Shyamalan has the fright factor

Picture this - a man is sitting at home alone when he notices a photograph of his wife is faced down. 'That's weird,' he thinks, before returning it to its upright position and leaving the room to make a cup of coffee. When he walks back into the room, he looks over at the photograph - it's faced down again.

Pretty scary, right?

But while I'd love to take credit for this terrifying tale, it is, in fact, M. Night Shyamalan's creation.

The director of The Sixth Sense has just conjured up this story on the spot, as we talk, to illustrate what he thinks makes a good thriller.

Before that 1999 film, starring Bruce Willis and a school-age Haley Joel Osment as the little boy who can "see dead people", Shyamalan had a few completed projects under his belt but was little-known.

A huge box office success, later earning six Oscar nominations, The Sixth Sense propelled him into the big leagues, cementing Shyamalan's reputation as a director with a gift for creating the fear factor.

"The unknown is what makes things scary," the 42-year-old says. "The why, how, what... That story is more frightening than 'blood dripping down the wall' horror. Plus, it's much cheaper to film," he jokes.

The Indian-American director is looking dapper in a dark suit and electric blue tie. He's quite small, with a curly mop of hair and such kind eyes that he doesn't exactly look like a man who has found fame scaring the living daylights out of people.

Shyamalan is in the UK to talk about his new film, After Earth, which sees Will Smith and his son Jaden starring opposite each other as father and son for the first time since The Pursuit Of Happyness in 2007.

It's hailed as one of this summer's big hits - thanks to the Smith duo playing leads - and a plot that ticks all the right sci-fi action boxes.

Set in the future (1,000 years after Earth became uninhabitable, to be precise), humans have been forced to move to another planet, Nova Prime.

Cypher (Will Smith), a legendary general in the United Ranger Corps, an army of sorts, takes his son Kitai (Jaden Smith) on a bonding trip. Unfortunately, it all goes very wrong and they end up crash-landing their aircraft on Earth - now a danger zone. With Cypher wounded, Kitai has to go on a perilous journey to find help.

Unlike many of Shyamalan's films, including The Village and Unbreakable, After Earth isn't necessarily a thriller, but fear is still a key part of the movie.

"Cypher teaches Kitai that when you get scared, you close your senses off," the director says.

"It's a very Zen thing - be present, stop anticipating what's going to happen in the next moment. It's also very much about mindfulness."

While researching fear for the film, Shyamalan stumbled upon the tale of a bank robbery that he's keen to talk about.

"There was a police officer yelling at a woman who was in the bank to 'get out', but she couldn't hear him because she was totally focused on the man with the gun," he tells me, wide-eyed. "She was so scared, her senses had become completely tunnelled."

While clearly passionate about his work, Shyamalan's success has been somewhat unstable since the mega heights of The Sixth Sense.

Earlier films, like Unbreakable and Signs, were well received, but Lady In The Water and The Happening fared less well with the critics.

His 2010 offering, The Last Airbender, based on a Nickelodeon TV show, was particularly slated and won a number of Razzie awards - those dreaded accolades that recognise Hollywood's worst films.

It must have been a difficult decision, then, to choose his next project.

But when Smith called to reveal his plans for a new film starring him and his son, it was a bit of a no-brainer.

"I guess I just had something to say about the father-son relationship," Shyamalan says. "My father and I are really close. We mainly chat about sport, because we're guys, but we also talk about important things - usually at crisis times when there's a health issue or something bad is happening."

Recently, he says, he's sensed a shift in the dynamics: "It's started to tip into me giving my dad advice, rather than him telling me what to do."

With Jaden still just 14 years old, this isn't something that's happened in the Smiths' relationship yet - it's still Smith senior dishing out advice to his son, which Shyamalan recalls witnessing on set.

"Will was telling Jaden how he would do something. He was thinking about how his son would feel at this stage in his career. It was fascinating to watch," the director says.

"Jaden wants to be like his dad but realises they're different. He gets irritated at his dad, just in a normal way, but I never saw them fight, there weren't any teenage blow-outs."

It isn't always easy working with family, especially when your father is a world-famous TV and film star with a decent music career, too.

Jaden seems to be embracing his dad's legacy though - the pair even treated viewers of The Graham Norton Show recently to a Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air rap and dance that has since gone viral online.

With the famous duo at the centre of attention, perhaps the media will be less scrutinising of Shyamalan's directing skills...

Either way, while After Earth is unlikely to reach the dazzling heights of The Sixth Sense, it certainly shouldn't earn him any more Razzies.

It's beautifully shot, touching and even contains a joke or two. It's a sure-fire summer hit.

Extra time - M. Night Shyamalan

:: M. Night Shyamalan was born on August 6, 1970, in Puducherry, India, the son of two doctors. The family moved to Pennsylvania, in the US, when he was still a baby.

:: He gained a scholarship to New York University and it was while studying there that he adopted the second name, Night.

:: He married his wife Bhavna Vaswani in 1993. They have three daughters and live in Pennsylvania.

:: In 1992 he co-wrote the screenplay for Stuart Little and then went on to write and direct The Sixth Sense.

:: Since then, he has directed films including Unbreakable, Signs, The Village, Lady In The Water, The Happening and The Last Airbender, and in 2010 he produced Devil, part one of a trilogy.

:: After Earth is released on Friday, June 7