Split

And so, Shyamalan returns to form.  For anyone who hasn’t yet found out yet, Split is the sequel to Unbreakable.  While I was initially a little skeptical of the movie due to the portrayal of mental illness, this aspect really fixed the problem for me.  Kevin (James McAvoy) isn’t a mental patient, he’s a super villain.

The premise of this movie, that a man with multiple personalities has been taken over by three malevolent personalities intent on creating a super-human amalgam, sounds utterly silly on paper.  It works largely because McAvoy is a brilliant performer, who can signal with his body language exactly who he’s supposed to be at any given moment.

We largely see the story of Kevin from the outside looking in, as we follow two subplots.  Dr. Karen Fletcher (Betty Buckley), Kevin’s psychiatrist, who begins to realize that his malevolent personalities have taken over, and Casey Cooke (Anna Taylor-Joy), a victim kidnapped by “Dennis” as a sacrifice for “The Beast.”  While Casey is one of three victims (the other two being played by Haley Lu Richardson and Jessica Sula), the others largely exist as foils to her.  Over the course of the film we realize that this is not her first time in the role of a victim, and she alone realizes that no empowerment mantra can fix the situation easily.

The leader of the three personalities is Patricia.  While she’s both female and terrifying, I feel the movie largely avoids transphobia.  She induces fear mainly from the disconnect between her calm demeanor, and her brutal plans to literally feed the girls to The Beast.

Her recruit, Dennis, really could have been split into two characters.  One who was a sympathetic protector of Kevin, the first alternate personality, and another who was a sexual predator.  These traits make it frequently unclear whether or not we’re supposed to sympathize with Dennis as misguided, or view him as irredeemably evil.

The final “evil” personality is Hedwig, a childlike being who has the power to take “the light” from any of the personalities, and give it to any other.  Hedwig is a very difficult character to nail down.  His nature creates the impression that he was manipulated by Patricia, but there are times in which he takes actions that seem to serve no purpose other than personal malice.

The trailer made it quite clear that, yes, the Beast was real and did come.  If there’s a real shocker to the ending, however, it’s in The Beast’s decision to let Casey go.  Through a series of flashbacks we find out that Casey has been living for years with her sexually abusive uncle, following the death of her family.  The Beast, upon realizing that Casey has been abused, tells her to “rejoice” that she is “pure” because of her brokenness, and by extension is worthy to live.  There’s arguably a strong implication that she will kill her uncle in the near future.

The movie closes with Patricia, Dennis, and Hedwig reflecting on how amazing The Beast is, as we look on and wonder what will happen next.  The ending reminded me of Edward Norton’s The Incredible Hulk, leaving us with some uncertainty whether the “monster” was a purely malevolent entity.  I do kind of wonder what Shyamalan is thinking presenting a character who literally cannibalized multiple people as morally grey.

The movie isn’t shocking or sickening, but it is intense.  It’s a film that I certainly wouldn’t show to a child.  With the sequel, Glass, on the horizon, I’m very eager to see what else M. Night has up his sleeve.

Wednesday Review - Split

Wow, this one’s late.  I know, I know, I’m sorry, I’ve been busy.  That said, however, I couldn’t pass up the chance to comment on Split.  Now, while I think he’s made definite stinkers like The Village and Lady in the Water, I’m not Shyamalan’s biggest critic.  I enjoyed Devil, and I remember getting a morbid kick out of all the suicides in The Happening, even if I remember nothing else.  Also, I’m on the pro-Visit side, despite the problems I have with the portrayal of mental illness.  All of this aside, yes Split was awesome, and comes complete with a twist that’s both surprising, and genuinely good.

I think Shyamalan has ultimately benefitted from his unlikely partnership with Producer Jason Blum, a man known for producing great trailers for bad-to-mediocre horror films.  This movie feels like something that had Blum’s stamp of approval on it before it ever got close to going in front of a camera.  Despite feeling like a Shyamalan movie, with lots of subtext and subtle moments, the plot ultimately keeps moving at a pace fast enough to insure that no viewers will get bored.  It’s a nice sign of learning from a directly who famously changed studios rather than try to turn Lady in the Water into something anyone outside his immediately family would want to see.

While most of the acting in this movie is great, James McAvoy steals the show.  Based on the trailer I was surprised to hear critics suggesting that he might be up for a Best Actor Oscar next year, but now that I’ve seen his entire performance I completely agree.  While his portrayed of DiD is, of course, absurd, he manages to make us by every second of it, while always keeping us fully aware of exactly who he is.

The premise of the movie is that McAvoy’s character, Kevin, is a man with 23 personalities.  Most of these are completely benevolent personas, but three (or two and a lackey) particularly dangerous personalities have taken control, and kidnapped three teenaged girls in an effort to sacrifice them to a mystical 24^th personality.  This ties in with a therapist who’s been treating Kevin, and who believes that DiD patients can alter their body chemistry to match the personas they assume.

The fact that the Beast eventually does show up, and has dangerous abilities that his counterparts lack, goes without saying.  The twist is where the film finally goes from there, and I have to admit that I didn’t see it coming, and my jaw legitimately dropped.  I’ll suffice it to say that it’s a meta twist.

This movie has my complete endorsement.  I now sincerely hope that Shyamalan’s career is back on track for some time to come.

100 Scariest Movie Moments: #71 The Sixth Sense

To summarize the inevitable attacks that are raised against this movie, as well as against anyone who likes it: the twist makes no sense, Shyamalan is a hack, and it shouldn't be on a list of horror movies because it isn't scary. Personally, I have a theory on how the metaphysics of this universe work, but explaining it would waste several paragraphs. So instead, I'm simply going to boil it down to “it makes sense to me.” I don't hate Shyamalan as much as most people do. He's pretentious, and many of his films can be boring, but I consider The Last Airbender to be the only unforgivable atrocity he's committed.

For the final issue, whether or not this is a horror film, I would personally say that it is. It simply isn't the type of horror that people went into it expecting to see. It doesn't matter how friendly the ghosts are, the idea of being the only person who could communicate with ghosts who didn't even know they are dead is scary. And facing a world that would inevitably think you're crazy if you told them the truth makes it doubly so. This isn't a traditional “ghost story,” this is a psychological horror story about a small boy facing a harsh reality.

The twist at this point is extremely well known. Bruce Willis plays Malcolm Crowe, a psychologist trying to help a troubled boy named Cole (Haley Joel Osment). He discovers that the boy is able to talk to spirits, and it's eventually revealed that Willis' character is himself a ghost, and died in the first scene of the film.

Unlike a number of Shyamalan's later films, the slow pace works here. We're not dealing with problems that are quickly solved. The slow, meticulous dialogue makes it clear that Cole is a very intelligent child, opening up to the situation in a cautious manner. He knows that he has to deal with the fact that he can see ghosts, but doesn't know the appropriate reaction, or what he's expected to do with this knowledge.

The movie plays around with the traditional structure of the horror movie, which could contribute to why people deny it's a horror movie at all. The most frightening parts are towards the middle of the film, with the horror gradually fading towards the end. The structure, even if it's unusual, is logical. Early in the film we're dealing primarily with Malcolm's perspective, who can't see other ghosts. Towards the middle of the film, we get an increasing amount of Cole's perspective, allowing us to see the ghosts. And by the end of the film, we've come to terms with the fact that the ghosts, while often disturbed, are not particularly dangerous.

The thing that fundamentally separates this movie from many of Shyamalan's later films is that it doesn't drown in its own mythology. The exact mechanics of how the universe works are less important than the human relationships within the universe. That's what makes the movie so impactful, comparing it to Lady in the Water, which spent far too much of its runtime dissecting the mythology, rather than letting characters react to it.

I'm probably the last person left hoping Shyamalan will somehow, some way pull his career out of a tailspin. I doubt that he'll make another Sixth Sense, nor should anyone expect him to. I'd settle for another Devil, which I think is a film that doesn't get nearly enough love, or a version of Wayward Pines that doesn't ruin ten great episodes with a Godawful final five minutes. That said though, this is an awesome movie.

100 Scariest Movie Moments: #77 Signs

Everyone remembers how stupid the aliens are in Signs. They attacked a planet that is 70% covered with a substance deadly to them, while naked an unarmed. Let me give an interpretation of the film I picked up on the internet to deal with this issue… The characters incorrectly believed them to be aliens when they were actually demons. Mel Gibson's character, being a priest, blessed the water, so they were harmed by holy water. There we go. The movie makes sense now, which is why I've come to adopt that theory.

Resolving that issue is the single easiest part of analyzing this movie. All of the dialogue and human interaction is so unbelievably awkward and stilted that I have no idea what anyone involved in the project was going for. It's not bad though, simply bizarre.

The film has a certain uncomfortable, dream-like feel to it, created by the awkward interactions. But, the effect is periodically broken by characters commenting on how ridiculous the dialogue of another character is. There's even a scene where Gibson's own facial expression indicates his character knows he said something absurd.

“The police are here and I'm with them. I'm a police officer.”

Beyond “there's an alien invasion, and Mel Gibson and his family are under siege in a farm house,” I have no idea what to describe about the plot. Graham Hess (Gibson) was a priest, until his wife died in a wreck, and she said some strange things that turned out to have been a vision of the invasion. Other than that, I have absolutely no idea which parts of this movie are supposed to be significant, and which parts are merely weird dialogue intended to establish characters.

The most notable thing about the movie is the score. The music is legitimately unsettling, and helps to back up some fairly creepy imagery. Even with the explanation of demons however, the ending does come across as quite anti-climactic. The movie attempts to become heartwarming instead of frightening, and ruins what was otherwise a decent (if awkward) setup, with the aliens/demons being defeated with little effort and the protagonist regaining his faith in God.

I don't hate Shyamalan the way that many people do. I feel that he can make good movies, when he makes them for his audience instead of himself. Hell, I thought The Happening was enjoyable, if only for morbid amusement of watching mass suicides. This movie however, I put in the same category as The Village and Lady in the Water. It's boring, and feels the need to constantly remind you of just how important the things you're watching actually are.

As with some other movies on this list, I wouldn't really discourage anyone from watching it. The experience is certainly interesting. But you might find yourself staring at the screen for five minutes afterwards, wondering what exactly you just saw.

Wednesday Review: The Visit

Watching The Visit I found myself debating whether my politics had any place in a movie review. Did I want to open this review by condemning the stigma against the mentally ill this movie perpetuates? Or did I just want to stick to talking about it's quality?

Thankfully, the movie resolved my debate for me by using the aspect of mental illness in an illogical manner, giving me something to complain about: How can people with mental disorders that leave them barely able to function pull off the evil scheme presented in this movie? It relied on a great deal of secrecy and coordination that I highly doubt either of them could have carried out given their mental states.

This movie seems to have critics split right down the middle, with a little more than half declaring it to represent an upswing for Shyamalan's career now that he's back to low-budget Indie films. The rest see this as another of Shyamalan's dreaded “twist” movies, shallow and illogical. Both seem to agree that this is a passion project, since he funded it with his paycheck from After Earth, and sold it to Blumhouse.

I don't really fall into either of these camps. I think this is calculated career-saver for Shyamalan. At the end of his rope, he made a film that was sure to at least turn enough of a profit to break the streak of failures currently filling his resume for most of the 2000s. It's a self-interested move, but one I fully understand.

I reach this conclusion because the film, while made independently of Blumhouse, seems far more like a Blumhouse film than a Shyamalan. The use of found-footage robs us of Shyamalan's usual cinematography, the soundtrack is downplayed for most of the film, the colors of muted, and the performances seem calculated to give every character one or two traits to remember. The decision to copy the Blumhouse formula was likely conscious. If he wants to show he can still turn a profit, why not copy one of the most consistent profit-makers in Hollywood right now?

The premise of the movie is that a brother and sister go to visit their estranged Grandparents, who they've never met. The sister wants to document their grandparents, in hopes of finding out what caused the rift between their mother and her family. They also want to give their mother time alone with her new boyfriend. However, as the movie progresses it becomes clear that both of their grandparents are mentally unbalanced. Their grandfather is often confused and paranoid, while their grandmother enters a psychotic state after 9:30 PM and begins running around the house frantically.

Judged as a Blumhouse film, this is among their better productions. Shyamalan inserts a lot of humor, such as making the brother a terrible rapper with a gigantic ego, or having the grandmother stuff cookies in her mouth and yell “Yahtzee!” during one of the film's more frightening scenes. It's ironic that a man with such a reputation as a diva would be the one to make a Blumhouse film that doesn't take itself way too seriously. On the other hand, Signs and Lady in the Water both had levels of self-awareness that much of their audiences seemed to have miss (not that it could save Lady in the Water).

Looking at it from a horror standpoint, it's only enhanced by the humor. A frequent problem with Blumhouse productions is that we get sick of the darkness, and don't care anymore what happens to the characters. Here, however, the elements of horror and comedy blend so well together that I often found myself unsure whether my fellow movie patrons were laughing, screaming, or both in many of the key scenes.

I do recommend this movie. By the standards of Blumhouse it really knocks it out of the park. On the other hand, letting the man who directed The Sixth Sense direct a Blumhouse feels somewhat like a little-league team drafting a laid-off MLB pitcher: Yeah, he'll win them the game even if he's washed-out, but at the end of the day it isn't a lot of bragging rights. Still, winning a game is winning a game.