Double Feature: Unbreakable / Split

M. Night Shyamalan’s newest film, Glass, is being released next week, and it’s the unprecedented end of a trilogy nobody even knew was happening until the release of Split back in 2016. A Bruce Willis cameo at the end of that film reveals that it and 2000’s Unbreakable take place in the same universe, and this year’s Glass will be the sequel to both. It’s the best twist Shyamalan has ever pulled (and he’s pulled a lot), especially considering that Unbreakable and Split are from entirely different film studios, and the combining of the two seemingly unrelated movies into its own trilogy is a bit of a groundbreaking thing. Like everyone else on this planet, I’m a fan of Shyamalan’s early work, but I admittedly had never seen Unbreakable, nor had I gone to see Split when it came out. So, in preparation for the release of Glass, I finally watched both, and I’m very glad that I did.

Unbreakable

Out of the two, I think I like Unbreakable a little more, if only for the fact that it doesn’t come with the baggage of the questionable depiction of mental illness that Split has (more on that later). The best thing about Unbreakable is that it falls under the umbrella of Shyamalan’s other early films: It’s about _, but really about _. Signs is about an alien invasion, but it’s really about a man struggling to keep his faith. Unbreakable is about a man with superpowers, but it’s really about that man trying to keep his family together and find the missing piece of himself that he needs to feel fulfilled. It was a superhero movie before superhero movies blew up and became their own genre, and it’s easily the most grounded and subtle of them all.

Willis’ David Dunn is a classic reluctant hero, unwilling to use his powers or even accept the fact that he has them, and only finally takes action thanks to the push of his son, Joseph (Spencer Treat Clark), and his mentor (of sorts), Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson). The film is a hell of a slow burn - almost every scene until the end is conversation. It’s all quiet moments between Dunn and his son, his wife (Robin Wright), and Elijah. It remains as reserved as it can possibly be, even in its climax, which is Dunn simply choking a guy out (no wild fist fight or anything like that) to save a couple of kids. It’s kind of remarkable to see a movie with this premise done so simply and without any bombastic flair. The craziest it gets is a scene where Dunn’s son threatens to shoot him in order to prove that his powers are real (it’s also probably its best scene).

Unbreakable is an incredibly grounded superhero film who’s focus remains entirely on the inner family drama rather than the crime-fighting action, and it’s all the better for it. It’s wonderful to see Sam Jackson in such a different kind of role (Elijah is a brilliant, eccentric, wheelchair-bound comic book enthusiast), and it’s also some of Willis’ best work even almost two decades later. The James Newton Howard score is remarkable and very much responsible for the triumphant feeling of the end of the movie, and Shyamalan’s signature twist ending is one that made me actually gasp out loud. It’s classic early Shyamalan, one of the better and more unique films of the superhero genre, and a very emotionally satisfying standalone story.

Split

It’d be a bit irresponsible to talk about Split without addressing the problematic nature surrounding it. The premise, a man with multiple personalities kidnaps three young girls and imprisons them in a underground facility, seems like a poor and stigmatized depiction of actual mental illness (horror movies have gleefully run amok with villains suffering from mental afflictions), and it doesn’t exactly help matters when that man turns out to be a literal demon monster. The film does go out of its way to properly label the disorder as dissociative identity disorder rather than the more common multiple personality disorder, and the film also seems to try and paint these mental conditions in a positive light by referring to those afflicted as special and capable of more than ordinary people, but the politics of it all remain a bit hazy. I’m not the authority on this kind of subject and whether or not Split’s depiction of these things is good or bad, so I’m forced to leave that to better informed people and judge the movie based on what it is and what it’s trying to do.

Split is one of Shyamalan’s best films. It’s easily his scariest and most tense - the vast majority of it takes place in a small, contained space, Mike Gioulakis’ (It Follows) cinematography really works in selling the claustrophobia of it, and Kevin’s (James McAvoy) transformation into “The Beast” is utterly horrifying. Once again, the film at a surface level is just about a guy kidnapping and terrorizing three teenagers, but it’s truly about trauma and how it affects and molds us as people. Kevin’s disorder was born from his constant abuse at the hands of his mother, and Casey’s (Anya Taylor-Joy) abuse from her uncle manifests itself in her self-harm scars. Two separate people morphed by extreme and continuous trauma, who seem to discover an understanding of one another by the movie’s end. It’s the writer / director’s darkest story he’s told yet, and it’s done so exceptionally well that the final twenty minutes are probably his most insane and powerful he’s ever done.

The performances from its three leads, McAvoy, Taylor-Joy, and Betty Buckley, respectively, are exceptional, particularly McAvoy who just simply goes for it. A character like Kevin and his 23 different personalities might come across as hammy or hokey, but McAvoy hits all the right beats of terrifying, sympathetic, and unpredictable. It’s a film that I feel I might enjoy even more a second time thanks to its many layers and character studies, and that final confrontation between “The Beast” and Casey is a scene that has refused to leave my brain. It’s kind of a polar opposite of Unbreakable, but that’s what makes the upcoming mashing together of the two so interesting.

Unbreakable and Split serve as two extreme outliers of the cinematic world of superheroes. Both are grounded as much as possible in reality, both are unique origin stories for two opposing sides (is Split the world’s first true supervillain origin story movie?), and both are about real human conditions and struggles rather than good vs. evil, superpowered action. The most David Dunn does is lift some weights and choke-hold a man until he’s unconscious, and the most Kevin Crumb does is crawl on a ceiling and bend some bars apart. It will be incredibly fascinating to see how these two films and characters collide and interact with one another, and what kind of movie Glass will actually be.