Radio Times

If there's one thing that ruffles the feathers of RT readers, it's giving away the endings of films. You can just about get away with hinting that the ship sinks in Titanic, but otherwise, if in doubt, remain tight-lipped.

This makes writing about M Night Shyamalan extremely tricky. If the writer/director/producer is known for one thing, it's his twist endings – to the point where he's now hidebound by audience expectation.

It was The Sixth Sense that made his idiosyncratic name (the "M" stands for Manoj and the "Night" he added, somewhat pretentiously, in college). Don't worry, I'm not going to give away the wham-bang revelation that throws this creepy tale of grief and dead people into sharp relief at the end.

Needless to say, on its release in 1999, people were seeing it, buying another ticket, and seeing it again. Dick Cook, boss of Disney, who released the film, made his feelings about the famous twist ending clear. "That’s a very important element," he said, between counting the takings that would rise to more than $650 million worldwide. "People are going back to catch all those things you don't pick up the first time."

The follow-up, Unbreakable, was another gloomy drama set in Philadelphia. It had a twist ending, albeit not quite as copper-bottomed as that of The Sixth Sense. Next, Signs was an unsettling alien invasion thriller whose denouement was so complex (and reliant on clues left throughout), that you could actually hear the gears going round. The Village, in which a pre-industrial hamlet is haunted by monsters, also has a twist, but, for me, it's one that ruins what's gone before, rather than enhancing it.

As for 2006's Lady in the Water, a chlorinated fairy tale that flopped and drew toxic notices, audiences were wishing for the ending to come, but for all the wrong reasons.

Shyamalan's next film, The Happening, is about a family on the run from some natural disaster. Let's hope it's not the director's once-promising career that really needs a twist of its own.