Editorials
Shyamalan’s ‘Split’ Has a Bit of a Twist Problem
*THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS. AVOID READING UNTIL YOU’VE SEEN SPLIT*
It should come as no surprise that Split has a twist. A really cool one.
M. Night Shyamalan’s Split is an immediately compelling film. Three young women are kidnapped from a parking lot by a mysterious man who clearly isn’t playing with a full deck, and they’re taken to some sort of underground bunker that’s strangely well-furnished. We quickly learn that the man has multiple (well over 20 of them) personalities within himself, but like the characters themselves, we have no idea why these women have been kidnapped. We have no idea what the man’s plan is. And we really have no idea what’s even going on. We just know that the many personalities seem dead set on the idea that a so-called “Beast” will soon be making an appearance. And goddamn is it tense while we wait for his arrival.
It’s no secret by now that Shyamalan is a filmmaker who builds most of his movies around a final act twist, and Split is certainly no different. We’re promised answers to all the questions we (and the characters) have been pondering throughout, and we can be pretty sure that things won’t turn out how we’re expecting them to. But the strange thing about Split is that they do. For the most part, everything about the core story ends up in the exact place we’d most expect it to. Everything the multiple characters residing within the villain (including a man, a woman, and a child) have been telling the women turns out to be true: one of those personalities is a “Beast” of sorts, and he ends up killing and consuming two of the women.
The other one, the clear survivor from the outset… she survives. Go figure.
So what’s the big twist? After the movie’s title comes up on screen and it seems to be over, we’re treated to a post-credits stinger of sorts. The occupants of a diner are watching a news story about the events we just witnessed. One of them remarks that the story seems similar to something that happened years prior: a train was blown up by a man given a villainous moniker by the media. The man sitting next to the woman who makes the comment turns out to be Bruce Willis’ heroic character from Unbreakable (and yes, he’s played by Willis). “Mr. Glass,” he tells the woman, when she inquires about the train attacker’s name. Yes, Split is revealed to be, in the literal final moment, freakin’ Unbreakable 2.
Okay so that’s super cool. My jaw honestly dropped nearly to the floor, and though I’m pretty sure most everyone else in the theater with me had no idea why such a big star like Bruce Willis was popping up for a cameo appearance at the tail end of a horror film (‘wait, is this a Die Hard movie?!‘), I can confirm that I was genuinely shocked and totally surprised. Like Shyamalan’s best twists, I damn sure didn’t see this one coming, and as I left the theater and walked to my car, I had a huge smile on my face. I was thrilled. And totally won over.
There’s simply no denying that Split‘s twist is a treat for longtime Shyamalan fans, ending the film on the highest of notes; but as I made the drive home and the thrill of that shocker wore off a bit, I began to remember that just prior to that post-credits stinger, I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the film. In fact, I was downright disappointed by the way the initially riveting events played out. The twist, though it distracted from the movie’s flaws, only distracted me for so long.
Highlighted by an incredible performance (or series of performances, really) from James McAvoy that would probably earn him an Oscar nomination had this not been a horror film, as well as yet another one from Anya Taylor-Joy that suggests she’s quickly on her way to becoming genre royalty, Split is a fine film, but it’s also one that just doesn’t really go anywhere. As compelling as it is in the early going, it eventually starts to drag and, worst of all, feel longer than it actually is. It feels as if Shyamalan didn’t quite know where to go with the clever concept (using multiple personality disorder as the basis for, essentially, a body-horror film, is pretty damn clever), and by the time the end title popped up on the screen, I had almost completely lost interest in the whole thing. The story doesn’t really even end, at least not in satisfying fashion, and in many ways it feels like a film that’s missing a few final scenes that it really needed to feel like a complete whole that said something and was worth sitting through. It could’ve also used a trim in the editing room, but that’s not what we’re here to talk about.
Let’s get back to that totally awesome twist, which provides the illusion of making the film feel complete and satisfying. It makes you forget that the actual story wasn’t very good, because holy shit, that’s Bruce Willis and this was a sequel to Unbreakable. But when you take that away, and look at the story that was actually being told in Split, you’re left with an incomplete movie that, let’s be honest, kind of shits the bed in the final act. Sure, the twist is the coolest we’ve seen in a handful of years, but it’s also one of the cheapest we’ve ever seen. Shyamalan pulls that card out way too late in the game, and he damn near pulls it from the bottom of the deck. Rather than focusing on telling us a new story, he instead chooses to remind us of an old one, hoping that we’ll be too awestruck to care that he didn’t really bother to finish that new story or create something on the level of the old one.
And it works… if only for a few minutes.
Ultimately though, Split‘s twist makes the film feel like a prequel to the nonexistent movie you’d rather watch instead: Unbreakable 2. It reminds, and not in a good way, of those superhero movies that build up excitement for the future while not actually delivering anything worthwhile in the present. I admire Shyamalan for creating his own super-villain universe of sorts (the brilliant Unbreakable, my personal favorite of his films, remains the best grounded-in-reality superhero movie ever made), and I’m hoping he does build upon it in the future, but I can’t help but be baffled by the choice to make Split a half-ass sequel to Unbreakable rather than a full-on one or, well, its own thing entirely. Had David Dunn (Bruce Willis) showed up earlier in the film, I’d probably have a new favorite movie in Split, but connecting the two in literally the final moment had a cheapness to it that rubbed me the wrong way. It was fan service, to be sure, but it was fan service that seemed specifically designed to distract us from the fact that Split was a half-cocked movie that couldn’t stand on its own two feet.
Split deserved better than its cop-out ending, cool as it may have been.
In this day and age, the word “troll” is often used to describe various online nuisances. Yet as abundant and irksome as the modern troll can be, they aren’t usually as fearsome as their mythological counterparts. I’m not talking about the small and gentler versions that have become more common to see in media. No, there are much bigger and scarier trolls out there—and André Øvredal’s movie Troll Hunter is one of the best places to find them.
It doesn’t take long for Troll Hunter (or Trolljegeren) to dump the Blair Witch Project-esque setup and aim for something a lot fresher. The trajectory of the story is augmented by Otto Jespersen’s character Hans, the titular Troll Hunter. The second he comes barreling out of the deep, dark woods and shouts “troll” at the camera, this movie takes a turn into what feels like uncharted territory. Not only subject-wise, but also conceptually.
For fantastical and made-up subject matter in cinema, found footage is a fast way to add a guise of believability. After all, what we accept to be the most crucial aspect of documentaries—the truth—rubs off on pseudo-documentaries, despite our understanding of the pretense involved. That is what Øvredal delivered with Troll Hunter: a movie so convincing that some viewers wondered if trolls really do exist. So, had this been straightforwardly made, it likely wouldn’t have been as effective. Conventional narratives would be more inclined to treat something like trolls as flat out unreal, and never try to convince the audience to think otherwise.
Hans petrifies the three-headed Tusseladd troll.
The viewers, like the characters trailing Hans, are quickly thrown into the deeper end of that extraordinary story. They have to process all this new information while staying on the go. So, although there is no significant amount of meandering, narratively or physically, there is still a good amount of atmosphere, not to mention tension building. It’s never anything frightful, but then again, Troll Hunter isn’t your standard offering of horror; it’s more on the low end of the dark fantasy spectrum. We aren’t ever spirited away to a faraway world—we stay in rather familiar surroundings, as well as dip into those less so. The outcome is a movie where you’re constantly more in awe than in terror.
As fantasy fiction might do, Troll Hunter prefers not to deal with incredulity. There is no time to waste on doubt, as interviewer Thomas (Glenn Erland Tosterud), soundperson Johanna (Johanna Mørck), and cameraman Kalle (Tomas Alf Larsen) all follow Hans around, recording whatever this character is willing to reveal about his bizarre job. Of course, the Troll Hunter himself is not an open book; in that respect, the diegetic documentary fails to fully capture and unpack the more interesting of its two subjects. Yes, all those giant, monstrous trolls are indeed incredible, but understandably, your mind wanders to their pursuer. What kind of person signs up for this gig and then chooses to stick with it for so long?
Reviews have called out Troll Hunter for its lack of character development. In regard to Thomas and his fellow documentarians, that criticism is valid, but bear in mind, they aren’t the focus of the story, either. Meanwhile, Hans is a well-crafted character. At least better than first realized. Before he was introduced, Hans had already grown tired of the troll grind. Fed up with that low compensation for his services, resentful of the bureaucracy, and wanting to expose his employer on a large scale, Hans’ discontent is glaring.
Then there are those finer details about the Troll Hunter, such as that indifference to both the natural splendor of his everyday surroundings and the affections of an obviously smitten colleague, that also suggest some level of despondency. So it is fair to say this movie doesn’t feature any sizable growth for its characters; however, the namesake isn’t underwritten. No doubt, putting a real-life character like Otto Jespersen in that role is partly why Hans is so fascinating—maybe even relatable.
Otto Jespersen as Hans the Troll Hunter.
There is always a small risk whenever using the term “mockumentary” to describe a found-footage movie, as the word could imply humor where there is none. In the case of Troll Hunter, the term’s usage is appropriate. Some folks have claimed the English-dubbed version has the more comedic tone, however, the Norwegian cut isn’t exactly humorless. Apart from the trolls’ absurd appearances, this is a movie where the characters nearly choke on the monsters’ farts, and Christians are like walking targets. Hans’ complete apathy towards everything is another cause of laughter. Overall, the comedy is intentionally dry and inconsistent. Unfunny, though? Absolutely not.
In a movie where endemic creatures are maltreated, as well as disavowed from living freely and peacefully, it’s hard not to notice the ecological message buried beneath the story. In addition to that is the unmistakable political satire. There is this whole business about intrusive and unsightly power lines—like trolls, they’re big blemishes on the land—that leads to what is perhaps the movie’s funniest moment. The scene in question is that one where certain electric lines, the ones secretly being used to keep the trolls at bay, go in a loop and don’t actually send power to any residents. Yet the monitors of said lines don’t find this at all weird. So it stands to reason that Øvredal was having a go at those who accept the government’s doings without question.
Looking past the fact that trolls aren’t actually real, this movie is an enlightening source of information. And not just for international audiences; Norwegians, too, get schooled about their homeland’s own mythology. It’s also evident from everything on screen that Øvredal and his crew were enthusiastic about the topic. The creature designs are the most indicative of that zeal; those imaginative yet myth-accurate manifestations are equally amusing and grotesque. One second you’re laughing at their phallic noses, the next you’re white-knuckling during a hairy sequence. Most surprisingly is how well the trolls’ visual effects hold up after fifteen years. It’s not all spotless, but on the whole, they remain impressive.
Vouching for a mockumentary about trolls isn’t easy, but those who do come around and give it a shot will more than likely be grateful for the recommendation. For Troll Hunter is a real find in that vast and varied genre we call “found footage“.
A bridge troll reaches up for food and finds Hans decked out in armor.
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