M. Night Shyamalan’s cameos ranked in order of importance

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.

10. The Last Airbender — Fire Nation Guard

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

9. The Happening — Joey

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

8. Knock at the Cabin — Infomercial host

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

7. Unbreakable/Split/Glass — Jai

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. While it’s hard to imagine this as intentional, it seems particularly fitting that the series that helped put Shyamalan back in Hollywood’s good graces includes the director playing a formerly down-on-his-luck character that straightens things out in the end. —AG

6. Trap — Lady Raven security

It’s incredibly wholesome to watch Shyamalan not only center the premise of Trap around his daughter Saleka Shyamalan’s character Lady Raven, but go so far as to play her doting uncle in the film itself. Shyamalan’s character plays a pivotal role in Trap, affording Cooper (Josh Hartnett) and his daughter the chance to go onstage during Lady Raven’s concert and thus offering him a small window to escape. What can you say: He’s a sucker for a sob story. —TE

5. The Village — Park ranger

In The Village (spoilers for The Village), Shyamalan appears briefly at the end of the movie as a modern-day park ranger, part of the twist that the movie was set in the modern day the whole time. His face only appears briefly and only over his own shoulder. In other words, this one is almost literally M. Night peeking his head around the corner to remind us that he’s still capable of surprises even four movies into his career. It’s easily the silliest of all of Shyamalan’s cameos, and it’s definitely the furthest he’s ever leaned into his reputation for twists, but it’s hard not to respect such a blatant trolling of the audience, especially in the movie that triggered his initial fall from grace in the eyes of the moviegoing public. —AG

By far the bleakest of Shyamalan’s cameos (verging on more of a full-blown role), he appears in Signs as Ray Reddy, the truck driver who killed the Rev. Graham Hess’ wife. The accident eats away at Ray until he finally apologizes to Graham, immediately before he sends the reverend inside to greet the alien that’s inside his cupboard. It’s a sadder and more tense scene than it sounds on paper, but it’s hard not to see even more of the filmmaker allegories that Shyamalan loves including in his cameos here. Shyamalan’s character in the movie is both the one who causes the grief that haunts Graham throughout, and the one who introduces him to the extraterrestrial force that helps him confront that grief head-on. It’s like Shyamalan is putting his own role as the writer and director of the film on screen in front of us, taking responsibility for both the fictional misery and redemption at the heart of the film. —AG

3. The Sixth Sense — Dr. Hill

In The Sixth Sense, Shyamalan appears briefly as a doctor who examines Cole. It’s a minor and pretty unremarkable part, but it’s notable for two primary reasons. The first is obvious: This is Shyamalan’s breakout film and his first step into the Hollywood spotlight, and he appears in his own film, something that’s not exactly standard practice for directors, especially not in 1999. The second reason this cameo gets such a high spot on our list is that it’s our introduction to Shyamalan’s penchant for pulling in real-world context for a bit of meta commentary on his career or his movies. According to M. Night, the reason he appears as a doctor in this movie is a tribute to his parents, who are both doctors. It’s a clever little acknowledgement of where his career could have gone if he didn’t become a filmmaker, but also a fun little moment of the real world bleeding into the movie, something Shyamalan would come back to over and over again. —AG

From a certain perspective, filmmakers can seem like fickle gods, toying with the actions and emotions of their performers in service of the inscrutable whims and tastes of an equally fickle audience. That’s what makes Shyamalan’s cameo in Old so deliciously meta: He’s scrutinizing the film’s cast through a telescopic lens, watching their bodies and lives literally fall apart with the uncaring gaze of a scientist observing the results of an experiment. Shyamalan’s cameo also proves essential to the plot, as it ultimately unveils not only the true nature of the beach at the heart of the film but the identities of those who seek to control and profit from it. —TE

1. Lady in the Water — Vick Ran

Look, objectively, this one probably shouldn’t be on the list at all. It’s not really a cameo, it’s more of a supporting role, but it’s important enough to keep it on the list anyway. In this one, Shyamalan plays a writer who is struggling to finish his first-ever novel, crushed between his own storytelling instincts and the pressures of public perception. His part of the narrative follows his encounter with the water nymph Story, who helps him come to terms with the importance of his own voice and encourages him to finish his novel his way.

Given the fact that Lady in the Water came out shortly after Shyamalan was met with critical and commercial criticism for his massive twist ending in The Village, it’s not hard to see the real-world implications on his role here. This is Shyamalan working out his relationship with art and commercial appeal on screen. This is the perfect apex of the meta commentary that his cameos usually explore, and more importantly, it’s one of the most fascinating examples in all of cinema of a director appearing in their own work, which is exactly why it earns the top spot on our list. —AG