Shyamalan works on his comeback

Director is ready to scare us again

Ghosts made M. Night Shyamalan a filmmaking wunderkind, and it might be creepy grandparents who remind everyone of the original storytelling he can do.

After a successful summer with the Fox hit show Wayward Pines, the writer/ director/ producer returns to the big screen — where he first hit it big in 1999 with The Sixth Sense — with The Visit ( in theaters Friday).

In the film, a couple of youngsters ( Olivia DeJonge and Ed Oxenbould) hang in rural Pennsylvania for a week with their increasingly odd Nana ( Deanna Dunagan) and Pop Pop ( Peter McRobbie).

Shyamalan’s career has had some ups and downs — Unbreakable and Signs were popular follow- ups to Sixth Sense, though folks broke out the torches and pitchforks for The Village and The Happening. But whether you want to call it a comeback or not, the filmmaker considers himself a lucky man.

“Honestly, my kids were small and I made more family- oriented fare,” says Shyamalan, 45. “They’re teenagers, so it’s time to scare them now.”

The Sixth Sense raked in $ 293.5 million — even though nobody knew Shyamalan’s name or could pronounce it, says Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Rentrak.

He likens it to “the second coming of Orson Welles,” but he adds, “With every filmmaker who comes out of the gate with their masterpiece, it’s hard to follow that up.”

Unbreakable ( 2000) was a moderate financial and critical success with $ 95 million, and Signs did huge business with $ 228 million. After the rise came the fall: The Village ( 2004) made $ 114.2 million but was met with mixed reviews, and his next three original movies all tanked at the box office and were lambasted by critics.

“He bought the same hype we did,” says Devin Faraci, editor in chief of the website Birth. Movies . Death. “He’s not Spielberg. He never was going to be. He just popped up at a weird moment when the ’ 90s were dying, when we were coming out of this ‘ adult thriller’ phase and we wanted something imaginative in our movies.”

Is there a way back? Faraci thinks so. “Going small, like he has with The Visit, is probably it.”

Making a good film would go a long way, adds Mike Sampson, editor in chief of ScreenCrush.com.

“If Shyamalan were able to make another crowd- pleasing movie, all would be forgiven. But the question is whether he’s creatively tapped out and even can get his mojo back.”