GLASS (US - 2019) Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Cast: James McAvoy, Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Sarah Paulson, Anya Taylor-Joy, Spencer Treat Clark, Charlayne Woodard, Luke Kirby, Adam David Thompson, M. Night Shyamalan, Serge Didenko, Russell Posner, Leslie Stefanson. (PG-13, 129 mins) After a decade spent as a critical punching bag and all-around industry pariah, M.Night Shyamalan mounted an unexpected comeback with 2015's THE VISIT and 2017's SPLIT, a pair of surprise hits for low-budget horror factory Blumhouse. SPLIT focused on Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy), a disturbed young man with 23 personalities he collectively calls "The Horde," working to both protect Kevin and contain a 24th, known as "The Beast." Kevin abducts three teenage girls from a mall parking lot and by the end of the film, the monstrous Beast emerges, with a Hulk-like animal rage and a supernatural ability to climb walls. McAvoy's performance was an astonishing tour-de-force and should've been up for some awards, and his work did much of the heavy lifting when it came to making SPLIT Shyamalan's best film in years. A closing credits stinger showing an uncredited Bruce Willis threw everyone for a loop, establishing SPLIT as a secret sequel to Shyamalan's 2000 film UNBREAKABLE, the director's much-ballyhooed follow-up to his blockbuster THE SIXTH SENSE. Considered somewhat of a disappointment at the time, UNBREAKABLE was ultimately a superhero origin story and comic book deconstruction that was made at a time when comic book superhero movies weren't really a thing. The film quickly found loyal cult following and a critical reassessment over the years, and is now regarded by many as every bit as essential the Shyamalan canon as THE SIXTH SENSE.
A lot's changed in 19 years. Comic book and superhero movies rule the multiplex and it seems a new one is opening every other week, with no apparent signs of audience fatigue, so much so that even the ones people hate become blockbusters. The only superhero hit at the time of UNBREAKABLE was Bryan Singer's first X-MEN, and where Shyamalan was once ahead of the curve, he's now playing not so much catch-up, but this sort of analytical, deconstructive take runs the risk of seeming like didactic lecturing to a moviegoing public that, at this point, is pretty knowledgeably savvy when it comes to the medium. It doesn't help that the brief shot of Willis at the end of SPLIT seemed like something added after the fact, and even now, fusing the worlds of UNBREAKABLE and SPLIT into GLASS often feels like Shyamalan is forcibly retconning a superhero trilogy for himself. Set several weeks after the events of SPLIT and 19 years after UNBREAKABLE, GLASS opens with Crumb and his constantly shifting roster of personalities holding another four teenage girls captive in an abandoned Philadelphia factory. Meanwhile, security equipment store owner David Dunn (Willis), the sole survivor of a catastrophic train derailment and a man who's been impervious to injury and prone to superhuman feats of strength, is still moonlighting as a hooded rain poncho-sporting vigilante now referred to by the media as "The Overseer." Gifted with an ESP-like ability to come into physical contact with someone and "see" their criminal past, Dunn, aided by his adult son Joseph (the now-grown Spencer Treat Clark, who played the same role as a kid), goes on frequent walks through the surrounding Philly neighborhoods to seek out wrongdoers, and when Crumb stumbles into him, he "sees" the kidnapped girls. As "The Overseer," Dunn rescues the girls and battles Crumb in his "Beast" form, but when the fight goes outside the warehouse, the cops are already waiting.
Both men are hauled off to a mental institution where they're evaluated by Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson), who specializes in cases of superhero-inspired "delusions of grandeur." She tries to convince them that their abilities aren't real and can be explained away, and brings them together with catatonic patient Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), the brittle-boned man who caused the train derailment in UNBREAKABLE and introduced Dunn to his long-suppressed abilities. Price, an aspiring criminal mastermind and comic book villain come to life who calls himself "Mr. Glass," has been confined to the mental hospital for 19 years, faking his vegetative state to wait for the perfect storm. He conspires with Kevin and "The Horde" to plot an escape from the mental hospital and cause a chemical explosion at the opening of the Osaka Tower, a new skyscraper in downtown Philly.
Much of GLASS deals with subverting expectations, which is very much in line with Shyamalan's recurring twist endings. GLASS offers several unexpected turns in the third act, but even under the auspices of a live-action comic book, it too often strains credulity in both its plot developments and the ways it continues to retrofit itself into the events of UNBREAKABLE. The film works better in its first half, particularly with McAvoy's once-again outstanding work as "The Horde" and in the warm relationship between Dunn and his loyal son (bringing Clark back to play Joseph is one of the best decisions Shyamalan makes here). But once "Mr. Glass" starts putting his master plan into motion, things start collapsing. What kind of mental hospital is this? It's made clear that Dr. Staple is visiting and only has three days to evaluate them, but where is the head doctor? Where are the other patients? There appears to be one orderly on duty at any given time, but there's tons of security guards who let Kevin--wearing a nurse's uniform--just wheel Price right out of the ward. Dr. Staple's behavior is inconsistent, even after her motives are revealed--first she's against Kevin's one surviving victim Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy, returning from SPLIT) meet with him, but then says she can't help him without her. Shyamalan doesn't seem to know what to do with Taylor-Joy, Clark, or Charlayne Woodard as Elijah's mother, and the big superhero/villain battle outside the mental hospital is an often awkwardly-shot letdown that allows Willis to pull some of his Lionsgate VOD antics and sit out most of the showdown while his double hides under his poncho's hoodie, complete with some Willis dialogue obviously dubbed in post. When all is revealed and the pieces of the puzzle in place after a laborious epilogue, GLASS just never quite jells into a cohesive whole. It's an interesting idea in search of a point. It's well-made, McAvoy is marvelous (introducing even more of the 23 personalities we didn't get to meet the first time around), and in their scenes together, Clark's presence seems to engage Willis enough to remind him of a bygone era when he gave a shit, but in the end, this doesn't live up to either UNBREAKABLE or SPLIT and doesn't fully succeed in making its case that this should've been a trilogy.
SPLIT (US - 2017) Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Cast: James McAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy, Betty Buckley, Haley Lu Richardson, Jessica Sula, Brad William Henke, Sebastian Arcelus, Izzie Coffey, M. Night Shyamalan, Neil Huff. (PG-13, 118 mins) While most viewed 2015's THE VISIT as a comeback for wunderkind-turned-pariah M. Night Shyamalan, I was in the minority and hated it with a near-blind fury that even LADY IN THE WATER and THE LAST AIRBENDER couldn't touch. A tardy trendhop onto the found footage bandwagon, THE VISIT was the most cynical move yet in the cratering of Shyamalan's career and I was pretty much ready to write him off for good. But now there's SPLIT, an ingenious and ambitious horror film that's easily his best work since the post-SIXTH SENSE glory days of UNBREAKABLE and SIGNS. A complex Hitchcockian mindfuck, SPLIT opens with three teenage girls--birthday girl Claire (Haley Lu Richardson), her best friend Marcia (Jessica Sula), and quiet outcast Casey (THE WITCH's Anya Taylor-Joy)--being abducted from a shopping mall parking lot and kept in a locked room in a vast basement. Their captor is Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy), who suffers from an extreme case of dissociative identity disorder and has 23 personalities existing within him. The girls were kidnapped by OCD neat-freak "Dennis," and the girls soon meet the prim, proper, British-accented "Miss Patricia," who wears a dress and explains that "Dennis knows he can't touch you." "Hedwig" is an eager-to-please, nine-year-old boy who knows what Dennis and Miss Patricia are up to: the two biggest troublemakers of the 23 personalities, they've planned an internal revolt and launched a coup in Kevin's mind, with Dennis even going so far as to pretend to be the affable, laid-back amateur fashion designer "Barry," the personality who regularly represents Kevin in his appointments with psychiatrist Dr. Fletcher (Betty Buckley), and the most conscientious and good-hearted of "The Horde," the collective name given to Kevin's personalities. All of this is to prepare for the coming of "The Beast," a powerful 24th personality brewing within the deepest recesses of Kevin's mind. Dr. Fletcher senses something is off about Barry in her sessions ("I'm gonna guess that you're....Dennis?" she asks at one point, and Dennis denies it) and is alarmed by the number of urgent e-mails he sends her, wanting to meet with her to warn her that something bad is about to happen but always overpowered when either Dennis or Miss Patricia step into "the light" or, the center of Kevin's head, making it necessary for Dennis to pass himself off as Barry to keep Dr. Fletcher from digging further.
"Dennis"
Among the girls, the focus is on Casey, who elects to hang back and survey the situation before attempting to escape. Casey has no friends and was only at Claire's party because Claire felt guilty about inviting everyone in her art class but her. Casey needed a ride home and was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time ("Dennis" has been stalking Claire and Marcia for days). Periodic flashbacks to young Casey (Izzie Coffey) and her relationship with her father (Sebastian Arcelus) and uncle (Brad William Henke) add depth to her character and help illustrate why she can read the situation more accurately and react to it more effectively than Claire or Marcia (sensing Dennis' germphobia and how to use it to their advantage, she advises Marcia to "pee on yourself" when she's carried into another room by Dennis, knowing he'll be too grossed out to touch her). To say anything more would risk spoilers, but SPLIT shows a Shyamalan that's rejuvenated and at the top of his game, with the film going into some disturbing places that stretch the PG-13 rating to its breaking point. SPLIT is a strange and inventive take on the psychological horror film, with a late development that has you scratching your head until a stinger early in the closing credits drops a ballsy twist that has you reconsidering the entire film from a different perspective once you realize exactly what Shyamalan has been up to for the last two hours. Shyamalan has demonstrated no shortage of arrogance and chutzpah over his career, to a detrimental degree in recent years, but the wrap-up of SPLIT is one that immediately goes down as one of the most daring and divisive that you'll see in any movie in 2017.
"Miss Patricia"
"Barry"
"Hedwig"
SPLIT wouldn't work nearly as well as it does without the tour de force performance of McAvoy in the most difficult role of his career. Though we only meet maybe eight of Kevin's 23 personalities, McAvoy is a sight to behold in each one, switching characters on a dime and also tasked with playing a personality impersonating another personality. He runs the gamut of emotions and acting techniques, sometimes playing to the back row as with the child Hedwig, or pursing his lips and emoting only with the slightest judgmental eyebrow arch that speaks volumes, as with Miss Patricia. The direction that SPLIT heads--and with it, Kevin's character and McAvoy's performance--requires a leap of faith from the audience that Shyamalan rewards with that reveal in the stinger. It doesn't so much change anything that happens before, but it does change your perspective on the film and what it's really doing. SPLIT isn't for everyone: it's a tad too long, Shyamalan still gives himself an annoying cameo, and some may find the extensive psychoanalytical dialogue a little too talky and clinical (though it does provide veteran actress Buckley with her most significant big-screen role in many years). Regardless, it's already going to go down as one of the strongest genre films of the year, with a go-for-broke, gives-it-everything-he's-got performance by McAvoy that's deserving of serious award consideration but will receive none. All is not yet forgiven, Mr. Shyamalan...but this is a huge step in the right direction and it's great to have you back for now.
THE VISIT (US - 2015) Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Cast: Olivia DeJonge, Ed Oxenbould, Deanna Dunagan, Peter McRobbie, Kathryn Hahn, Celia Keenan-Bolger, Patch Darragh. (PG-13, 94 mins)
M. Night Shyamalan's rocky road from once-adored wunderkind to piled-on pariah is nearing its second decade after a hubris-driven downward spiral that began with his spectacularly egocentric LADY IN THE WATER (2006) and last surfaced with the generally reviled sci-fi flop AFTER EARTH (2013). Shyamalan is back with THE VISIT and like seemingly every wide release horror movie these days, it's "from the producer of PARANORMAL ACTIVITY and INSIDIOUS." Judging from some of his recent career choices, it would appear Shyamalan is a glutton for punishment: anyone willing to take on a Will Smith family vanity project seems to be asking for it. AFTER EARTH wasn't very good, but it wasn't quite the apocalyptic bomb the reviews made it out to be, nor was Shyamalan's 2010 film THE LAST AIRBENDER, perhaps the apex of unrestrained and downright irrational critical and comments section Shyamahate. But for someone of Shyamalan's experience and reputation (he was, after all, once anointed "The Next Spielberg"), arriving beyond fashionably late at the Blumhouse dinner party to scrounge for found-footage table scraps six years after PARANORMAL ACTIVITY seems desperate and almost masochistic. Is he inviting hate from his detractors? Does he enjoy this?
Yes, THE VISIT is yet another Blumhouse-produced horror film of the faux-documentary/found-footage variety, and even as box office takes dwindle with each new one that comes along, they're so cheap to make with their usually unknown casts that you're getting more whether you want them or not. 15-year-old Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and 12-year-old Tyler (Ed Oxenbould) are Philadelphia siblings planning to visit their grandparents in rural Pennsylvania for a week while their divorced mom (Kathryn Hahn) goes on a cruise with her boyfriend. There's a troubled family history here: not only are Becca and Tyler still scarred by their father ditching them all to run off to California with a Starbucks barista five years earlier, but Mom hasn't spoken to her parents in over 15 years, after they had a huge falling out when she decided to run off and marry the kids' father against their wishes. The visit to the grandparents is not only to give Mom some time with the boyfriend (who the kids really like and would welcome as a stepdad). but also to reach out to the grandparents and try to put the family back together. All of this is documented by Becca, an aspiring filmmaker who uses terms like "blocking" and "mise-en-scene," and hopes to create a film chronicling the week with her mom's folks.
At first, Nana (Deanna Dunagan) and Pop-Pop (Peter McRobbie) seem like a nice old couple--a little out of touch ("They don't know who One Direction is!" muses Tyler), and with odd bits of behavior like Pop-Pop frequently visiting the locked shed and a momentarily ferocious Nana pursuing them in a game of hide-and-seek under the porch. They live on a farm and turn in by 9:30 pm. Pop-Pop tells the kids to stay out of the basement because there's mold, and to stay in their room after 9:30. Outside their room, in the middle of the night, a nude Nana vomits, crawls around the house, and claws at the walls. Tyler sneaks into the shed to find a pile of feces-filled adult diapers. Pop-Pop explains that Nana has a condition known as "sundowning," when the night brings dementia-like symptoms, and Nana tells them that Pop-Pop is embarrassed by his incontinence issues and keeps the diapers in the shed until he has enough to burn the pile. The kids are weirded out, but accepting of the explanations because "well, they're old and they live on a farm, and..." Things get more intense as the week goes on, and when the grandparents are out for a walk, a couple of visitors stop by to check on Nana and Pop-Pop , who volunteer at an area mental hospital but didn't show up on their last scheduled day.
THE VISIT hinges on the kind of third-act plot twist that made Shyamalan famous, but it doesn't really work here. For starters, it requires the local police to be complete morons, and it can't be explained away by someone groaning about "hick-town cops." What does work are a lot of the little details the director throws in: the character elements between Becca and Tyler that show the way siblings both love and hurt one another and how they fight but instinctively stick together when the shit hits the fan. They're children traumatized by the breakup of their parents' marriage: Becca is filled with rage at her father that she can't articulate and instead morphs it into crippling self-esteem issues that she masks with an affected, beyond-her-age vocabulary, while Tyler cites his bad performance at a little league football game for the reason their dad left, and his coping mechanism is germphobia, which a fumbling Shyamalan only brings up when it's necessary for the plot (like an encounter with one of Pop-Pop's diapers that, once seen, can't be unseen). Both of the young actors are quite good, particularly DeJonge, but Shyamalan too often dwells on the more grating aspects of Tyler, like his freestyle rapping, which gets entirely too much screen time and does nothing to endear Oxenbould (who looks like a young Dax Shepard) to the audience.
The biggest problem with THE VISIT rests on the shoulders of the man himself, M. Night Shyamalan. As someone who has said things like "Well, AFTER EARTH has it strong points," and "THE LAST AIRBENDER was a little better than I thought it would be," I wouldn't say I'm a Shyamalan apologist, but there seemed to be a herd mentality in the way critics have piled on his films of the last decade. Shyamalan's decision to make THE VISIT in found-footage format is its complete undoing. Of course, he throws in some shots that couldn't possibly be filmed by Becca or Tyler or any of their cameras. Of course, their cameras never stop rolling 24/7. Of course, the middle-of-nowhere house owned by Luddites with no TV, computer, or cell reception somehow has wi-fi so the kids can Skype with Mom. And of course, the climax involves a shaky-cam, tilted-angle trip into the dark basement. There's enough positives in THE VISIT in its characterization and the concept itself that it quickly becomes obvious that it would've worked significantly better had it been shot as a straight narrative instead of the faux-doc/found-footage format, which adds nothing to the story but frustration and requires the actors constantly showing off and playing to the camera.
2002 seems like a lifetime ago
And in that realization, the truth becomes clear: M. Night Shyamalan is his own worst enemy. He had a good movie here, with a plethora of macabre and dark-humored ideas, but he can't resist shooting himself in the foot time and again by making the dumbest decisions possible, inviting scorn, negating the work of the two young stars and haplessly trying to cash in on a played-out fad that refuses to die. There's a reasonably decent little horror movie locked up in here, but Shyamalan has thrown away the key and with that, he's not so much the master filmmaker he was being touted as after THE SIXTH SENSE but rather, a troll masquerading as an auteur to the amusement of no one but himself. He's Uwe Boll with an Oscar nomination. The finale is disappointing, there's a typically cloying, sentimental coda, and then another rap from Tyler over the end credits because hey, let's make sure the audience leaves pissed-off and annoyed. Shyamalan could've saved a lot of time and just let those closing credits play over a static shot of himself flipping the bird. Even with all the positives that are there if you look for them, THE VISIT is his worst and most infuriating film yet. I have no more defenses of his work left in me. We're done here.
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Written by Gary Whitta and M. Night Shyamalan. Cast: Jaden Smith, Will Smith, Zoe Isabella Kravitz, Sophie Okonedo, Glenn Morshower, Kristofer Hivju, David Denman. (PG-13, 99 mins)
Opening to apocalyptically bad reviews despite Columbia keeping the involvement of Hollywood pariah M. Night Shyamalan as quiet as possible, AFTER EARTH is, yes, first and foremost, a Smith family vanity project. There's two things going on here with the almost universal pre-release hate directed toward this film: first, the Shyamalan factor. Over the last few years, critics seem to be taking pleasure in the sinking of the director's career. To his detriment, Shyamalan has made it very easy for them to resort to these rarely-reached levels of schadenfreude. His hubris and his inflated ego made him an easy target, especially once the SIXTH SENSE novelty wore off and films like LADY IN THE WATER and THE HAPPENING started to torpedo his reputation. Critics piled on THE LAST AIRBENDER to an absurd degree, but don't misunderstand me: THE LAST AIRBENDER is not good, but it's nowhere near as awful as critics made it out to be. At this point, it's almost expected for critics ranging from serious professionals all the way down to IMDb message board shut-ins to bag on anything Shyamalan does and that's probably not going to change. Call him an asshole, a hack, a one-trick pony, whatever, but too many people are judging him and his past disappointments, and not the movie in question. Hell, Michael Cimino bankrupted a studio and he never had this kind of abuse leveled at him. Cimino made movies after HEAVEN'S GATE and the one-sheets still hyped his involvement. At this point, Will Smith should be lauded just for having the courage to hire Shyamalan in the first place.
And speaking of Will Smith, particularly in his role as father to son Jaden, it's very unbecoming of professional, adult movie critics to take cheap shots at someone's kid. Yes, Jaden Smith is a pampered Hollywood rich kid and he's kinda cocky and he's not nearly as charismatic as his dad, doesn't have the same screen presence, and isn't as good of an actor. But he's still a kid and having said that, a 14-year-old kid, even if he's insanely wealthy and reaping the benefits of nepotism, shouldn't be the object of such pithy scorn and mean-spirited ridicule by people who should know better. I'm not implying that kids who act should get a pat on the back and a pass. Some child actors are terrible. But there's a way to say that without sounding like an asshole. Furthermore, while Jaden is guilty of the unpardonable sin of hanging out with Justin Bieber, it's not his fault that he was born to rich and famous parents. I only say this because when it comes to people like Shyamalan, and now Jaden Smith, critics seem to be attacking the people personally, with unbridled and frankly disturbing glee and some of the reviews of AFTER EARTH, many almost certainly written in part before the critics even saw the movie, actually border on bullying. Shyamalan probably has a thick enough skin by now and doesn't really care what critics think, but a 14-year-old kid is still a 14-year-old kid. I've been guilty of sarcastic comments and cheap shots in print and on this blog, but what is it about Shyamalan and the young Smith that turned an alarming number of critics into the tampon-throwing bitches from the opening scene of CARRIE? I say this not to mount some passionate defense of AFTER EARTH or the Smith family, but only to say that no, it's nowhere near as awful as critics would have you believe and perhaps they were more concerned with being snarky dicks and joining the cool kids in the pile-on rather than objectively looking at the film.
AFTER EARTH gets off to a rocky start with a confusing and clumsily rolled-out exposition involving Earth being declared uninhabitable after various catastrophes both natural and man-made, with humanity relocating to a distant galaxy on a planet called Nova Prime. Over 1000 years later, the Ranger Corps regularly battle large reptilian creatures known as the Ursas, which hunt by sensing the fear in their enemy. The Rangers, led by legendary war hero Gen. Cypher Raige (Will Smith), are experts in a technique called "ghosting," which masks their fear, allowing them to defeat the Ursas. Cypher has been away in battle for several years, and is a largely absent figure at home, where his wife Faia (Sophie Okonedo) is raising their son Kitai (Jaden Smith), who was just rejected by the Rangers for his inability to follow orders and still blames himself for not stepping up several years earlier when his older sister Senshi (Zoe Isabella Kravitz) was killed by an Ursa. Kitai was only nine years old, but he also feels that Cypher blames him as well. Cypher has one last training mission before his retirement, and Faia convinces him that Kitai "doesn't need a commanding officer...he needs his father" and talks him into taking Kitai along as a way for the two to bond. The ship is hit by an asteroid storm and breaks apart, crashing on Earth, which no longer supports human life for long periods as they've adapted over time to the atmosphere of Nova Prime. Cypher and Kitai are the only survivors, and the distress beacon is with a part of the ship that landed 100 km in another direction. Both of Cypher's legs are broken in the crash, and Kitai must travel on foot to retrieve the beacon. Also making his journey difficult: the high probability that an Ursa that was onboard the ship to be used as a "ghosting" training exercise has survived the crash may make things difficult for Kitai.
Shot in beautiful locations in areas like Costa Rica, Pennsylvania, and Utah by veteran David Cronenberg cinematographer Peter Suschitzky, AFTER EARTH looks great on a big screen. The script, by Shyamalan and Gary Whitta (THE BOOK OF ELI) with uncredited contributions from Stephen Gaghan (TRAFFIC, SYRIANA) and Mark Boal (THE HURT LOCKER, ZERO DARK THIRTY) was based on a story idea by Will Smith. The film suffers from far too predictable character arcs and the absence of anything really innovative or surprising (there's no Shyamalan twist ending here), but it's an involving enough adventure and young Smith doesn't come off like the spoiled, talentless brat that internet mouth-breathers would have you believe. It's nothing I'd watch a second time and I'm not saying it's a FIELD OF DREAMS-level man-weepie, but I wasn't bored and it's a nice movie for dads and younger sons to see together. And honestly, if you want to talk Summer 2013 sci-fi flicks so far, I'd rank AFTER EARTH above STAR TREK: INTO DARKNESS.
