This post contains spoilers. Flashbacks in a movie typically reference what’s going on in the present, and the ones in M. Night Shyamalan’s Split are no different. Kevin (James McAvoy), a man with multiple-personality disorder – with a yet-to-emerge master persona, The Beast – has kidnapped three female teens, one of whom is Casey (Anna […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Split’ (2017)
Bickering families are ugly, whether they’re blood kin, feuding gods and goddesses, or archetypes all scrambling for a place in the sun. In Split, written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, a man named Kevin (James McAvoy), who has dissociative identity disorder, is the vessel containing 23 personalities, a bit like someone wielding a multiple […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘The Visit’ (2015)
No wonder grandparents are so culturally revered. Their nurturing and protective genes still glow, they can usually set down a good plate of food and ignore curfews from the parental unit and, if track records are good, even shine as confidantes. The ones in The Visit are not those sort of elders. They’re different, and […]
Astrology: Film: ‘After Earth’ (2013)
Director M. Night Shyamalan’s After Earth is less the sci-fi action story it purports to be, and more a meditation on the prickly nature of the father-son relationship. After Earth is set far into the future, a thousand years after earth has become uninhabitable. The planet to which humans had been evacuated relies on the […]