie His quote can be found below.

“I’ve thought about this a ton, about my relationship to marketing, my relationship to the audiences, and how each of the movies affect each other, the brothers and sisters. There’s a sugar content metric, and there’s a savory content metric. So in the savory category, the balance of the taste of the piece, that one resonated for a long, long time, even until today, it keeps on resonating and resonating. That balance was right. In the sugar content metric, which maybe is, ‘Was it scary? Was it this?’ That’s a different metric where maybe they were like, ‘Hey, I wanted it to be just a straight genre piece.’

"If I had to say it in the broadest of terms, I changed genres on you. And that was OK when you weren’t coming with the adrenaline on opening morning of, ‘I’m coming to see the scariest thing I've ever seen’ and then feeling, ‘Wow, I saw a really great drama at the end of the day.’ … Or if you came in and saw Signs as a movie about faith [and] you weren’t coming in going, ‘The number one thing is, I want to get scared out of my seat.’ It’s what your expectations are. And I guess when marketing comes, too. So we’ve been very careful in the last five or six movies to make sure that we are selling the movie that I made.”

How Marketing Has Impacted Knock At The Cabin

Knock at the cabin cultists

Marketing campaigns around the themes of his movies have begun to be shaped by him. The genre and tension are communicated through the trailer, compared to the marketing for The Village.

Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment standing together in The Sixth Sense

Shyamalan's movies are known for their twists and turns. Since the end of The Sixth Sense, the director has cultivated a reputation for surprising audiences with shocking narratives that change expectations, and The Village is no different. The idea of not having twists at all is now the idea of a twist ending.

It is easy to watch a movie with a habit that can be difficult to break. Even if marketing hadn't presented the wrong type of movie, the twist still could have turned off audiences as it is fairly easy to predict when one is going to happen. The Village and Knock at the Cabin both suffer from expectations for the twists in the movie.

There is a chance that Knock At The Cabin could be the riskiest film yet.

The source is Yahoo entertainment.