Let’s twist again, like we did last summer! Or in this case, like we did a decade or so ago when director M. Night Shyamalan became the master of the trick ending. Remember the twist in “The Sixth Sense”? It was one of the best surprises in movie memory. Ever since little Haley Joel Osment uttered those four words that sent chills down audience’s spines—“I see dead people”—Shyamalan has been largely unsuccessful in recreating that kind of jolt for his audience.
His new film, a psychological horror called “Split,” comes close to re-establishing Shyamalan’s reputation as the ziggiest zagger of a storyteller in Hollywood.
The dark story begins in broad daylight with the kidnapping of teens Claire (Haley Lu Richardson) and Marcia (Jessica Sula) and Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy). The three friends are plunked down into an airless basement dungeon, held captive by Kevin (James McAvoy), a man with dissociative identity disorder. In other words his mind has cleaved into twenty-four separate and distinctive personas. Think “Psycho” times 12. To escape the girls must appeal to Kevin’s better nature or natures before the final personality, The Beast, shows up and they become, “sacred food.”
Shyamalan will earn a good chunk of the credit for “Split,” for writing the twisty-turny story, for choosing the anxiety-inducing soundtrack, for constructing a (mostly) taut and tense pulpy thriller with loads of black humour but it is McAvoy that makes the movie memorable.
From the button-down, neat-freak Dennis, to nine-year-old Kanye West fan Hedwig to the sinister Patricia, he jumps from personality to personality, breathing life into each of his characters. The changes are frequently lightening fast. A furrow of a brow, the tightening of the lips and presto-chango, he’s someone else. It’s bravura work, unafraid to go over-the-top, embracing each and every character as if they were the star of the show.
Like all good Shyamalan movies (and some bad ones too) there is a twist, and a good one, but you’ll have to buy a ticket to find out what it is. There will be no spoilers here. Suffice to say the curve ball works thematically as well as providing several ‘What the Hell!!’ moments.
“Split” is wild and wooly, uniting, for the first time in a long time, Shyamalan’s talent for keeping the audience on the edge of their seats and his ability to change the game in the final act.
Remember the twist in The Sixth Sense? It was one of the best surprises in recent movie memory. Ever since little Haley Joel Osment uttered those four words that sent chills down audience’s spines—“I see dead people”—director M. Night Shyamalan has been trying unsuccessfully to recreate that kind of jolt for his audience. His subsequent films, Unbreakable, Signs, The Village and The Lady in the Water have all had their moments, but none have become pop culture touchstones in the way that The Sixth Sense has.
The trailer for his latest film, The Happening, is a grabber. Without giving away any details it elegantly sets up the premise that something catastrophic has happened, but if it isn’t a terrorist attack, what is it? It gave me hope that M. Night was back on track.
Starring Mark Walhberg as science teacher Elliot Moore, The Happening sees him, his estranged wife (Zooey Deschanel) and the eight year old daughter (Ashlyn Sanchez) of a friend running for their lives after a strange pandemic spreads through the American Northeast. The mysterious disease causes loss of speech, physical stupefaction and suicide, usually by violent and very unpleasant means. Will they survive as the devastation swells?
Will there be a twist ending? Not since Chubby Checker has one man been so closely associated with “the twist.”
Will Elliot Moore wake up in bed with Suzanne Pleshette and realize that it was all just a crazy dream?
And most importantly, will M. Night Shyamalan finally once again give audiences the shock they expect from his movies?
The answer to that last question, sadly is no. The biggest shock in The Happening is how ineptly made it is. Since his first big hit it seems as though M. Night has been hemorrhaging the good filmmaking sense he showed on that film, diminishing his talent with each new project.
For much of The Happening I thought perhaps he was making a tribute to the b-movies of the 1950s, complete with ridiculous dialogue, crazy science and wooden acting. I rejected that theory when I thought back to those movies and remembered that while they might not have been Citizen Kane, at least they were entertaining. The Happening’s main achievement is to figure out increasingly gruesome and strange ways for people to off themselves.
Even then, some of the methods of death raised hoots of derision from the audience I saw it with. When a woman watching a video of a man feeding himself to a pride of lions at a zoo says in horror, “Mother of God, what kind of terrorists are these?” it caused a ripple of laughter that passed through the entire theatre.
Even the film’s eco message—we better start taking better care of the environment or Mother Nature might make us jump in front of a haymaker and die a bloody and brutal death—is simplistic and underdeveloped. One can only hope that other upcoming green themed movies like The Swarm and James Cameron’s Avatar dig a little deeper.
Despite the rare flash of inspiration—a scene with a dead policeman’s revolver is intense and effective—The Happening just doesn’t deliver the goods. It’s doubly disappointing because it comes from someone whose talent once approached greatness, but as it is this is the worst movie by a major, mainstream director since Gigli and could be used in film schools as a lesson in how NOT to make a thriller.
The Happening raises just one more question: M. Night, what happened?
M. Night Shyamalan has said “The Last Airbender,” in theatres this weekend, will be the first of a trilogy. A mix of action and spiritualism it will be, he says, his “Lord of the Rings.” I’m here to tell you, this ain’t no “LOTR.” It’s barely “Police Academy” standard let alone anything that could be compared to Peter Jackson’s richly layered epic.
The story begins with the discovery of Aang (Noah Ringer) a young boy with a distinctive tattoo marking his head and back. He’s been frozen in a block of ice for one hundred years and is unaware that the evil Fire Nation has waged a war on his home, the Earth Kingdom. Along with his new companions, Katara (Nicola Peltz), her brother Sokka (Jackson Rathbone), he flies around on a large creature that looks like a “Where the Wild Things Are” reject, fighting for the land and trying to stay one step ahead of Prince Zuko (Dev Patel) a disgraced royal who thinks capturing the boy will restore his honor. You see, Aang is the last of his kind. He’s the Avatar, the only person alive with the ability to “bend” all four elements. Unfrozen Avatar boy would be an asset to the Fire Nation army, but it is his destiny to supply order to his war torn world.
Based on an animated television series, “The Last Airbender” struggles to wedge three seasons worth of “bender” mythology into a ninety minute movie. To bring the audience up to speed Shyamalan provides endless exposition. In fact, there is very little dialogue in the first hour that isn’t setting up the history, motives and abilities of the characters. Conversational it isn’t. It’s a lot of “What is the spirit world grandma?” and “Aren’t there spirits here?” followed by long winded explanations delivered with a gravitas that wouldn’t be out of place in a community theatre production of “Sweeney Todd.” Add some narration and location intertitles to the questions and exposition and it’s obvious Shyamalan has broken the golden rule of filmmaking—show me don’t tell me. He shows us plenty, but unfortunately tells us even more.
He isn’t aided in the storytelling by a wooden cast of young actors who seem to have been hired more for their athletic ability than their acting chops. Even Dev Patel, such a winning presence in “Slumdog Millionaire,” is reduced to spending most of the movie simply screeching and glowering. When the other acrobatic actors aren’t over emoting they spend their time engaged in an elaborate game of Rock, Paper, Scissors battling with earth, wind and fire, the elements, not the funk band, to win control of the Earth Kingdom.
Even the murky 3D doesn’t add much, once again proving that stereoscopic images cannot rescue a weak story or mask poor acting.
“The Last Airbender” is my first seat belt movie of the season—that’s a movie so misguided, so off the mark you need a seat belt to keep you in your chair for the entire movie. Shyamalan really should have released the movie at Thanksgiving because it’s a turkey—but you won’t want a second helping.
Signs takes a great deal of time and creates a very elaborate context to teach us one simple, and not very original idea: everything happens for a reason. Mel Gibson is Graham Hess, a former minister who left the church after the tragic death of his wife. Everywhere he goes his former parishioners call him “Father,” even though he vows “not to waste one more minute of his life on prayer.” You see, Hess lost his faith when his young, beautiful wife was taken from him, cut down in her prime. When giant crop circles appear in his corn field and then start popping up all over the world, it seems his faith is to be tested once again. Are these bizarre configurations a hoax, or a sign that an alien invasion can’t be far behind? Bet on the latter. When the tall green ETs do touch down Hess fights for the survival of his family, and learns more about the complex nature of fate. In the end he realizes that life is not just a series of coincidences, but a carefully arranged pattern that fits together like a jigsaw puzzle – everything happens for a reason. Director M. Night Shyamalan handles the material with his usual incredible visual style, but unfortunately the story is too thin to sustain interest. The aliens are not the focal point of the movie, but simply used as a plot device to help Hess learn about himself and his beliefs. Shyamalan has an almost Hitchcock-like ability to build suspense, unfortunately, unlike the late-master he doesn’t follow-up the anticipation with any thrills. Signs is limp – all fore-play and no sex. If you’re in the mood for an exciting alien invasion movie skip Signs and rent the 1953 Byron Haskin directed War of the Worlds, you’ll have a better time.
What do you call a Will Smith movie that’s not really a Will Smith movie?
A screening of his new film, the sci fi actioner directed by M. Night Shyamalan provides the answer. “After Earth” sounds like a great Smith vehicle—he not only acts in it, but produces and has a story credit as well—but it fails to take advantage of his greatest asset—his star power.
Big Willie is Cypher Raige, a highly respected general in the intergalactic peacekeeping organization Ranger Corps, based on the planet Nova Prime. He rose through the ranks fighting the Ursa, genetically engineered beasties who can literally smell human fear. They are POed because they consider the planet their home and the humans interlopers. By learning to overcome his fear—a technique known as “ghosting”— Cypher became invisible to them.
Unfortunately his son Kitai (played by his real life son Jaden Smith) is invisible to him. To try and mend family fences he takes the youngster on a mission to deliver an Ursa specimen for use in training ghost warriors wannabes.
But after Cypher breaks his leg in a crash landing on Earth, a planet uninhabited for a millennium, Kitai must navigate the unfamiliar landscape and battle the escaped Ursa and overgrown Earth organisms—everything on the planet has evolved to kill humans!— to retrieve an emergency beacon.
Herein lies the big problem with “After Earth.” Will Smith—one of the most charismatic movie stars of the day—may have his name above the title on the poster, but he’s the star in billing only. For most of the film he lays back, motionless and bleeding, allowing the light to shine brightly on his son Jaden.
It’s too bad, the listless “After Earth” needs the elder Smith driving the film, not taking the backseat over enunciating motivational lines like, “Recognize your power: This will be your creation.”
Jaden isn’t a strong enough actor to hold the center of a massive CGI movie. He’s charismatic like his dad but here he appears to have only a handful of facial expressions and rotates between anger, surprise, fear and some serious eyebrow acting for most of the film’s scant 90 minute (including credits) running time.
Shyamalan, whose forte is not helming big summer tentpole movies, doesn’t bring much to the screen visually. The look of the movie is generic sci fi, and for every cool scene—Kitai soaring through the air in a wing suit, chased by a giant eagle—there are obvious soundstage scenes and cheesy costumes. Then there are the accents—apparently all future people sound like Rolf Harris. And don’t even get me started on the logic leaps—how do flora and fauna survive on a planet that falls into a deep freeze every night, for instance.
On the plus side it does have a pretty great last line, and at least it isn’t in 3D. But at the end of the day “After Earth’s” main crime is placing Will on the sidelines, robbing it of a star that might have been able to make this journey interesting.
