25 years ago this month one film and one filmmaker became synonymous with the big plot twist.

I see dead people.

Now if you're someone out there who has not seen the sixth sense I promise we will not ruin it for you

But it is no spoiler to say that the film became a phenomenon and its director M-night

Shamalan an overnight sensation.

You know in the 90s there were a lot of breakthrough directors a great time to sort of

go from almost nothing to superstar. That's Brian Hyatt, a senior writer for Rolling Stone. He says

Shamalan's career has had twists and turns to rival his movies.

The faster the rise or the bigger the rise, the rise the harder the fall.

And Shamalan's rise was fast and big.

The Sixth Sense became the second highest grossing film of 1999

and was nominated for six Oscars including Best Picture. By

2002 Newsweek magazine touted him on its cover as the next Spielberg. But in

2004 with his gothic thriller The Village, things began to go wrong.

Backlashes don't happen all at once. They kind of actually can happen in slow motion.

And that was the first hint that a backlash was coming. It was

2004. It had a pretty mixed reception. The promotion of the film was a little bit overdone at the time and a lot of people thought the twist was just flat out dumb.

His next films were not only critically panned, they also flopped at the box office.

By the time he made the almost universally hated after Earth in 2013, many moviegoers decided

that Shamalan was a sham. Brian Hyatt, so Shamalan was a sham.

Brian Hyatt, so Shamalan himself took notice.

So he gave this amazing commencement speech

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