M. Night Shyamalan seemed to be lost in the wilderness for a long while, making some truly awful movies that only highlighted the odd flaws of his earlier more successful movies.
Along with simply being bad, some of his movies like the Happening were just outright bizarre, as if they were movies made by aliens trying to approximate what stories or acting are.
With the Visit, Night's weirdness seemed to find it's proper outlet, a much more deliberately schlocky vibe. It felt like someone helped reign him in a bit or at least gave him the right context. The Visit is a movie full of obvious trailer moments but then also some actually poignant character beats, that then have conveniently pat payoffs. Also white boy rapping. It's weird, but on its own terms it worked.
Split really seemed like it was going to be an extension of that, the weirdness of M. Night funneled into a "F*** You it's January" Movie, a nonsense horror movie for teenagers to text over. I was interested because it really seemed like McAvoy was cutting loose and its premise at least looked like some potential schlocky fun.
The movie delivers on that promise, of likely ill-advised or poor taste fun about a man with 23 personalities abducting young women. But the longer it went on, the more it was clear that there was some actual, real competent filmmaking going on. McAvoy was actually turning in a great performance that while over the top was actually driven by a lot of really subtle choices and turns. The teenage girl characters had a lot more depth than one might expect...
and then of course the film sets up what it sets up and I was blown the hell away.
Truly this is Night's greatest twist of all. He made a movie that would stand perfectly well on its own and in its final seconds makes it doubly as exciting and truly pulls the rug out. The weirdest thing about the twist is the extent to which it will be completely be lost on the texting-through-the-movie crowd. For no fault of their own, most are several years too young to have the context.
Personally though, my wife and I are on cloud 9 after returning from the theater.
