OT: Spilt (2017) getting good reviews and tracking for Big Box Office
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Psycho
swanstep — 9 years ago(January 19, 2017 03:50 PM)
Shamyalan seems to have gone back to his Hitchcockian roots (dropped his Spielberg-side) and to have got a powerhouse (career-making? maybe Anthony Perkins-level?) performance from McAvoy. Beyond that, checking the film's IMDb page, he's snapped up some major young horror talent for this picture: the lead gal from The Witch and the DP from It Follows among others.
It's been a while since there's been a director/script-focused, major studio, psychological thriller/horror hit. I can't believe it but I'm actually rooting for Shamyalan this weekend. (Spilt isn't out in NZ until early Feb. so I'm going to have to work hard to avoid spoilers.) -
ecarle — 9 years ago(January 21, 2017 12:06 PM)
Some teenagers of my acquaintance went out to see it last nightand couldn't get in at three theaters they tried.
So it had a good Friday night.
I dunno, I can wait a bit on this one. The "women in a holding cell" genre is wearing out its welcome for me.
But I wish M. Night wellhe did good work in the past, classic work. He could use a comeback.
I also like the poster for the film, in which McAvoy's various personalities extend from him as shadows and one shadow is bigger and nastier looking than all the rest of them.
PS. Though "The Sixth Sense" is M. Night's true classic("the horror movie that turns into a tearjerker") I think my favorite of his work is the one right after that "Unbreakable," with Bruce Willis yet AGAIN anchoring the film and giving us a gloomy, slo-motion study of a man in crisis (no job, marriage falling apart, a son to raise) who slowly learns that he has superpowers but elects to use them in a very mundane way. With Samuel L. Jackson great as the comic book collecting "Mr. Glass," a man as breakable(he has super-fragile bones) as Willis is unbreakable. Like "The Sixth Sense," "Unbreakable" moves at a stately, slow pace, with a gloomy, depressed mannerand then builds to ITS twist ending. Which is a true shocker. En route to that shock is a scary climactic sequence in which Willis must confront a huge, muscular male "home invader" who is out to kill an entire family just because(its Henry: The Serial Killer/Frenzy time). This scene is our nightmares, personified.
And that line again. I've quoted it before. Sam Jackson gets it: "We live in mediocre times."
Yeah, we do. -
swanstep — 9 years ago(January 21, 2017 02:45 PM)
I dunno, I can wait a bit on this one. The "women in a holding cell" genre is wearing out its welcome for me.
The prisoner-taker plot is overdone at this point, so that's a big negative you're right.
I got around to watching Don't Breathe (2016) recently, and well, just shoot me,
it turns into a prisoner-taker-in-a-basement movie
. It's not the main plot but it's a important ingredient. I was sort of enjoying the film up to that point, and then it just became depressing -
you hate everyone in the film after that reveal.
It really is a little disturbing if you think about it: 'is-a-prisoner-taker' is now up there with 'has a large collection of guns' or 'likes taxidermy' as an exotic-but-completely-understandable character trait. -
ecarle — 9 years ago(January 28, 2017 11:57 AM)
I haven't seen "Split" yet, but in its honor, a fair number of M. Night movies are making the cable rounds.
And I watched one he put out last year(unbeknownst to me) called "The Visit" and it was pretty good. Not great, but good, and certainly scary enough.
It has a pretty damn good twist that shows up with about 15 minutes of movie to goa twist which turns those final 15 minutes into a pretty terrifying ordeal.
What's interesting to me about "The Visit" is how M. Night who once created his own very interesting "terror movie style"(very slow, very stately, very quiet, very depressive) in The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, here elects to "join the crowd" and give us a pretty typical genre: the "found footage movie" in which much of the story is seen through the video camera of a teenage girl. The gimmick: she's a budding filmmaker of great sophistication and trying to make a documentary of grim family secrets under the disguise of simply filming "grandma and grandpa".
TWO "found footage" classics are referenced in "The Visit." One is perhaps the start of it all: "Blair Witch Project"(which came out in the same 1999 summer as The Sixth Sense; they OWNED that summer), and the other is the more recent vintage "Paranormal Activity" series where a camera planted all night while people sleep sees the demons and monsters they can't see AS they sleep.
I suppose M. Night is honoring those two films while spoofing them a bit and they STILL work for scares when night comes and the camera sees horrific things.
On the other hand: marone, what a glut of horror genre mash-ups with have today. I see a new "Ring" movie is coming and I've lost track how many remakes(Japanese to American) sequels and re-boots the damn things have had.
So it is with "The Visit," in which so many OTHER movies are referenced(including Psycho, a bit) that trying to find something original in it istrying.
The premise: pretty simple really. A single mother abandoned by her husband sends her two teenagers the older daugheter and the younger son to go visit their grandparents. Its the first time the kids will ever meet the grandparents, as their daughter (the kids' mother) walked out on the parents at a young age and never spoke to them again. The teenage daughter is out to "interview" the kindly grandparents and to subtly find out why they broke with their daughter all those years ago.
The kids hang with their grandparents in a snowy, isolated farmhouse while trading Skype video talks with their mom, who is with her new boyfriend on a cruise ship while the kids hole up with the boring grandparents in that snowy cabin. M. Night creates a great deal of tension in our knowledge that the kids are snowbound in the middle of nowhere as their mother tries to enjoy herself romantically and sexually on the sunny seas. She's so far AWAY from them
And slowly but surely, the grandparents are revealed as pretty spooky people. The stern, tall, strong grandpa admonishes the kids early on: "We're old people. We go to bed at 9:30 pm. you should never leave your room after 9:30 pm." Uh oh. And soon the camera is planted to see what's going on and hey..what's with GRANDMA clawing the walls in the nude at 2:00 am? Or crawling around like Linda Blair and growling in the dead of night?
In the dead of day, the teenage girl tries to get her grandparents to "open up" for filmed interviews to figure out why they split with their daughter and..the interviews don't go well.
I guess that's all I can say without hitting the twist and the spoilers etc. Suffice it to say that the film captures well the spookiness of being left alone with old people in a very desolate location with no real generational connection to those people. THAT would be unnerving enough as it is. "The Visit" goes a lot farther in terms of those old people and their capacity for evil. Mrs. Bates was old, too.
One more thing: near the very end, homicidal madness is represented by the grandpa doing something uhscatological..to the teenage grandson. Its perhaps the unique "ick" moment in the entire movie; its most memorable moment and yetyecch. Horror movies have come a long way. Down. But I can't say it was "unnecessary." Troubling, though. -
swanstep — 9 years ago(January 28, 2017 03:56 PM)
I haven't seen "Split" yet, but in its honor, a fair number of M. Night movies are making the cable rounds.
And I watched one he put out last year(unbeknownst to me) called "The Visit" and it was pretty good. Not great, but good, and certainly scary enough.
I remember seeing the trailers for this. I didn't realize it was an M. Night movie so they must have decided to not push that angle in marketing for a change, perhaps on the grounds that he'd become a bit toxic.
I believe that The Visit made reasonable money on its quite small budget, and with Split doing quite well indeed (#1 again this weekend by the looks), M. Night's back, name above the title, detoxified. Good for him.
Heh, I just mistyped
Split
, as
Spilt
. I think we can predict the plot of an SNL parody from that: the manic, super-irritating office co-worker with lots of personalities who's always spilling things on his co-workers, turns out he's keeping some of his co-workers prisoner in a basement. -
ecarle — 9 years ago(January 29, 2017 08:25 AM)
I remember seeing the trailers for this. I didn't realize it was an M. Night movie so they must have decided to not push that angle in marketing for a change, perhaps on the grounds that he'd become a bit toxic.
The greatest example of that "toxic" issue that I'm aware of came with the career of John Travolta.
He hit big in the seventies with a TV show(Welcome Back Kotter), a supporting horror role(Carrie) and then two back-to-back blockbusters(Saturday Night Fever/Grease.)
But came the 80's, the hits stopped coming. A "Saturday Night Fever" sequel directed by Sly Stallone was laughed off the screen. An attempt to re-team with Grease co-star Olivia Newton John went nowhere("Two of a Kind.") And soon Travolta was toxic.
Travolta eventually got a lucky comeback break with a movie called "Look Who's Talking," about a talking baby voiced by Bruce Willis. Travolta had top billing buthis photo was not put in the ads. The toxic thing.
Travolta acted in some talking-baby sequels, but it took Pulp Fiction(1994) to reinvent him where his face could go back on the ads.I believe that The Visit made reasonable money on its quite small budget, and with Split doing quite well indeed (#1 again this weekend by the looks), M. Night's back, name above the title, detoxified. Good for him.
Hollywood offers us a "public version" of the rise and fall and rise that all of us out here will have to deal with in our working lives. These people succeed and fail in the public eye.
The disproportionate weight I give to Frenzy in the Hitchcock canon stems from things beyond the movie itself. The SUCCESS of the movie mainly with critics and somewhat with audiences is Hitchcock's comeback story. He'd been written off, pretty much from The Birds through Topaz, as a man in steady decline due to age, health and relevancy issues. Frenzy not only reversed that visionit suddenly made the movies from The Birds through Topaz LOOK BETTER. ("Oh, he wasn't senile, maybe those movies were sub-par for other reasons having to do with Universal?")
Clint Eastwood's another example. Big as he was in the 70's and early 80's, the late 80's and early 90's saw Big Clint in so many flops that Hollywood was starting to think of him as "third or fourth choice casting" (for the 1993 movie "In the Line of Fire," Harrison Ford, Robert Redford and even James Caan were considered before Eastwood.) But in 1992, Eastwood gave us "Unforgiven," which, rather like Frenzy, was hardly a happy affair, but , rather like Frenzy, was just so great in themes and execution that it succeeded in spite of itself. To much bigger effect than Frenzy, too: Best Picture, Best Director(Eastwood.)
What Hitchcock and Eastwood both sensed, I think, is that they were iconic enough to survive IF they picked the right project to come back on and IF they did it well. Hitchcock in particular was not going to let Torn Curtain and Topaz be his last films. He put himself through a health regimen physically and refused all compromise in making Frenzy back on his home turf of London - -and he won.
Inspiration for us all.
As for M. Night, I think his issue was that he allowed himself to be put on projects that had little personal connection to him a Will Smith SciFi vanity project; The Last Airbender(?)
The Visit and now Split are back in M. Night's wheelhouse. I can attest to good thrills in The Visit and a real spine tingle when the twist is revealed (and HOW it is revealed is great cinema up to date to 2015.)
Heh, I just mistyped Split, as Spilt. I think we can predict the plot of an SNL parody from that: the manic, super-irritating office co-worker with lots of personalities who's always spilling things on his co-workers, turns out he's keeping some of his co-workers prisoner in a basement.
Hah! I can see it now.
What a difference a letter reversal makes.
And I'm reminded: in Robert Bloch's novel of Psycho, Norman Bates is thinking about things what with Marion(Mary in the book) dead in the shower. Norman thinks to himself:
"Well, no use crying over spilt milkbut then, it wasn't milk, was it?"
Oooooh. -
swanstep — 9 years ago(February 04, 2017 07:29 AM)
I have seen Split (2017) now and can report that, unlike the majority of prisoner-taker films, Spilt is not grueling or gory, nor does it use the tiresome 'shock edit with loud noise'/jump-scare formula that modern horror films are so scarred by. Split is comparable in many ways to 10 Cloverfield Lane from early last year or maybe to Silence of The Lambs: that is, it's the sort of tense, nominallygrim thriller that a general audience can appreciate and enjoy, and hence that can make some serious dough.
In effect Split becomes as much a character piece as a horror, with McAvoy as the titular split character whom we end up pretty fascinated by, and Anja Taylor-Joy (so impressive in The Witch last year) as Casey the victim with her own intricate back-story (Taylor-Joy has amazing black eyes, so that her irises blend into her pupils - the camera loves her.)
Shyamalan doesn't go for a big twist this time and is better for it. There is a groanworthy reveal at the end that I won't spoil. Shy. should have left that on the cutting room floor too in my view.
Anyhow, Split (2017) is definitely worth a look. We'll clearly be seeing more of these two main characters in future. Split and Casey are not as fascinating as Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling but they're definitely heading in that general direction. -
ecarle — 9 years ago(February 04, 2017 10:18 AM)
I have seen Split (2017) now and can report that, unlike the majority of prisoner-taker films, Spilt is not grueling or gory, nor does it use the tiresome 'shock edit with loud noise'/jump-scare formula that modern horror films are so scarred by.
All good to know. I am perhaps most put off by the prisoner-taker aspect. I can still enjoy a good burst of gore if it plays well and without lingering sadism. As for the shock edit/loud noise tropeits better left alone after all these years. Arbogast on the stairs, Alan Arkin's back-from-the-dead leap in Wait Until Dark, and the ending of Carrie are perhaps the best remembered such jump-shocks, but they were unique in their time and its all been done to death now.
Split is comparable in many ways to 10 Cloverfield Lane from early last year
I thought that from the trailers. Not good for me.
or maybe to Silence of The Lambs:
Better.
that is, it's the sort of tense, nominallygrim thriller that a general audience can appreciate and enjoy, and hence that can make some serious dough.
Anthony Perkins at the AFI Tribute to Hitchocck in 1979 said that the key to the success of Psycho was that it was a gory shocker that people could ENJOY. He repeated the word "enjoy." And that's key, isn't it? Psycho is fun, the gore isn't all that gory, and the sadism isn't lingering(as it sometimes is in Frenzy.)
If Split has the quality of "enjoyment" for audience, it CAN make serious dough.
Speaking of "unenjoyable," I the other night watched about 10 minutes of the remake of "Funny Games"(by a director you like) and found itunwatchable any longer than ten minutes. Its a home invasion movie about two young creeps taunting, tormenting, torturing and killing a family. And whatever thematic analysis the film put forth on "violence in film" is negated by its utterly downbeat sadism and nihilism. Its like a two-hour long version of the Brenda Blaney killing in Frenzy(which was at least surrounded by scenes of traditional suspense and contrasting comedy.) Worse, the scene I mainly saw involved one character(Naomi Watts) needing about five minutes of endless real-time screen time to stagger across a room while tied and bound. In her underwear. Boredom on top of sadism.
Hitchcock never would have made Funny Games.
In effect Split becomes as much a character piece as a horror, with McAvoy as the titular split character whom we end up pretty fascinated by, and Anja Taylor-Joy (so impressive in The Witch last year) as Casey the victim with her own intricate back-story (Taylor-Joy has amazing black eyes, so that her irises blend into her pupils - the camera loves her.)
Nice write-up on Taylor-Joy. McAvoy bugs me in the trailers, but perhaps he's more dazzling at "full length."
Shyamalan doesn't go for a big twist this time and is better for it. There is a groanworthy reveal at the end that I won't spoil. Shy. should have left that on the cutting room floor too in my view.
Hmm. I'm intrigued. As much intrigued to see a bad reveal as I would be by a good one, I guess.
Anyhow, Split (2017) is definitely worth a look. We'll clearly be seeing more of these two main characters in future. Split and Casey are not as fascinating as Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling but they're definitely heading in that general direction.
SoSplit II? -
swanstep — 9 years ago(February 04, 2017 08:52 PM)
Split is comparable in many ways to 10 Cloverfield Lane from early last year
I thought that from the trailers. Not good for me.
I ended up liking 10 Cloverfield Lane quite a lot once I got over the stoopid idea that somehow we (and the lead gal) are supposed to be in doubt as to whether John Goodman's character is a good guy (which required us all to have amnesia about the whole chained to the wall thing at the beginning!).
Speaking of "unenjoyable," I the other night watched about 10 minutes of the remake of "Funny Games"(by a director you like) and found itunwatchable any longer than ten minutes. Its a home invasion movie about two young creeps taunting, tormenting, torturing and killing a family. And whatever thematic analysis the film put forth on "violence in film" is negated by its utterly downbeat sadism and nihilism. Its like a two-hour long version of the Brenda Blaney killing in Frenzy(which was at least surrounded by scenes of traditional suspense and contrasting comedy.) Worse, the scene I mainly saw involved one character(Naomi Watts) needing about five minutes of endless real-time screen time to stagger across a room while tied and bound. In her underwear. Boredom on top of sadism.
Funny Games in either version is a tough watch no doubt about itif you stick with it writer/director Haneke kind of harangues you for doing that so you can't win as a viewer. which is what Haneke wanted. Anyhow, very polarizing film, best seen the 1997 German version I think, and you do have to watch from the beginning and then stick with it (to know what the game is you have to know how it ends) to have a hope of understanding what the director's trying to do. There's a lot of Hitchcock in the mix notwithstanding that, as you say, there's no way Hitch would ever have made such a deliberately aggravating, occasionally aggressively boring film as Funny Games (without giving too much away, Haneke never shows you the key deaths rather he makes you wait and wait for them then turns the camera away a few seconds ahead of time so you don't get 'the payoff' and then have to think about what it is you wanted to see). Put another way there's as much late Kubrick as there is Hitchcock (and also people like Tarkovsky and Bresson and Pasolini) in Haneke's style. Haneke's not for everyone to say the least but he's absolutely one of the smartest people to ever get behind a camera and even when I don't exactly enjoy his films I feel like here's someone who's got original ideas about cinema language and who really thinks about how to put each new project together cinematically so that it can told using some cinematic ideas that no one else has ever had.
Nice write-up on Taylor-Joy. McAvoy bugs me in the trailers, but perhaps he's more dazzling at "full length."
I wouldn't describe McAvoy as 'dazzling' myself (he doesn't 'pop' as much I'd say as Edward Norton did all those years ago in Primal Fear for example, let alone Perkins in Psycho) but he's fun and the split/horde-of-identities character he plays does end up being a compelling, novel villain/victim that we'd like to see more of.
SoSplit II?
I don't know anything about Shyamalan's plans but the film's crying out for several sorts of continuation really. What's amazing about Split is that the film was evidently made very cheaply and it constantly shows less of everything than you think it's going to show. and it really only has a couple of locations/sets. Thus there are really indefinitely many ways to expand the palette from here: sequels could go gorier or become more transformation-sfx-heavy or science-fiction-y or
I'd guess that Shy., McAvoy, and Taylor-Joy are going to e making bank off this for many years to come.