Traumatic Seclusion in M. Night Shyamalan’s Garrison Trilogy: Signs (2002), The Village (2004) and The Lady in the Water (2006)

Abstract

Shyamalan’s Signs, The Village and The Lady in the Water turn around the need to find refuge away from violence, in an updated version of Northrop Frye’s garrison motif. Absolute safety is, however, threatened by spectral, even fictitious monstrous creatures that can be defined as projections of specific traumatic situations, provoked partly by the terrorist attacks of September 2001 but mostly by Shyamalan’s own response to social violence.