M. Night Shyamalan has a cameo in nearly all of his movies, but some have a little more to say about his career than others
M. Night Shyamalan’s public reputation has had its ups and downs in the more than 25 years he’s been making movies. While Polygon is using the release of Trap on Max to argue that he’s always been a lot better than people give him credit for, one uncontroversial fact about the director is that his cameos in his movies have always been fascinating.
So, to celebrate the streaming release of his new movie, we ranked Shyamalan’s cameos based on how important they are to his movies and his career. As you might already suspect, importance is a pretty flexible definition, and we’re happy to stretch it in a few different ways on this list. Some of the cameos are important simply because they make a great joke, or give him a fun role. Others are important because they let him have a literal on-screen voice at a pivotal moment in his career. But no matter their overall impact, we’ve broken each one down on this list.
One note before we get into this list is that it includes all of Shyamalan’s films except After Earth and The Visit. For one reason or another, he doesn’t appear at all in those. You could probably read something into that if you wanted, but what’s important here is that they aren’t included in our ranking.
Shyamalan plays a guard wearing a mask, so you can’t really see him in this at all. Much like its place in his larger filmography, Shyamalan’s cameo in The Last Airbender is last on this list by a mile. This is the one cameo to render the director almost completely anonymous and invisible, which feels fitting for his foray into blockbusters, which does the very same thing to his directing talents. —Austen Goslin
In this one, M. Night is really just a voice on the phone, which isn’t much of a role, but it is still a fun little wink to the audience. In a note that will make more sense further down the list, it’s possible that Shyamalan’s reduced role here is due in part to the fact that he had such a major role in his previous movie, Lady in the Water. —AG
Given the stakes of everything going on in Knock at the Cabin, it’s hilarious to see Shyamalan pop up as an infomercial host shilling an air fryer right as a massive tsunami engulfs the Pacific coast. Of all the things you could tell someone if they asked you “Where were you when it happened?” that’s got to be one of the most embarrassing. —Toussaint Egan
This is a particularly fun one. Shyamalan’s character Jai starts out as an anonymous drug dealer in the first movie, then gradually moves up in the world as the series progresses.
