It's pretty competitive actually. It's one of those situations too where if you look at who had the lower lows, it's quite obviously Night. Craven was a damn solid filmmaker and far more consistent. But if you look at just overall career and achievement, I think Shyamlan has an argument here.
At least for me, the 1-2-3 punch of Sixth Sense, Signs, and Unbreakable is very, very good. Look, I'm a big horror movie guy. Nightmare on Elm Street is rightly an iconic movie. It's a great horror movie. It's a good movie. But is it on the level of the Sixth Sense? I think it would be tough to make that argument.
I guess the thing that always stands out for me when you assess these filmmakers' careers in these types of forum matchups (and, look, respect to all of these guys, as being a person at the helm of motion pictures on that level is assuredly insanely difficult and complicated) is how much you concentrate on their best work and how readily you discount their missteps in the overall assessment.
It's like Coppola right. If you were to line up Coppola's work with Scorsese and Spielberg, let's say, he could obviously, when looking at the best features of all of their canons, stack up against them, no problem. Everything he made in the 70s was gold- Godfather, Godfather Part II, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now. Four classics. But then you look at what he's done post say 1990 or, better yet, post-1992.
So I guess if I'm looking at overall consistency of quality in the career, Craven probably takes it. But if I'm looking at the best work at the tops of their filmographies, I'd go M. Night.