M Night Shyamalan’s daughters were being comforted today after being “cheated” by the last installment of their father’s bedtime story.

The two girls are refusing to speak to the Hollywood director after he tied up the many plot contradictions by saying the whole tale had in fact just taken place in the mind of a fevered old woman.

The older girl told us, “He promised he wouldn’t just explain everything away with one of his ‘big twists’ again. Not after what happened when he told us a story for sixty-two straight nights before saying all the weird stuff was caused by the earth spinning the wrong way. That really sucked.”

But others leapt to Shyamalan’s defence, with his agent Ken Staffleberger saying, “Night is the master of the big twist. One minute you’re wondering how this crazy story is going to be resolved and then bam, the next he’s ripped up everything he told you and said it didn’t really happen at all.

“It’s almost as if the previous two hours didn’t count. Genius.

“One time he offered to pick me up a sandwich from the deli. When I’d eaten it he played me a smartphone video of him placing a dead insect inside it. What a twist! Man, we laughed.

“Another time he promised me he was going to make three great movies in a row. Then he made Lady in the Water, The Happening and The Last Airbender. Now who could have seen that twist coming?”

Shyamalan told Glossy News, “I’m the man who explained The Village by saying it was all a big game. I explained The Sixth Sense by saying the main character was dead, and I explained The Happening by saying plants were trying to take over the world.

“I’m sorry my critics – I’m sorry, I mean daughters – didn’t like the bedtime story but if anyone can rationalise unlikely plot strands with credibility, it’s me.”

Night was charged with theft in 2009 after attempting to remove a TV set from a shop, and telling the security guard who stopped him that “it was all just happening in a parallel universe.”