M Night Shymalan

Old

27/07/21

Cineworld

M. Night Shymalan. There, I’ve uttered the forbidden name.

Mister Night Shymalan is something of an enigma to me. Most people know of his trajectory, making a spectacular debut in 1999 with The Sixth Sense and then working his way steadily downwards ever since. There have been a lot of films over the intervening years, from the halfway-decent to the downright unwatchable. Lady in the Water? The Happening? After Earth? I had reached the point where I vowed I’d never watch another one.

And then I started hearing good things about Old. ‘A surprising return to form.’ That kind of thing. Hmm. Could that be right? So, inevitably, here I am, back at the cinema, giving him one more chance to surprise me.

To be fair this is one of his better efforts, though a five star review in the Guardian seems wildly over-enthusiastic. This sub-Twilight Zone story is all about a bunch of people experiencing the holiday from hell. (We’ve all been there.) Guy (Gael Garcia Bernal) and his wife Prisca (Vicky Krips) have been going through a bad patch, possibly because she’s discovered she has an inoperable tumour, so they’ve gathered up their kids and headed off to a fancy beach resort in search of a little quality time. The resort manager (Gustaf Hammarsten) tells the family about a ‘special’ beach they might like to visit, a place where they won’t feel so crowded, so the following day they climb aboard a mini bus and head for it. (Sadly they fail to notice that the bus is being driven by M. Night Shymalan, which should perhaps have been a warning.)

They arrive to find that there are quite a few other holidaymakers there, all of whom seem to be suffering from one kind of malady or other. A dead woman is found floating in the water. And then Guy and Prisca notice that their two kids appear to be ageing very rapidly…

The Shymalanisms dutifully ensue in mind-bending fashion. There are deaths and a birth, transformations and deteriorations. Charles, a doctor (Rufus Sewell), loses his marbles and runs amok with a knife. Patricia (Nikki Amuka-Bird) has an epileptic fit. People bleed and contort and drown. This film is not short on incident.

And yet… and yet… many of the old problems are still here. Shymalan’s script (based on a graphic novel by Pierre-Oscar Lévy) is clunky, while his characters often speak and act like no human beings on the planet ever would. And then there’s the inevitable ‘twist’ ending where Shymalan tries to explain what’s been going on, but I still cling to my theory that, no matter how weird the goings-on, the internal logic of any story should remain rock solid – and here it really doesn’t. Plus… call me old fashioned but is it really wise in the midst of a global pandemic to point the finger of blame at the devious nature of scientists? I think not.

Maybe the problem is mine. Maybe I just don’t get M. Night Shymalan. But as I said, while this is one of his better efforts, that really isn’t saying very much.

Sorry – and maybe cancel that holiday booking, before it’s too late!

3.2 stars

Philip Caveney

Split

21/01/17

It’s time to ask some important questions. Why do film companies keep giving M. Night Shymalan the money to make more films? Why do major actors still think it’s worth taking a punt on appearing in one of them? And perhaps most vexing of all, why do I keep giving the man another chance? To be fair, I’ve managed to resist seeing his last few efforts, alerted by terrible advance reviews, but the word on Split is that it represents a major return to form (something he hasn’t really had, in my opinion, since The Sixth Sense, way back in 1999). So off I dutifully trot to my local multiplex and, perhaps inevitably, I am disappointed once again.

Split is all about Kevin (James McAvoy), a man who suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder and who, according to his therapist, Doctor Karen Fletcher (Betty Buckley), has twenty-three separate identities. At the film’s opening, he abducts three young women who are leaving a birthday party and imprisons them in his labyrinthine underground lair. One of them, Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy), seems more resourceful than her companions, mostly because of trauma she suffered in her childhood (and to which the film intermittently flashes back). Casey learns very quickly that one of Kevin’s personalities, a nine year old boy called Hedwig, is more approachable than the others and starts to investigate this as a possible way out of her predicament… but all of Kevin’s characters talk about the imminent arrival of a new and very frightening twenty-fourth identity…

It’s an intriguing premise but one which falls short on just about every level. Given that it’s about an abduction, the film fails to generate any real tension or sense of threat. Its risible treatment of a genuine psychological disorder, will, I have no doubt, offend anybody who knows anything about the reality of the situation, as will the actions of Doctor Fletcher, a supposed professional who surely breaks every rule in the book in her approach to her patient(s). McAvoy makes a decent fist of his eight roles (thankfully he isn’t called upon to show us the other fifteen!), which essentially means he changes his voice and expressions, so we’re never in any doubt as to which personality we’re seeing at any given time, but it’s hardly the grandstanding tour de force I’d been led to expect. Perhaps if the script (as ever, also by Shymalan) had been more skilful, I’d have been more convinced by what I was hearing.

All the usual Shymalan tropes are in evidence. Cameo performance by the director? Check. Twist ending that you can see coming a mile off? Check. Weird Twilight Zone-style payoff? Check. And oddly, we’re also offered a coda that absolutely relies on you having a working knowledge of the director’s early output. Inevitably, a lot of people left feeling baffled.

Shymalan has always had a very singular approach to his cinematic ‘vision’ but I’m sorry to say that, try as I might, it’s a vision that I am unable to share. Well, at least it was better than Lady In The Water.

2.2 stars

Philip Caveney