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Yet just when you expected that nasty streak to continue with Knock at the Cabin, released into theaters this weekend, something else happened. In the most unexpected Shyamalan twist, the camera follows a horrible-looking instrument of death as it hovers above the soon-to-be-sacrificed man. But as soon as the weapon slams into the man’s head, the camera disobeys his last request. It looks away. Instead of indulging in the gore and shock of the moment, Shyamalan trains his camera on the faces of people, focusing instead on their feelings. Is M. Night Shyamalan finished with the trash phase of his career, and is he ready to return to the heights of his most prestigious days?
A Split From Good Taste
To be sure, the director has always had a nasty streak. The Sixth Sense features a girl killed by a mother with Munchausen syndrome while Signs revealed that a loving God orchestrated the brutal death of a minister’s wife in preparation for an alien invasion. And Shyamalan has always chosen shock over good taste, particularly when dealing with mental illnesses and disabilities. Just look at the Noah Percy character from The Village, who not only presents the greatest danger to the other characters in the movie but is also portrayed by the wholly incurious Adam Brody.
As the director’s star began to fade after audiences (unfairly) rejected The Village as a ludicrous story built around an uninteresting twist, we saw more of that nasty side at work. The Happening, the first R-rated film in Shyamalan’s oeuvre, had outrageous scenes of a man laying down in front of a running lawn mower, and another allowing himself to be mauled by lions. However, these were just glimpses of what was to come after the unconvincing character drama of the disastrous The Last Airbender and the Will Smith nepotism vehicle, After Earth.
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After those critical and commercial failures, the post-Sixth Sense sheen where the filmmaker was hailed as the next Spielberg or Hitchcock was well and truly gone. So what did Shyamalan do? He teamed up with Blumhouse and made a movie in which an elderly man sticks a soiled adult diaper on the head of a young germaphobic boy. Not only did 2015’s The Visit embrace its low-budget aesthetic, following the found footage trend of the last decade, but it used the lower stakes to wallow in the director’s basest impulses. Over a trim 94 minutes, The Visit gives viewers a scary naked granny, a whole shed full of poopy diapers, and an incredibly embarrassing rap song. It’s all shocking and tasteless, and a whole lot of fun.
The same could be said of his follow-up Split. Yes, it features a great cast, including Anya Taylor-Joy, Betty Buckley, and James McAvoy, and yes it has some exciting visuals. But really, you’re coming for a bonkers story about a guy with dissociative identity disorder who kidnaps young girls and eats them in preparation for “the Beast.”
Between McAvoy’s wonderfully committed performance and some genuinely gnarly moments, most people didn’t even worry too much about the movie’s scare-mongering about mental illness and truly outrageous sexual abuse subplot. And with Split, Shyamalan rocketed right past good sense and good taste, delivering an audaciously weird bit of blockbuster cinema that made him a household name again.
