What was kind of a spoiler was not my wife mentioning the end at the end, but the events of the movie themselves. The movie was released in 2000. The gruesome tragedies included plane bombings, burning buildings collapsing from internal fires, train derailments, and scores of other disasters not only conceivable to the mind, but which have come to pass since the movie.
The train crash that precipitates the change for Bruce Willis'
character was not unlike the Waterfall train disaster in 2003. My wife and I watched a documentary on the Waterfall disaster when we were in New Zealand. The dramatization shown in the documentary was eerily similar to Shyamalan's portrayal of the Philadelphia train crash. While train derailments aren't really out of the ordinary, the portayal was just too similar for comfort.Plane disasters, buildings collapsing from internal fires, and many deaths were all boldly realized almost a year later. Regardless of who you may believe is behind the September 11 attacks, the unfolding of events in Unbreakable seemed to be very familiar. Almost too familiar.
I am certainly not suggesting M. Night Shyamalan is behind any of the events, but the movie has many events in it that came to pass in the following years. That coincidence may come off as prescient, but it was probably the most haunting aspect of the film. That and the fact that Shyamalan has a knack for revealing just how inhumane humans can be toward one another.
Shyamalan gets credit for weaving a compelling story with fantastic underlying premises. The characters are appealing, interesting, and smartly motivated. The use of color, symbolism, flashbacks, and foreshadowing are hallmarks of a Shyamalan movie, and this one is no exception.
I hope to see the movie again. The copy we got from the library was so damaged, we missed four scenes. As far as I can tell, they were important scenes.