From 'The Sixth Sense' to 'Trap' : Exploring the Highs and Lows of M. Night Shyamalan's Career

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome everybody to anotherepisode of need some introduction.
In today's episode, I will be reviewingthe new M night Shyamalan film
trap just coming to theaters today.
It'll be a spoiler free, veryshort spoiler free review.
Then I'll have a conversation withmy sister, which I've pre recorded
walking through his entire filmography,almost his entire filmography.

(00:24):
important films after The SixthSense, Sixth Sense and Beyond, minus
his first two early attempts, andthen wrapping up the episode with
a spoiler filled walkthrough of theplot with my thoughts about this
interesting, very interesting film.
Like it or not.
It's definitely something worth discussingbefore then a few calls to action Haven't

(00:46):
mentioned this on the podcast in some timeif you'd like to support the show Please
do recommend this to your friends andfamily if they're seeing these films or
watching these shows Or you're watching itwith them and you think they might enjoy
the conversation follow me on letterboxd Iwill have mini reviews and a full ranking
of the M night Shyamalan films check theshow note for my letterboxd Profile link.

(01:11):
And next week I will be on vacation, butSunday is the finale of Game of Thrones.
And I will be giving you my review ofthis season once we've seen the ending.
I think this season, the qualityof this season really depends on
how well they nail the landing,but I will be on vacation.
So will it be a short episode?
Maybe I'll have a few short episodesrecording from the car once again, like

(01:33):
I did earlier during my last vacation.
I have yet to figure that out.
I'll probably also throw in an episodethere where I have things you may
want to watch in the next week or two.
Some reviews of series that Istarted watching that I gave up on
for multiple different reasons, butthat you may appreciate more than me.
So I'll make those recommendationsin a separate episode.

(01:55):
As well as some movies thatare coming to streaming that
you may want to catch up on.
And once I returned from vacationand House of the Dragon has wrapped
up, HBO's coming back with Industry,a third season of Industry.
That's definitely something everybodycan catch up on now, if you have
Macs and something I'll definitelybe covering here in the show.
Okay.
So Trap.

(02:16):
M.
Night Shyamalan has had a resurgence.
In the past few years, his careerhit a real tough spot working within
studio systems, making very expensivefilms that weren't very financially
successful, and then made a huge pivot.
And I'm going to cover all of thisin much more detail when we get
to my conversation with my sister.
And to a large extent, it gives him alot of freedom to make the kind of film

(02:40):
that he maybe would hesitate to make.
There's pluses andminuses here, basically.
He can take more risks, but maybethere's less scrutiny in what he's
trying to create, which then makesme curious about him as a filmmaker.
He's one of the more interestingfilmmakers working now in that he Not
only writes and directs these films, butunlike a Tarantino that needs hundreds of

(03:02):
millions of dollars to make and promotehis films He works on much tighter
budgets, which gives him a huge amountof control to be the producer He really
just makes the films he wants to makeand sometimes he makes them because he
thinks he's gonna make some cash Andsometimes he makes them because it's
something very personal to him So allof this is to say he is good and bad
and most of his films in my opinion notsuccessful but always interesting and You

(03:26):
You really are seeing somebody who hasfull control of their career, such a rare
thing, and what he chooses to do with it.
What he's chosen to do with themovie Trap is to put his daughter
front and center as a Taylor Swiftlike, well, not musical style wise,
but theoretically a huge pop star.
She is actually a singer.
She's trying to get hersinging career off the ground.

(03:48):
And in so many ways, thisfilm is almost like a movie.
unreviewable.
Or I should say that it's which versionof this movie you choose to review.
Because this film is multiple filmsat the same time, and some of them
are far more successful than others.
And the one most negative thing that ittruly is, is an incredible vanity project.

(04:10):
There's been so much talkabout nepo babies in the
culture in the past few years.
And M.
Night is one of those filmmakers,like Tarantino and some others, where
you have to talk about them in thecontext of talking about their movies.
It's inescapable.
And in this particular year, he hasnow had a film he's produced, directed

(04:30):
by one of his daughters, and thenhis own directorial effort this year.
starring his daughter,and I really do mean that.
She is playing this character, LadyRaven, who's performing on stage
throughout a large portion of this film.
We hear at least 10 different songs,and almost the totality of those songs

(04:51):
We see her dancing and then amazinglyshe becomes part of the story of the
minor spoiler there, but it is prettyincredible when that turn comes in
the, in the plot as that plot itself.
Let me just tell you the experienceof, I tried to avoid watching trailers.
And then I saw the teaser for trap.
I tried to avoid trailersin the movie theater.

(05:13):
First of all, try to getthere late enough to avoid it.
When I saw long legs, I saw somany trailers for horror movies.
I decided to do an episodeabout it because, uh, about
these upcoming horror films.
It's included in the Long Legsreview, if you haven't heard
that already, in our catalog.
Because in general, Itry to avoid trailers.
I don't want to be spoiled.
So when I saw the teaser for the filminitially, I felt like they shouldn't

(05:37):
have given away the setup for the film.
And I'm going to do that here, even thoughI disagree with it, because it's such a
minor spoiler in the context of the film.
In that initial trailer, we see.
Josh Hartnett is speaking to one of theworkers at this concert and says, Hey,
why is there so much security here today?
To which he discovers thatthis is actually a trap.

(05:59):
This is a trap to capture theserial killer called the Butcher,
who has killed about a dozenpeople in this Philadelphia area.
Once again, almost all, if notall of Shyamalan's films have
a Philadelphia connection.
And I felt like, are they tellingme too much ? Is this a reveal?
And actually, in watching the film,it actually is a reveal, although

(06:20):
it comes only 15 minutes in.
So I don't really feelbad about spoiling that.
First of all, it's alreadybeen spoiled in the trailer.
Second of all, it'svery early in the going.
What I would say is if you have notseen the most recent full trailer of
this film, absolutely do not watch it.
There are literally scenes in the trailerthat occur In the very, very final

(06:41):
moments of this film, and I anticipatedthroughout watching this film a change
of venue, let's just say because ofthe trailer, and I would not have had
that anticipation if I had not seen it.
So if you haven't seen thetrailer, the full trailer, I've
only seen that that teaser, thenthe teaser spoils very little.

(07:03):
The trailer spoils a lot, sodon't watch the full trailer.
And if you have seen the trailer.
Even the teaser, you get a feel for this.
This is a trap.
He's been trapped inside of this arena.
They knew he was going to be here.
That gets explained later in the film.
So in my conversation with mysister later, you're going to
see us asking that question.
Like, how would theyeven be able to do this?

(07:25):
It is explained.
Literally by the end of thefilm, but that's the setup.
And I can already hear the memesor there probably exists already.
I should track them down, but this ishow all the fathers in America felt
taking their daughters to the era tours.

(07:45):
They felt trapped.
Now, if you do make this read,if you do want to make that
read of this film, you can.
This could be something a littletransgressive or maybe a little
too honest because the performer onstage that theoretically is driving
this father to desperately need toescape at all costs without upsetting
his daughter too much would be M.

(08:08):
Night's daughter
. So this is like M.
Night saying, if I got to listen toher, you guys got to listen to her too.
I'm inflicting this on therest of the population.
I mean, that as a joke, bythe way, because she has a
totally fine and nice voice.
The production here is actually on someof these songs is actually pretty good.
I assume they got famous producersto do some of this productions.

(08:31):
As a matter of fact, Kid Cudi hasa very funny cameo here in the
film as one of her collaborators.
I thought it was funny.
I know people are alreadyreacting negatively to it.
And even as a performer, she needs toactually perform a few scenes with some
of these much more experienced actors.
And she's totally fine.
Uh, would I have centered mydaughter this way in a film?

(08:54):
I mean, maybe she wanted to do this.
I hope so, because it is a strangedynamic to build a whole movie around
your daughter, but she does not humiliateherself and it surprisingly doesn't
distract, or I should say distracts.
Incredibly early on in the film,but somehow by the end, it just all
becomes part of this really convoluted,surprisingly, considering how simple

(09:17):
this premises, how convoluted theplot is, which is kind of why this
film is one that you can't even quite.
Review, because yes, it's a mess.
Yes.
It's a vanity project.
Yes.
It is literally just asking you as you'rewatching it to be like, well, what could
they possibly do with this premise?
And how's he possibly goingto get out of the situation?

(09:39):
And that is part of thegame that is being played.
So in that way, it is as a verytrashy and inconsequential thriller.
It's actually fun.
Is it scary?
Not really.
Is there a mystery thatThat is compelling.
There is maybe thefrustration in all of this.

(10:01):
There are parts of the film thathint at maybe a really good film.
This is my criticism.
Once again, you'll hear it when I'mreviewing old later in this whole
career retrospective section ofthis episode, there is even in a
movie as dumb as old ends up being.
are moments in thatscript that you can see.

(10:25):
A much better film built out of, andthere are moments here where you could
have an actual really earnest and seriousexploration of some of the topics that
are here because this film, like mostof his films have ideas in them, but
then the experience of watching itis just one contrivance after another

(10:45):
that either does pay off or does not.
And sometimes raises more questionsthan it answers and other times.
And for the most part here, I wouldsay for the most part, it plays fair
as silly as some of the things thatplay out here are that even when you
scratch your head about them, theykind of, the script is tight enough
to wrap those things up by the end.
And yeah, if you've seen the trailer, youhave already seen a lot of the structure

(11:09):
of at least the first half of this film.
I won't talk about the second half untilspoilers, but I, once again, will be
critical of the trailer itself in thata lot of the situations he has to try
to get himself out of, and he proveshimself out to be very proficient.
Although these hundreds and hundreds andhundreds of security guards and police

(11:30):
officers have to be absolutely dumb anddoing absolutely the wrong thing for
him to be Or appear as smart as he does,although he is doing clever things.
It's just that no oneever questions anything.
He's no one's ever doing the followup that they need to do to prevent
him from even being able to make itthrough the first half of the film.

(11:50):
And the last thing I'll mentionis the main performances.
Josh Hartnett, who's clearly who's havinga bit of a comeback between his memorable
episode of black mirror last year.
And then of course Oppenheimerand now this, so big comeback
for him and he's good.
There are choices that aren't necessarilyhis, they could be requested of him in

(12:13):
which he has to do this like creepy smile.
You've seen it in the trailer,the like dead eyed smile where
he is freaking out and playingthe doting dad at the same time.
And it's effective.
And yet it is just the same notehit over and over and over again.
But what I'll mention is that lateron, when some of the thematics of the
film, not very well explored, but stillraised, at least he shows a lot more.

(12:36):
And once again, hints at a muchstronger version of this film.
And I was actually going tocompliment another performance,
but I'm going to leave it for.
The spoilers becauseit would be a spoiler.
So I'll just keep it there.
There are other performance here thatdon't really hit until later in the film.
Let's say that you may feel that maybethis role, if it's so slight has been

(13:01):
overcast and then it pays off in the end.
I'm sorry, that's so vague, but It'sspoilers, so I'm going to try to avoid it.
Alright, so my final verdict isthis was fun, this is a dumb movie,
this has terrible things about it.
Primarily, I would have cut a lotof the footage of the performer.

(13:22):
I understand he's trying to showcasehis daughter, but if he had hired
an actual famous singer to be thestar of this film, you would have
judiciously cut around the performance.
You would have cut back in, youwould have dipped out, you would
not have just had a scene in whicha whole entire song or multiple
songs are playing out in totality.
That obviously is this dad, thisdoting dad Shyamalan himself, and

(13:48):
thematics can, will talk about adarker read of this whole thing, a
biographical one, an autobiographicalone when we get into spoilers, in
trying to give his daughter this.
launchpad for her potential career.
But the fact that it is so centralto the beginning of the film
is an obvious, it makes it feellike an obvious vanity project.

(14:12):
So that's weird, and the plot contrivancesrequire a lot of suspension of disbelief
or just accepting the fact that everylaw enforcement member in this entire
film is really bad at their job, butit just makes it fun to watch for me.
I think mileage may vary on this.
If you are not a fan of hissillier films, you may want to

(14:35):
wait until this is available onstreaming, which will probably be
a month from now, or rental anyway.
And if you want to go see this with yourkids, it has this really brutal, central
serial killer character, but yet, andthis is a critique I'd make of the film,
it pulls so many punches in not havinga, an edge of brutality to it, that it

(14:56):
simultaneously lessens the impact ofthe film, but it would make it something
you could see with your teenage kids.
This is very teen horror.
It's a.
avoids horror almost completely.
It is mostly a thrillerand oftentimes very funny.
So it's the type of thing that isjust a fun movie going experience,

(15:17):
but it could have been more.
And, uh, so take that review, a verymiddling review and depending on your
expectations, proceed accordingly.
Okay.
I will have the spoilers jump to the endof the episode if you want to hear those,
but do stick around for my conversationwith my sister, where we break down
his filmography And I'll even have someadditional commentary at the very end,

(15:41):
correlating this film thematically andjust correlating some of the elements of
this film and the experience of watchingit with this review of his career.
All right, Celia.
So to the audience out there, I will bereviewing trap in this episode, but we're
recording this before we've seen trap.

(16:01):
So we don't know if it'sgoing to be good or bad.
My general opinion of M nightsfilmography, we're going to
be walking through all of ithere I've seen all this films.
I've done my homework.
I've caught up on everysingle one of them.
There was two that I was missing.
I've seen both of them and maybewe could just give our general
opinions of each one of these.
Celia has a preface to this.
I'm going to actually have his biographyand some of the behind the scenes behind

(16:24):
some of these films, which maybe I'lltouch on a little bit in our conversation
A lot of these films have veryinteresting backstories, especially
some of the earlier ones, he's hadquite an interesting career and it's
very variable the quality of his films.
So I kind of hope, and I wantto get your opinion on what
you're hoping to get from Trap.

(16:45):
I don't even think he's going to makea classic film anymore, like the Sixth
Sense or something, but something likeSplit where the acting is really good.
Suspense is good.
It's good.
The actors are taking itseriously, but the movie's pretty
goofy and having fun, right?
That's one option.
Or, if it's not that, I don'twant it to be like, okay, I want
it to be an absolute train wreck.

(17:07):
That's one of those two things.
That's what I'm hoping for here.
A trainwreck would be very entertaining,because some of these movies that
he's made, and I've said this beforeabout him, are not very good, but
they are extremely entertaining.
That's the vibe I might be gettingfrom this entire plot that he

(17:28):
has in trap, which I'm going togo see on Saturday with Andrew
.So I'm excited for that.
I don't know.
If I see this being aserious movie so right.
ridiculous on its face, right?
That, I mean, I guess we'll have to see.
We'll have to see what theexplanation for this is.

(17:48):
The idea that we've entrappedsomebody here, we gave away these
free tickets, we've gotten somebodyhere who is the serial killer.
Maybe there's an explanation, butlike how you would know enough to
lure the serial killer, but notknowing who that person is, is pretty
preposterous and weeding them out, right?
Like it is going to be veryfunny, but I guess that's the,

(18:09):
I guess that's the film, right?
That's what the film is going to be.
How is he weeding them out?
I don't know the answers to this stuff.
And the thing is, I didn'teven think that hard about it.
Because He's so whimsical inhis, , ideas that I didn't think
to be very logical about whatwould be happening in this movie.

(18:29):
I just am very interested to seehow he's going to play this out.
To your point, I'm a little skeptical thatthis is going to pay off because when they
interviewed him recently and they said,what was the Genesis point for this film?
his daughter is the pop star who'sperforming and he said it was, I wanted a
movie where she would be singing the wholetime to expose her singing abilities.

(18:51):
And then he does developthe movie around that.
So I'm like, okay, I'm notsure this is really gonna work,
But I'm hoping he
I, yeah, I'm hoping.
make a dark comedy out of
Yes, and by the way, his filmsoftentimes are comedic, and I think
people miss that a little bit.
So, okay.
He makes a movie in 1992,right when he graduated from

(19:13):
NYU called Praying with Anger.
I've never seen this film butit was pretty well respected.
Mostly what people say is that it waswell made and pretty impressive that he
makes a feature length film coming outof NYU as his graduate thesis, basically.
It takes him six years to.
, get a film off the ground.
This one's called wide awake.
I've never seen this film by the way.
This did get a theatrical release.

(19:33):
It stars Rosie O'Donnell and Dana Delaney.
Dennis Leary's in it.
There's Robert Loggia.
It has a Hollywood stars.
It came out through Miramax.
It's about a boy in Catholic school.
By the way, he was born in India, butmoved when he, here, when he was a baby,
he grew up outside of Philadelphia, whichis of course where all his movies are set.

(19:54):
He did go to a Catholic school.
So , these themes of exploring faith,obviously, especially early in his films.
And of course, being an outsideralthough this is about a white
kid in a Catholic school.
So it's really not that close to him.
I don't think, although it wasactually shot in the school he went to.
I've never seen this film andI heard it's not very good.
I think it's earnest, but not great.
Have you ever seen this wide awake

(20:15):
I don't, I, I think I've seensomething else called Wide Awake.
I don't think it was the movie you
not the Rosie O'Donnell nun movie?
No.
No.
This was a flop.
It costs 6 million and made nothing.
But once again, it's like oneof those middling, it wasn't
expected to be a blockbuster.
He's, this is six years for himto get this movie off the ground.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He has made money, by the way, along theway by writing spec scripts, and he was

(20:39):
pretty well known for polishing movies.
His culminating year for him is 1999,where not only does The Sixth Sense
come out, But also, he wrote the scriptfor Stuart Little, the animated movie,
which was a big hit this same year.
And another film that he ghostwrote, hisname's not on the credits, but he's the
one who actually wrote She's All That.

(21:01):
So, 1999 was a big year for M.
Night Shyamalan.
good.
I mean, it's a cult classic at this point.
I never thought it was very good, but itdid make a lot of money, that's for sure.
It was cute though.
Most importantly, of course, isthat he makes the sixth sense.
This movie, by the way, hedesperately wanted to direct again.
He was so frustrated with his career.
He said, I'm going to write a script.

(21:23):
It's like, maybe this is what leads tosome of the mistakes he makes later on
in believing in his skills too much.
He sat down and said, I'mgoing to write a script.
That's undeniable.
Someone's going to have to buy it.
And then I'm going to use that script.
To force them to allow me to directand that's exactly what he did.
He wrote the six cents, which of coursewas a script that was undeniable.

(21:43):
He said, I will sell this script.
It went up for 3 million, was soldto Disney for 3 million, the highest
anyone ever paid for a spec script.
And he said, but only if I get to direct.
So it worked, they bought it.
But.
This was considered such a horribleidea that the head of production
was fired for this very deal.
Of course, he had the last laugh.

(22:04):
And more importantly than that,Disney had such little faith in this
movie, especially with him directing,you know, untested director that
they sold the film off to Spyglass.
Only keeping 12 percent of theprofits, basically got rid of it.
They dumped it a big mistake for them.
Cause the movie made a huge amount ofmoney and even getting Bruce Willis
involved, all of this is to say that allthese films even getting made are one

(22:25):
accident after another, Bruce Willis hadsued Disney for a deal for a movie that.
fell through.
He was having a very rough patchin his career at that moment.
To his credit.
He saw the script and he loved the script.
He did not want M.
Night directing it because this guyhad no, you know, street cred at all.
But after he met with him, hesays, I have faith in this kid.
I'll work with him.

(22:46):
And they had a reallysuccessful relationship.
And of course the movieis a massive success.
Just to put it in context, beforewe give our opinions on the film,
it was produced for 40 million.
It made 673 million.
It was the second highest grossingmovie of the year in today money.
That would be way over a billion dollarswhen you adjust for inflation that this
movie came out of absolutely nowhere,got dumped in August this very weekend,

(23:09):
by the way, back in 1999, 25 years ago,the same weekend that trap is opening.
But movies that open in August arenot expected to be blockbusters.
the end of the summer.
You're going to get the last peoplebefore they go back to school.
And this thing of course was numberone for eight weeks in a row.
It was a massive success.
No one could have expected it.
And it's a really important filmbecause I feel the way people write

(23:31):
scripts, this is extremely rare.
The way people write scriptschanged after this movie came
out and fight club as well.
And the matrix, all 1999 movies, bythe way, matrix and fight club and the
six cents, but six cents is the mostsuccessful of those three probably.
But it was from that point on, peoplecould never just tell a straightforward.

(23:52):
Crime story anymore, orhorror story or whatever.
There always had to be some little twist.
Even if you're making adrama, you couldn't just
make a straightforward drama.
Everybody needed to have a little twist.
And that became a problem, honestly,with screenwriting from this point on.
It was like a lot of gimmickymovies, but it also made, I think
screenplays a lot more interesting.

(24:12):
Like you really needed to havesome kind of reveal in the
third act across the board.
And that all comes from thismovie, because it was so, so huge.
And books also
Oh, everything.
Right.
Exactly.
Storytelling in general.
There was just an expectation now thatif you just say, then this happens
and this happens at the end, peopleare like, the end that there's always
an expectation now from this momenton that there's going to be something

(24:35):
that happens in the third act.
It doesn't have to be a huge reveal.
It could just be a small reveal, butthere's always got to be something
how do they know each other?
Oh, they did know each other before.
There's gotta be something,even in the drama.
So just an expectation now.
And this movie really created that.
That's what I was gonnasay about this movie.
This is before all of this was happeningthat you were just talking about.
So when it turns out at the end,I don't even want to spoil it

(24:59):
for someone who hasn't seen it.
It's 25 years
so
lot of young people whohave not yet seen it.
So I think most people know this,but yeah, we, we don't have to
spoil any of these movies, but
Yeah, I mean, I think if you haven't seenit, you should see it because it wasn't
something that was happening up untilthis point, really, at least not in with
this kind of impact that I was blown away.

(25:20):
And now, because it has becomethe norm or expected, it's almost
like we need this extra adrenalinerush now when we watch our movies.
So if there isn't some kind of aUnknown fact in there, especially
towards the third act or At the veryend, it becomes disappointing because

(25:46):
when I saw this movie and the revealcomes, I was blown away and people
are watching it just to see thislike, Oh, you have to see this movie.
Like it's amazing.
You'll never believe it.
So I really liked it.
, I loved it even.
To this day, I still love it.

(26:06):
And it's the type of movie whereyou're gonna watch it a few times,
especially now that you know.
I saw this in theaters when it came out.
Speaking of 1999, being such aninfluential year, an important year
that changed so many aspects of my life.
Filmmaking, The Matrix, obviously,I just mentioned before, but
1999 is a truly exceptionalyear for filmmaking.

(26:30):
There's so many , The Talented Mr.
Ripley, which we just discusseda few months ago here on the
Ugh, I love that movie.
But, , Fight Club, of course, a perennialclassic which also has a big twist in that
Four times in the movie theater.
Could not stop going.
I could not stop.
But it's just, and of course, TheMatrix, another hugely influential film.
So just really incredibly hugefilms all happening in 1999.

(26:54):
This is maybe one of the absolutemost important I remember
seeing it in the theater.
It was one week after, of course, that'swhat I was going to say, one week after
the Blair Witch Project came out, anotherhugely influential, hugely influential.
, spawned a whole genre of thosefound footage horror movies and
this was the next horror movie.

(27:14):
One week later, another horror movie.
Everybody thought , this isthe horror movie of the year
when they saw Blair Witch.
And then of course, one week later, itgot usurped by the huge popularity of
The Sixth Sense, which was even bigger.
I saw in the theater.
I had been really freaked out by theending of the Blair Witch Project.
Maybe I expected this to be scarierbecause it's really more of a drama.
But I, and I figured out the twist.

(27:35):
But when I say that, I'm notpatting myself on the back like,
Oh, I knew it from two minutes in.
I figured it out maybe 15minutes before the ending.
Like, Oh, I see what's happening here.
And then when they have the littleflashback and you see everything coming
together, I'm like, Oh yeah, yeah.
See, I picked up onall those little clues.
Like I said, with minutes to go.
Like, I'm not saying I, we figuredthis out the, the first half hour,

(27:57):
But that's because you are, you know,it's there, but also because, and I
do the same thing, I'm always looking.
For certain things when I'mwatching a movie, like, who did it?
I automatically, , start lookingfor who did it and usually figure
out, you know, most of the time I'mright, because we're looking for it.

(28:19):
But what if you were to goin just to watch a movie?
It's even more of a blow at
Well, I saw it in opening night, so I,I did not know there was a twist at this
point, but I figured it out once again,because I think the movie plays fair.
What I was gonna say about the Twistfor me and I, because I'm gonna
counterpoint it to his next movie,what I thought about the twist was
that the movie is too reliant on it.

(28:40):
My personal opinion.
I think the movie is good.
I just, I think it's overpraised.
Although undeniably for me, I haveto, all the things I said before,
it changed the way films are made.
So there's very few movies like that, butI thought that it's extremely well made.
The tone management that thecinematography is absolutely beautiful.
The performances are spoton great performances.
Bruce Willis gives a greatperformance in this movie, by the

(29:02):
way, not only Haley Joel Osment.
But of course, tony Colette as the mom,another performance that people don't
really bring up because everyone'stalking about the Hallie Joel Osment
performance, but all the performancesjust fantastic across the board.
And I think it's really wellmade I know people say that
it's so much deeper on rewatch.
For me, it isn't as impactfulon . Once you know the twist,

(29:27):
that's my on this film.
Yeah.
Oh, I know.
I'm in the minority on this.
yeah, I think that the fact that themovie was all about, the twist and
it was completely, I think it wasyour right, completely reliant on it.
, almost completely thatthat's what makes it so good.
It would not be the same case todaybecause you can't do that today.

(29:50):
Everybody's already expecting a twist.
So if your whole movie is hanging on this.
Then, eh, , it just becomes.
not a very good quality movie.
I just can't imagine this being greattoday because of the expectation.
But when you don't see it coming atthat time, then having everything

(30:14):
be reliant upon it would be prettyawesome that he could pull that off.
Like when he was, you were talkingabout how he needs to make a
movie that will not be denied.
And he accomplished that absolutely 100%.
So I'm with the majority because atthe time that was pretty impressive,

(30:37):
extremely impressive, actually.
Yeah.
And for someone so early in theircareer I'm not saying it's a bad movie.
I just think it's a littleoverpraised as just a film.
For me, let's take out the, the context,which is undeniable, undeniable that,
like I said, I will say that thisis one of the most important films
made in the past 25, 40 years, maybeeven for me as a film, it's good.

(31:00):
It's very good.
It's some parts of itare really, really good.
I just think overall the experienceof it is just, it's good.
I like it.
I definitely like it.
It's a solid film, but I justwasn't blown away the way so many
other people are, and I don't thinkit holds up on repeat viewing.
I do want to bring up a couple ofreally clever things he did so early
in his career, and maybe he thoughtthis out because there was more at

(31:20):
stake here so early on that is notas well thought out in so many of
his other films, including one that Ijust saw yesterday that I have to talk
to you about I'll get around to it.
The fact that there is hardly any colors.
Everything's almost black andwhite and gray in the entire film,
but then there are colors of red.
Whenever there's a color of red, there'ssomething supernatural happening.
And this is all planned out fromthe very first scene of the movie.

(31:42):
So it's, that's so smart,so well planned out.
And more importantly, is that, I guesswe're just going to spoil this at this
point, but Bruce Willis is wearingover the course of the entire film,
clothes or articles of clothing thathe touches in that opening scene.
They've thought about his entirewardrobe, even though we're seeing
different variations of it so that he'snot always looking exactly the same,

(32:04):
but they're smart enough to think,well, what was he wearing that day?
And then.
using that as his wardrobe forthe whole rest of the film.
So it's very, very smart
.And, he plays fair.
So many of these twist movies, they get tothe end of the twist is almost arbitrary.
And oftentimes it will be arbitrarywhere they shoot four different
versions so that even the castdoesn't know what the final reveal is.
And you're like, well, thiscould have just been anybody,

(32:24):
you know, because we don't knowthe clues until the last minute.
This thing's playing fair from thebeginning, which is part of the
reason you actually can figure it outif you are really paying attention.
And it is about dealing with loss,dealing with the trauma of being a child
and having these experiences and all thechildren that he interacts with, right?
Oftentimes abused kids.
So he has thoughts on his mind, andthis is probably If not his best

(32:48):
script, absolutely one of his very best.
By the way, I do want to call out thatthis got an a minus cinema score, which
seems a little low considering, butjust to be clear on anything, that's a
horror movie, supernatural, even thisis not really a horror movie, by the
way, but even if you want to put itin that realm, horror movie fans are
so finicky that an a minus is actuallyvery high, very, very few horror movies

(33:10):
even touch anywhere near the a realm.
So this is a very high score, but Ido want to call out the cinema scores.
Because it's this idea thathe had a rough go at it with
audiences later in his career.
So, I want to talk about his,the, the follow up to this.
He makes Unbreakable, which comes out ayear and a half after The Sixth Sense.
He chose the script first to Disneybecause he had a good experience with

(33:33):
them, despite the fact that they rejectedhim and fired people because of that deal.
They did make this into a giant hit, sohe was happy working with them again.
They paid him 5 million for the script.
And 5 million to direct.
This was the most thedirector had ever been paid.
It was a huge payout for him.
And I bring this up because Iremember seeing this in theaters

(33:54):
and I absolutely love this movie.
This is in 2000 before thewhole rush of comic book movies.
This is before all of that, even beforethe X Men movies, for example, which
came out in the early 2001, 2002.
So even ahead of that, when comicbook movies were rarely ever in
theaters, And we have this movie aground level, naturalistic version

(34:17):
of an origin story for a superhero.
And I love this movie.
And I remember walking out of theaterand people were like, that sucked.
And it shows the cinemascore is a C on this movie.
People did not like it.
It made no sense.
248 million on a 75 million budget, much,much less successful than Sixth Sense.

(34:38):
People were expecting, I don't know, likea sequel to the Sixth Sense or something.
And he gets the last laughhere because of something that
happens later in his career.
And I'll leave it at that for now.
Tell me what you thoughtwhen you saw Unbreakable.
I loved Unbreakable.
This is when I became such a fan of him.
So I see Unbreakable rightafter, just like you did.

(34:59):
And I'm like, this guy is a genius.
Yes.
He did a few things after that that stillfor me, confirmed, this guy's a genius.
Some of the stuff you didn't like,but I have reasons why I kept that
that theory going, but Unbreakableis a really interesting movie.

(35:20):
I don't know.
Interesting is, is the best way Ican think of because it's so thought
provoking all the way through and itlike yanks on your heartstrings also.
So the performances hereare also really good.
really, really good.
So I was in love with this movie.
I'm wondering why didit get such a low score?

(35:41):
I think a lot of it hadto do with expectations.
People were expecting a giant twist.
I think that's what was a curse he had.
They were waiting for a giant twist.
And the reason I liked Unbreakableso much, by the way, is it has a,
for me, a very satisfying twist.
And the movie is not relianton that twist at all.
The movie is a really successfulmovie, even without the twist.

(36:01):
And then the twist is reallysatisfying on top of it.
And I think people wanted that I gottotally blindsided by that insane twist.
I have to assume that's what thedisappointment was initially.
Cause like I said, this was not verywell regarded by audiences, but he
gets the last laugh because heturns this into a trilogy basically.
And when this got rejuvenated again,as a full trilogy of films, people.

(36:25):
were bouncing off the walls.
They were so excited.
So I'm like, this is not that movie.
You hate it now.
You love it.
All right.
Well, but you know what?
Like I said, he got the last laugh.
So good for him because I thinkthis is a really strong film.
What I'm going to have a dividing linehere when I'm going through his career,
when I watch a movie, I always think tomyself, if I'm going to write a review
or discuss it here on the podcast, Ialways think, what is this movie about?

(36:47):
And when I say, what is this movie about?
I'm not talking about the plot.
I'm talking about, like,why does this film exist?
Why should I care about the actualplot machinations in this story?
Right?
And I feel like so many of his filmsthat don't work for me are really not
about anything other than a twist or aconcept or some goofy payoff of some kind.

(37:09):
And I think that's what we'reAs opposed to the sixth sense is
about emotionally dealing withtragedy, accepting loss, right?
Whether that is someone who diestragically or someone who's dealing
with the death of someone closeto them, who's died tragically.
And that is like seeped into the script.
And finally, Unbreakable is anotherfilm that's about something, right?

(37:29):
It's about this guy who feels like he'sa loser who's proving himself to his son,
who's proving to him that he has thisworth and that relationship between the
father and son is so powerful in thisfilm and that's why it works, right?
I think that's a big problem with genremovies in general, it's not just M.
Night's films, it's in general.
There's just nothing going on, youknow, under the covers . Speaking of

(37:53):
dealing with loss and thematicallyand a film that he followed this up
with, and this one starts to maybego in the direction of being more
about itself than anything else.
But I still really like thisfilm, especially when it came out.
This really worked in movie theaters.
His third film, or thirdmajor film, is Steins, right?
And this of course is with Mel Gibsonand with Joaquin Phoenix before

(38:16):
he became a giant star of his own.
Although this is coming alreadyafter Joaquin Phoenix got his Academy
Award nomination for Gladiator.
Gladiator 2 is coming out thisyear, by the way, but Gladiator.
So he's already makinga name for himself here.
Once again, great performances across theboard . Audiences like this a lot better.
They gave it a B, which seems a littlelow to be honest with you, but it was
a huge hit made over 400 million aroundthe world on a 72 million budget.

(38:40):
So very successful.
And this works really well.
This is, you know, a littlescience fiction in there.
There's definitely the influence ofknighted living dead with the aliens being
like what the zombies are trying to breakin and get this family in their basement.
So there's a whole aspect of that,but I thought this is a lot of fun.
The use of video surveillancefootage is really well done.

(39:03):
The home invasion aspect ofthis is really well done.
I forgot to call that out.
I think unbreakable is incrediblysophisticated visually, just the shot
selection, the way that sam Jacksonis always being shot through glasses,
through reflections, through broken glass.
So there's always this very cool,sophisticated reveal that's being done.

(39:24):
And also, especially in Unbreakable,how scenes will start in very
mundane ways, but almost endexactly like comic book framing.
Because once again, it's teasingthe fact that we're actually
seeing a comic book origin story.
. That's all very cool.
And it extends to science.
Once again, very sophisticated.
There's a lot of comedy in scienceand the comedy really works and it

(39:45):
counterpoints to the thrills , a lotof fun, very sparing use of special
effects, but I think very effective.
The less you see the alien, somethingthat people need to understand, the
less you see the aliens, the betteroftentimes has a really stupid
ending, but I'll forgive it for that.
But what did you think of science?
, it was good.
But this is my problem.
I'm not really into moviesthat feel very contained.

(40:10):
And what I mean by that is like they'rein this very specific, smaller, Yeah,
but I don't, I don't really like that.
I like to see what isthe next scene going to be?
Where are they going to be?
Even stuff like, what arethey going to be wearing?
What will they say?
Who will they meet now?

(40:31):
So that's just so I wasn't asthrilled, , with this movie because
it is too contained for my taste.
But, , the thing about movies likethat is that they really do have to
be at least somewhat exceptional to beable to pull something off like that
But you like speak no evil, speakno evil is all in one place.

(40:52):
Pretty much.
Yeah.
But that was really, really creepy.
And it wasn't only in one place.
They start off somewhere that isnowhere near where they end up,
but at time they end up where.
Everything's starting to really happen.
I'm so riveted that I'm notworried that they're not going

(41:15):
to be in, , another country.
I just want to know what'sgoing to happen next.
And I didn't have thatreaction to this movie science.
I knew this was it and I'm interested,but I think I liked it less than you.
Although, yes, it was a good movie, itwas very well made, there was comedy in

(41:36):
there, but I mean, if you're gonna ask mehow I feel about it, I was not as thrilled
by this as some of his other movies.
I was a little bored, which is not great.
I, I see it in theaters.
I enjoyed it a lot.
I laughed a lot, but it was definitelylaughing a lot and the scary parts
were really scary and it was fun.
It was like a rollercoasterride type movie.

(41:58):
But to your point in general, I thinkthat this one doesn't hold up so much.
Like you watch it now and yeah, thetense scenes are still tense, but
it's kind of just, you know, Okay.
It's good.
The performances arevery good, by the way.
Performances are very good.
The kids are totally convincing.
Mel Gibson does a great performance.
Joaquin Phoenix, great
that was good.
That my reaction was that was good.

(42:19):
But then I forgot all about it.
Okay, then things start to turn for him.
It's 2004.
And before this movie comes out,the movie is The Village, by the
way, but before that movie comesout, something starts to happen
to him and to his mythology.
He makes this sci fi mockumentarycalled The Lost Secrets of M.

(42:39):
Night Shyamalan or something likethat, where supposedly these people
are making a documentary about him.
He doesn't want people knowing this secretabout himself, which apparently I'll spoil
this for everybody, because I don't eventhink you can find this thing anymore.
The secret was that he drownedwhen he was 10 years old.
And ever since he drowned, he had thisother person that he was communicating.
He was communicating with the deadand that his scripts are coming

(43:01):
from this with the dead and nobody.
Nobody wants anyone toknow the secret of M.
Night Shyamala, which
who is he?
Beyonce?
Beyonce?
Beyonce?
Well, it was the whole thing is totalbaloney, but it's just the fact that
it's so tired by the way, part of thereason that the Blair Witch Project was
so huge was that the week before it cameout, the sci fi network had put out a

(43:22):
documentary made by the very filmmakerswho made the Blair Witch Project telling
people that this was a true And then ofcourse, when the movie comes out, people
think they're watching a snuff film.
So it was great marketing, right?
So he's doing this five yearslater, like, okay, that's been done.
Let's get past it.
The Blair Witch Project is not even atthat moment, that big of a deal anymore.

(43:44):
And that's the best he can do.
And this is all a marketingploy for this movie.
And then the actual movie comes outand the critics start to turn on
him, but audiences turn on him also.
The village opened with 20million on its opening day.
And it at the time had theworst multiplier on its opening
day of any wide release.

(44:04):
It was so people just rejected it.
All that being said, he still drawsan audience, by the way, just out
of curiosity, but he It made cost 60million and made over 250 million.
So it's still made money.
The film itself actually until aabsolutely terrible twist ending
until then, it's actually really good.
This is his direct responseto September 11th, 2001.

(44:28):
If signs was a reaction to the trauma ofwatching something on TV and wondering
what's going to happen to my family now.
And I think that's what sign is aboutin context of that terrorist attack.
This is the opposite of how peoplebecome so reactionary and so isolated
that they cut themselves off ina way the, the cure is worse
than the disease in that regard.

(44:50):
And I think that as this parable, as this.
Twilight Zone episode type story.
I think it's a really interestingmetaphor, but ending just
lands like a cinder block.
Although I know you like thisthing a lot better than I do.
I did like it.
I thought it was really good becauseeverybody's so strange and creepy,

(45:12):
but yet they're all very believable.
, I believed these peoplewere, , existing in this way.
And there's a lot of social commentary in
Oh yeah, absolutely.
so much.
And then at the very end, thetwist was kind of like, wow, this
movie's even better than I thought.

(45:32):
But like, that's how Ifelt about the twist.
Well, I knew that,
established the social commentary
yeah, for me it didn't work.
I think so much of the reaction to itwas a backlash to people rolling their
eyes at another twist ending because Idon't think the twist is delivered well
and it's telegraphed by the way I knewthe twist this unlike the six cents I knew

(45:54):
what was going to be the twist here veryvery early on because I think he thinks
he's being coy but a couple of I thinkSigourney Weaver is speaking to this is
an incredible cast by another and you haveSigourney Weaver speaking to William Hurt.
And they use a term thatis like a slang term.
And I'm like, Oh, these people aren'tin the medieval times or whatever

(46:18):
these people are contemporary people.
So I kind of knew right away.
And once again, I think he's playing fair.
He's putting those clues.
In there.
And once you pick up on thatand you start paying attention
to those, he actually puts in anumber of different clues in there.
So he was playing fair.
That's fine.
I just thought that the whole waythat it delivered at the end and the
way it resolved itself is so silly.
He, by the way, is in his own movies.

(46:40):
He's, he's the security guard atthe end who sees the blind girl
wandering out and doesn't say anything.
It's just hilarious.
Anyway, all of that is hilarious,but it does have, once again,
absolutely great performances.
Joaquin Phoenix.
That's a great job.
Adrian Brody this film ispacked with, with stars.
Oh, and Roger Deakins who does most ofthe cinematography for the Coen brothers,
for example it was just like, you know,maybe the best cinematographer ever

(47:04):
who also did the cinematography forI know a movie you love, which is the
assassination of Jesse James, whichis such an incredible visually, just
Oh, I love that movie and the
an incredible, yeah, just a, justan incredible cinematographer.
But anyway, he's workingwith top notch talent.
This movie looks great.
The scary scenes are pretty scary.
Although since I figured out thetwist, I wasn't really scared, but

(47:26):
they're beautifully staged andthematically interesting, right?
He's a parent now.
If you want to think about hispersonal life, you think about dog
tooth, for example, metaphoricallyabout to say a similar theme of
trying to control these kids.
And these kids want to wander out intothe world, even if it's dangerous, right?
Much less than in spite of that.
And of course, we've spokenabout station 11, for example,

(47:47):
very similar as well, right?
So there's a lot of thematicshere that definitely resonate.
And to your point, I thinkThis movie was so marked by its
failure at the time critically.
And if he had rebounded in another way,I think it would have been reappraised.
But I think today young peoplewatching this movie for the
first time, they love it.
This has been really rediscoveredas a, as one of his classes.

(48:08):
It doesn't quite work for me, but Ithink the public agrees with you in this.
I'm just ahead of my time.
That's right.
The letter boxers love this movie.
They, this is, this has definitelybeen reclaimed for sure.
But at the time, by the way, not only wasthere that really bad promo documentary,
And then they follow up with this.
Not quite what they expect.

(48:29):
Then things get really bad.
next We're going to talkabout Lady in the Water.
Oh my God, so funny though.
Yeah.
Okay.
I don't think it wasintentional, but very funny.
Now this is really interestingfor a couple of reasons.
I think he really starts to drink theKool Aid here for his own Kool Aid,
starts to think that he's infalliblebecause there's a whole book written

(48:50):
about the making of this movie by the way.
He had been working with Disneythis whole entire time since
the success of The Sixth Sense.
Disney was willing to make this movieas well, but the head of production
read the script and said, I thinkthere's some things you need to change
here and made some really intelligentcommentary, which I'll point out when
we break down the movie a little bit.

(49:11):
But he was furious by any kindof feedback on his script.
And he took the projectover to Warner brothers.
A couple of things here about this, themovie lady in the water cost 70 million.
All his movies are pretty expensivefor what they are, by the way.
But this is a movie that takesplace in a motel swimming pool

(49:31):
and the surrounding area of thereand shot on location outside of
Philadelphia and cost 70 million.
There's no big stars in this movie.
Unlike some of the other movies,like The Village, for example, which
had a very large set, had a lot ofstars in the cast, Sigourney Weaver
and William Hurt just to name two,but this movie has no stars in it.
Paul Giamatti was a well respectedactor at the time, but not a

(49:57):
name brand or anything like that,couldn't open a movie necessarily.
And this movie is very expensive forwhat it is cinematography by Christopher
Doyle speaking of working with peopleat the peak of their skills, if he had
the best cinematographer in the world,potentially for the previous film.
He follows it up with ChristopherDoyle doing cinematography here.
Christopher Doyle, Celia, if you don'tknow, is a cinematographer for Wong

(50:20):
Kar Wai, including , for example, Inthe Mood for Love, one of the most
beautiful movies ever made in history.
Oh, I can't stop watching that movie.
It's been years and I watched it again theother day and just was hypnotized again.
I think something inthere is hypnotizing me.
This movie's amazing.
Oh
Yeah, there's alchemyin movies when things

(50:42):
What is going on with that movie?
that's, I'll have to havea whole digression on.
I just read Sidney Pollock'sbook called Making Movies.
He would be 100 years old this week.
That's why there's been kindof a retrospective about him.
And I finally read his book.
And I highly recommend this to anybodywho's interested in movies at all.
He talks about exactly that.
By the way, something that I had notseen, maybe I picked it up from him

(51:05):
without realizing it, that first of all,when he reads a script, the first thing
he asks himself is what is this about?
Meaning specifically that, like Imentioned before, there's What is
it about beyond the plot, right?
What is it actually about?
And then another thing he mentions is thatwhen everybody's clicking, when the actors
and the director and the cinematographerand the editor and everything's just
clicking, you make the movie and allof a sudden you realize, Oh my God,

(51:27):
this movie is about something else.
It's more than we expectedwhen we went into it.
And anyway, we've talked aboutscience and lambs recently about,
about a film that is in a way morethan just a really solid thriller.
There's some magic withinit and in the mood for love.
Another one of those.
In the Mood for Love is so amazingthat their facial expressions don't

(51:50):
even require that they have a dialogue.
Oh, right.
It's, it's was shot intentionallyas if it was a silent film.
So absolutely.
But speaking of movies that are notwhat I described before, not more
than the sum of their parts lady inthe water, by the way, Walt Giamatti
in this movie, thank God this did notruin his career because he gives an

(52:11):
exceptional performance in this movie.
This movie, which is absolutelyridiculous and wasting everybody's
talents across the board.
And here's somethinginteresting about this.
This the genesis of this movie, unlikesome of the other ones we mentioned
here, was this was a story, a nighttimestory, a fable that he had invented.
He was telling stories to hisdaughters when he was tucking them

(52:34):
in and putting them to bed andthen these stories were evolving.
And by the way, we probablyhave all done something similar
with our children as well.
We had the story that we made up for them.
We told this is his version of that story.
And the second thing I would sayabout it is when you think about these
characters, like the guy who only worksout one side of his body and all these
weird people that in the end all haveto fit together perfectly to rescue this

(52:57):
mermaid, a spoiler for this ridiculousmovie, that when you think about that, you
imagine A picture book version of this.
I've read so many picturebooks to my daughter.
I can picture this on the page working.
These people, they all livetogether in this complex.
You can imagine a a cartoon book thatactually could work, but instead he takes

(53:18):
what should be like a curious George.
Adaptation and he directsit like this very serious.
Everybody's whispering.
It's like the sixth sense or unbreakable
be like an episode of South Park.
That would be amazing asan episode of South Park.
Because it is funny.
What an
they, they may have spoofed.
They may have spoofed it on there

(53:39):
They should, oh, I, Ican't wait to find out.
I'm going to like check that out.
But.
It is a spoof.
The whole thing is a spoof.
I thought so.
I don't even know what to say aboutthis movie because when I was watching
it, I said, is it supposed to be funny?
You know, like dry
it is not.
It's not though.
Yeah.

(53:59):
It's so serious.
Think about Giamatti's break whenhe breaks down finally at the end
that they think about that scene.
This is not a comedy.
It's obviously not intentionally funny.
It is so earnest it's as if it is acurious George comic book or kid's book
adaptation, but it's shot so seriouslyby the cinematographer who does one

(54:20):
car wise movies with that level ofimpeccable detail and earnestness.
None of this works, but that'snot even the worst of it.
The, the two things.
that were requested to be changes arethe two things that make this thing
really almost derail his entire career.
One is that he was so angry aboutmovie critics criticizing the village

(54:44):
that he has the critic in thisfilm killed viciously by a monster.
You can't be a very popular filmmakerand then murder critics in your movie
unless you're doing it as a joke.
You know, the South Park guys can dothat, but this is not in that tone.
But so much worse than that, somuch worse than that is that M Night

(55:04):
Shyamalan plays a character in thismovie and he, the whole point, the
mermaid is trying to rescue himbecause he's going to write a story.
This is what he thoughtof himself at the time.
He's got to write a story thatis going to be so important.
that no one will understand.
It'll change all of society,but he's like Jesus.

(55:25):
Basically, it will take decades for thatto happen, but he's going to be murdered.
This story is going to be so powerfulthat he will write the story.
He'll be martyred.
And then decades later, 30 or 40years later, It'll become like the
cornerstone of all of civilization.
So he's basically sayinglike, I am Jesus, Jesus.
You cannot put yourself in themovie and say you are Jesus.

(55:49):
This is
that's why I thought he was joking.
I
nothing in this film that there'snothing in this film that ever
indicates that it's joking.
I did not go to a movie theaterfor this, but I was just watching
it one day, like years ago.
And I'm thinking, Oh, I've, Can'twait to see this I've heard terrible

(56:09):
things, but then I tried not to listenbecause I don't really want to know
what the movie's about and I'm watchingit , and I'm a little buzz, this is
what I'm doing that Friday or something.
So I thought it was supposed to befunny, but then became confused.
Because of everything you just said.
Like, it's not funny enough to be funny.

(56:32):
But the Jesus thing was weird.
I saw this in the theater, and in an emptytheater, by the way, this movie was a huge
flop, so if he thought he was going tomake the movie he wanted to make and that
everybody was going to turn out because hehad such loyal fans, nope, didn't happen.
But more importantly is seeing thisin the theater and obviously everybody
just laughing out loud at, at someof the twists towards the end.

(56:54):
But that moment when he's talking tohis sister, saying, , I have to write
it, I know I'm going to die, but I haveto write it to save the world, , it's
so insane, like, that someone could bethat full of themselves at that moment.
, it's utterly shocking.
, , you really should watch it because it isan incredible completely misunderstanding

(57:16):
the role of a filmmaker basically, hereally thought that he could just say
anything that came out of his headand people would line up to see it.
It's just, it's astounding.
I was confused by this movie becauseI'm thinking, is he being, , as
narcissistic Assuming, it's aserious movie or is he really kidding?

(57:40):
I mean, it's that bad.
I was baffled.
I am pretty sure that he does not havethat tearful scene with his sister.
If he meant this as a joke.
The concept is preposterousjust to begin with.
So I went in there thinking itwas some kind of black comedy,
which is what I, that's why I'm
When it is, it is a black comedy,but the best kind of black comedy,

(58:05):
Yeah, people should watch it.
It's absurd.
I don't like all his movies.
I've said this before that I am a fanof him because I'm never bored, but
like, not because I love all his movies.
And this one was like a fail
I was talking about the cinemascores for these things.
The village got a C, which is bad.

(58:27):
Like I said before, evenlike a B or a B minus is not
considered a great cinema score.
Anything that's below like anA something or B plus at best.
So a C is pretty bad for the villagelady in the water, believe it or not got
a B minus and, but it was a huge flop.
So this is importantbecause the opening weekend.
It did terrible, but you have to remember,these are the self selecting, die hard M.

(58:48):
Night fans are turning out, and theyare giving it a B which once again is
not a great grade, but Celia, his nextfilm, gets a D, a D, which is extremely
hard to get a D from CinemaScore.
If you get a C, you're like, man, thismovie's gonna be a disaster the average
grade that someone's giving you is a C.
So think about it.
The most of the people walkingout of there are just like, it

(59:10):
barely passes and half of themthought it was worse than that.
So to that point, next movie,the happening gets a D.
That's the average gradethat everyone's giving it.
No
happening is funny though.
Like it's genuinely funny.
I don't, again, I'm a little confusedas to was he trying to be funny,

(59:30):
but like the concept of it is.
Like not as preposterous.
I mean, maybe it is as preposterousas the lady in the water, although
the lady in the water, it is morelike a, I guess, It's, I don't even
know how to describe these movies.
I would find it less interestingand less vast than the horror

(59:57):
of, of this other movie.
Oh my God.
You know what's so funny is
is that a
how
Oh my God.
The wind, the wind, like there'sjust stuff you can't hide from.
And it's very funny.
I thought that moviewas very entertaining.
the crazy thing about it is that thereis so many, up until this point, even

(01:00:20):
Lady in the Water, the performances fromthese actors, like Giamatti, are terrific.
Like he's getting reallygreat performances from these
actors across the board.
It like revitalized Bruce Williscareer, for example, making
those two movies with him, right?
So that is the template up untilthis point, but man, and I'll say
something complimentary about it.
This is rated R by the way, the happening.

(01:00:41):
So that's part of the reasonaudiences did turn out, by the way,
made over 160 million, a big jumpup in his box office compared to the
disaster that was lady in the water.
And so it made money.
That's why he keeps making movies.
I think having the R rating people,the first time he had an R rating,
by the way, made people think, Ooh,maybe he's going to really go for it.
He doesn't really go for it, but hedoes go for it in some interesting ways.

(01:01:03):
He does.
And complimenting at the beginning ofthis film, when this virus or whatever
it is, they don't know what it isinitially, starts to make everybody
commit suicide which is creepy.
Now, in retrospect, after the pandemicto watch this, it resonates in ways
that it probably didn't even intend atthe time, but it's really intriguing.

(01:01:23):
And really well executed.
There's some really disturbing imageswhere all those construction workers
are jumping off the buildings,for example, in Philadelphia.
So a lot of that stuff isreally well done, very creepy,
but then the performances.
When the next scene we see isMark Wahlberg trying to explain
He's so funny in this.
he's hilarious.
Like he's tried to sell this biological,he's still inappropriate for this role.

(01:01:48):
He's made fun of this by the way,like in interviews, he just talks
about , I had no idea what was goingon in that movie half the time.
He's really tried to distance himself from
When I was watching him perform this,I'm like, this is a black comedy.
Just look at his performance.
So overacting.
, I guess you would if whatyou're running away from is, I
mean, , you don't know what it is.

(01:02:08):
Is it air?
, I don't even know what to say, , Iloved his performance in this movie.
it.
It's this movie is an absolutedisaster, but people should watch just
there's cuts, super cuts on YouTube.
If you don't want towatch the whole movie.
that are just some of this hilariousline readings with Mark Wahlberg.
This is a bad, this concept of this isso misbegotten that there, there's some

(01:02:33):
kind of pollen or something that the earthis attacking us because we're killing it.
And this thing is makingus commit suicide.
So it's pretty silly.
It could actually work.
There are somewhat similar storylines,whether it is zombie outbreak
movies things like that, that couldbe theoretically you can even take
read the last of us as a metaphorof a similar one where nature

(01:02:56):
itself is basically eradicatingus because we're attacking nature.
So it's not like thisconcept is impossible.
It's just the way it's executed.
When, for example, like you said,they're running away from a breeze
in the, they were looking at the windpattern in the grass and they're like,
Oh no, the wind is coming this way.
It's just, it's so silly.
Did he really not know how to act?

(01:03:18):
I'm not an actor, but I would belike, what is my tone for this movie?
I don't know if he's the right person forthis period and yeah, it's just, but it's
very funny and and things get worse fromhim, at least from a critical standpoint.
He hits another record low there witha rotten tomato scores basically,

(01:03:38):
but then he makes the last airbender,which costs a fortune, 150 million.
It actually breaks even causeit makes over 300 million, but
critics really did not like this.
And audience didn't need, didn't either.
It didn't get a sequel obviously,but it made money in theaters,
people showed up to see it.
It's just boring, by the way, it's justa very boring adaptation of the story.
And of course people arediehard last airbender fans.

(01:04:00):
So they were disappointed bywhat they got, but it's not a
catastrophe the way you would think.
Although at this point, everyone'spiling on, they just want to name
everything he makes a catastrophe.
But the next movie he makesis an absolute catastrophe.
He makes after earth with Will Smith.
Have you seen this thing?
I think I, you know what, Idon't know if I got through it.

(01:04:21):
I'm going to go with no.
I think I tried to seeit and then I was bored.
After Earth is like Lady inthe Water for Will Smith, and
it's amazing that he gets M.
Night to direct it for him becauseit's exactly the same thing.
This is when Will Smith kind oftook a backseat in his own career
and was trying to make Jaden Smithinto a big star, and he had had the

(01:04:42):
Karate Kid movie, which had been
Oh, I did see that.
Okay.
I just got a flashback.
Okay.
And now in this movie, he wantsto basically prop up his son.
So in a way it's about trustingyour son to be an adult and
replace you and yada, yada, yada.
And in this movie, which is part of thereason people didn't like it, Will Smith

(01:05:02):
is in that marketing, but he basicallygets knocked out in this spaceship.
And then Jaden is trapped traversing thisalien landscape being pursued by this
weird Alien that they brought with them.
The plot is ridiculous.
But what's funny about it is the genesisof this story was Will Smith had an
idea for a story where he gets into acar wreck and Jaden is on his own and

(01:05:24):
they have a walkie talkie, but he'strapped inside the car and Jaden's being
pursued by some kind of wild animal.
And it's very naturalistic.
And then somewhere along the way,people said, well, we'll fund it
for you if you make it sci fi.
So it goes once of athousand years in the future.
And then they start saying,we're going to make comic books.
It's going to be a trilogy.
There's going to be a spinoff series.

(01:05:45):
And the movie like ladyin the water is just.
some ideas thrown at the boardand without any connective tissue.
And it's absolutely preposterous.
And it lost a ton of money.
It was an absolute fiasco.
I remember this movie.
I remember saying , is thisjust a showcase for his kid?
Because I wouldn't mind thatif this wasn't so boring.

(01:06:09):
And then I don't think Iwatched it all the way through.
I remember trying to watch it.
And then I think I something cameup and then I never remember
to go back and finish the
It's
This is how boring it is, in my opinion.
And it's hilarious by the way that WillSmith, for example, gets knocked out

(01:06:30):
and then he wakes up for five minutesand then he gets knocked out again.
It's like they're trolling the audience.
No, he's not going tobe awake for this movie.
It's so crazy.
I don't know.
I don't recommend anybody watch that
I do not recommend it.
It's not even worth watchingas a so bad it's good.
It's just boring.
it's, it's very boring.
Because I
it's a very
before.

(01:06:51):
it's very expensive andthe special effects are.
Awful.
Let's turn.
Okay.
So this is amazing.
When I looked at these all next to eachother, I felt like there were multiple
times where he could not get a movie made.
And it's amazing to me that, the ladyin the water is 2006 happening 2008.
The last airbender is 2010.

(01:07:11):
After Earth 2013.
So he's continuously making movies.
I, for some reason, I reallyfelt like there was this gap.
Maybe it's because I wasn'tseeing his movies in theaters.
So I felt like there had been like10 years since he put out anything
that, that mattered in some ways.
But he knows after AfterEarth that he is toxic.
He can not get his movie made.
He decides to make a super lowbudget, horror movie and sell it.

(01:07:35):
And no one will take it.
No one will take it.
So what he decides to do is toget a mortgage on his own home.
And he makes for 5 millionhimself, a movie called The Visit,
which I've just seen this week.
And this movie comes out, it getsbought by Blumhouse, very popular
horror movie producers now, but alwaysmake movies on a very low budget.
And they sell it.
And this became, began their template.

(01:07:56):
So he put his own moneyin, and it was a huge hit.
For 5 million, this movie made 98 million.
Smaller than basically any otherfilm he'd made since his rise to
fame in terms of dollars, but veryfinancially successful, especially
for him because he paid for the movie.
So he got a big chunk of that back end.
back to himself.

(01:08:16):
It's found footage going backto the Blair Witch Connection
all the way at the beginning.
It's the first time he'sshot, found footage.
And it's interesting becausethere's comedy in it.
He had prepared because he didn'tknow if people would buy this.
This is actually interesting.
He made a straight up horror cut of themovie, a comedy only cut of the movie, and

(01:08:37):
then an in between cut, which is the onethat he basically released into theaters.
Have you seen The Visit?
What did you think of it?
Oh, I loved that movie.
That was good.
I recommend everyone see that.
That was so good.
And the performances were fantastic.
I jumped back on hisbandwagon after I saw that.
The kid was great.
How funny is he?

(01:08:58):
Like he has perfect, yeah, he'sgot great comedic timing, this boy.
He was making me laugh all the time.
yes, I, my opinion of it.
I just saw it.
This is one of the ketchupones that I was missing.
And for me, this didn'treally work for me.
It wasn't terrible.
, it just, the scary parts weren't scary.

(01:09:21):
The comedy should have been even moreso, but to your point, I think the
kids, both of the kids give really goodperformances and he did make me laugh.
He, he was very funny,
Good for him for resuscitating his career.
I thought this was fine.
This got a B minus from cinema score.
I didn't call that out.
So it's good.
It's better than these D's andterrible movies he had been recently

(01:09:45):
getting the scores he'd been getting.
So it's better.
It made money, like I mentioned,on a very small budget.
, and he funded it himself,so he cashed out,
I didn't think it
and it was very middle of the road.
It's like meh, which is, by the way,this is what I don't want to see.
in trap, hopefully.
I don't want it to be justthis, like, it's fine.

(01:10:07):
I would rather get the happeningor get split, which we're going
to talk about in just a minute.
well, what I liked about it was theperformances because I was entertained
because these people were really funny.
Again, I'm not sure if he intendedit to be as funny as it was,
but I didn't think it was scary.

(01:10:28):
I thought it was.
He definitely intended it to be scary.
I think I mentioned that at the topof the conversation, but he actually
made three edits of this film.
The one we saw is like a blend of the twoprevious edits, but he made one edit that
was much darker and all horror basically.
And he made another edit whereit was like a slapstick comedy.

(01:10:50):
And this is the in betweenversion that he released.
So they comedy intentional for sure.
do you think like theother two are out there?
I would like to see them.
They're not unless they're bonus materialon the DVD or something, but I, I've
not heard of it, but I would liketo see the comedic version for sure.
That, I think that would work betterfor me in this particular case.

(01:11:10):
I agree because I thoughtit was just funny.
I also don't think it's scary in anyway, other than if you think, , old
people are scary and Sona hassaid like old people are scary.
So if that is a real fear of yours,then, , then yes, this, it works, but.
That is not enough to scare me in a movie.
Yeah.
Old people can be scary if liketheir mind is faulting a little

(01:11:34):
bit, what they're going to do next.
And I have, experiencewith that for sure.
There's no logic to thebehavior that I'm seeing.
And then how do youreact to this situation?
You can't use logic to react to it.
So yeah, old people can be scary,

(01:11:56):
M.
Night apparently does have somekind of phobia of old people because
we're going to talk about old soon.
But also, uh, remember that scene, oneof the most memorable scenes in that
terrible movie to happening is whenBetty Buckley, they're staying at her
house and she is infected and theydon't realize it until late in the game.
And you start seeing her outside,just like walking backwards.
That's a very memorablescene in, uh, that film.

(01:12:17):
It's once again, going back to howabsolutely preposterous that movie is
and how terrible it is across the board.
, there are scenes in it thatare , really well made.
He still can direct excellentscenes and he can't help it, but
be a good craftsman, even when thestories are absolutely bonkers.
But I will call out here in regards tothat, that the visit itself as a found

(01:12:38):
footage film, uh, because of that, butnot only because of that, it's a little
bland visually, and obviously it's shot,supposed to be shot by this girl, but
it doesn't feel impressive visually.
Like basically all his other films do.
but because she's shooting it.
would make sense
That's the content, right?
Right.
I agree.

(01:12:59):
Okay.
Next film I think is much more successful.
One of his absolute best films in myopinion, uh, this one, once again,
having the success of the visit, hemade money on that a lot of money
on it because he funded it himself.
He's like, I'm going tofund my next movie too.
And I'm going to make a movie calledsplit, which features James McAvoy

(01:13:20):
and Anya Taylor joy, giving twoterrific performances as is often
the case with the minor exceptions,usually the case in his films.
And in this regard, this film works sowell because it once again, speaking of
twists, this film works perfectly well asfirst of all, the revelation that this guy

(01:13:41):
may have multiple personality disorder,or maybe it is something supernatural.
Can we trust what he'sseeing in his own minds?
And then, of course, the double twistthat not only is this actually happening,
but wow, the audience, when I saw this,went absolutely bonkers at the end when
Bruce Willis is there in the diner in thefinal moments and you realize, Oh my God,

(01:14:04):
this is a side sequel to unbreakable.
It was a huge.
Success and made almost 300million around the world.
He funded it himself for 9 million.
He made a boatload of money.
And this is a really fun movie.
That movie was scary,

(01:14:24):
Yes.
Yeah.
McAvoy
and, , I've said this before, it's like,ugh, how boring, she keeps saying this.
But the things that, like, humans do.
But the fact that the character becameso much the personality that he was
in in the moment was terrifying.

(01:14:47):
So,
is terrific in this film.
He should have had theAcademy Award nomination.
I think for, although this is acompletely misrepresentation of
mental illness, regardless, theway that he can switch gears from
scene to scene is really excellent.
And then the concept is terrifying.
And then because of all thesemultiple personalities, there are

(01:15:10):
some of the personalities whereyou actually feel sorry for them.
So the empathy is involved.
So there's a lot of layers to this movie.
Yeah.
And his relationship with Yeah.
And speaking of those excellentperformances, I think it's not only
his performance, obviously jumpingfrom one persona to another, but

(01:15:31):
Anya Taylor Joy, who's one of myfavorite young actresses today.
We have to talk about Furiosa, by the way,which is about to premiere on HBO Max.
We'll definitely have that reviewcoming up, I think she's usually
exceptional in everything she does.
And in this regard, I love howshe is code switching, right?
Like talking to these differentpersonas in different ways, being

(01:15:51):
tough when she needs to be tough,being, seductive when she needs to
be seductive and being manipulativewhen she's talking to a weak character
and how she is trying to use her.
Personality basically to, uh,get herself out of the situation.
And then you see her flashbacksto her, , honestly, a pretty
dark backstory here for a movie.

(01:16:11):
That's PG 13.
I was surprised after thefact realized as I was leaving
the theater, that it was PG 13,considering how grim her backstory is.
, I didn't think they would address sexualassault in that way in a movie that was PG
13, but regardless, it's a very dark film.
He really takes his PG13 as far as it can go.
And yeah, I think this is a hugesuccess, , as a film and, , as

(01:16:36):
improving his mythology, reclaiming.
Unbreakable, which had already hadthis cult following and making it
relevant again at 20 years later, Ithink it's the best trick he's pulled
since the sixth sense for sure.
I saw Split I would say maybe twomonths ago, and it had the same impact.,

(01:16:57):
nearly, because now I know more about it.
So a lot of the things that were happeningwhen you first see it are gut punches.
But I still had that reactionwhoa, this is insane, the whole.
And some people, I've heard peoplesay , Oh, he was overacting.

(01:17:19):
I'm like, his character hasmany multiple personalities.
So as he embodies each personality,he's really intense there's no
personality in there that's subtle.
, but that's what I loved about it.
Yeah.
And it's fun.
He even gets to use that againsther later when he's pretending

(01:17:40):
to be a different persona.
It's really well done, I think.
And I agree.
I think this one holdsup on revisit for sure.
Unlike a lot of the other ones.
Alright, he follows that up.
Huge success.
Lots of money he makes.
, , the next film he makes is Glass.
So he ends the trilogy,, immediately following up Split.
Officially making this all part ofthe same universe as Unbreakable.

(01:18:02):
Bringing back Sam Jackson,bringing back Bruce Willis.
And this film, critics savaged it.
Audiences were lukewarm on it.
It got a beef cinema score.
So not as good as the previous one.
And it only made 250 million.
Once again, he financed it himself.
This is his new pattern, bythe way, he's his own bank now.

(01:18:23):
Uh, the film was a hit, don't get mewrong, based on that budget and the
return on it budget wise, but it was stillconsidered a disappointment because when
you think how excited everybody was tosee this movie, you would have assumed
it would make a lot more money than theprevious one and it ended up making less.
And I understand why.
I remember seeing this one and it'snot a terrible film, but it's a weird

(01:18:45):
way to wrap up this mythology where.
These people are mostlystuck in an asylum together.
They're in a room, oneroom most of the time.
They rarely interact.
And then finally they bust out andyou're like, here is the battle royale.
And the battle royale happenson people's cell phones.
So they, you only seesnippets of what's happening.

(01:19:06):
And that's it.
That's the end of the movie.
It's bizarre.
And also the fact that Bruce Willis,spoiler for everybody, dies by
drowning in a puddle of water.
A very strange way tokill his character off.
I agree not not a great way to endthe trilogy, but not a bad movie.
It was okay.
I don't like saying stuff

(01:19:27):
It's the worst of the three.
I think it's the
Yeah, yeah, I agree.
, I think this is why peoplewere disappointed in my mind.
I assumed.
that he had made this tinybudget 9 million movie and
had been a phenomenal success.
And now everyone's so amped up fora real comic book movie, right?
Like he's basically create anorigin story for the superhero
origin story for the supervillain.

(01:19:48):
We have Mr.
Glass in the background.
And could you imagine that he had gonein partnered up with a studio all
these films are very like grounded.
They're not giant specialeffect extravaganzas.
I understand that.
But not that he would make thischeap movie that's shot pretty much
just in this abandoned penitentiary.

(01:20:08):
He would actually take some ofthat money with the studio and
then have a big battle at theend and just double the budget.
Spend 50, 60 million dollars, right?
But for him to just say, okay, we're goingto shoot 80 percent of this movie in a
couple of rooms, literally Bruce Willisis in one room the whole entire time.
And I'm like, this iswhat we get at the end.
And then of course you're waiting,, , you know, they're going to bust out.

(01:20:29):
Mr.
Glass has a plan.
There's going to besome huge battle Royale.
And there's not, there's justpeople talking about it on the news.
And I'm like, that's it.
That's what we get.
I, I was pretty disappointed.
Yeah, not great.
And Again, I do not love whenthings are too boxed in either,
like the atmosphere, I get bored.

(01:20:55):
So there were moments whereI'm like, I'm kind of bored.
This is definitely a boring film.
Oftentimes.
I agree.
yeah, oftentimes, but there's enoughin it that you're not like on board.
And he's such a strange thinkerwhen he makes his movies.
So, I mean, I hung in therecause I'm like, okay, this guy.

(01:21:17):
is, you know, a little offthe rails most of the time.
So who knows what's going to happen.
But then also because of that, it doesbecome disappointing when it's over.
Yes.
This is a very disappointing film bythe end and it really feels honestly,
like this is the minimum he couldhave done to wrap up the trilogy.

(01:21:39):
And that's prettydisappointing, obviously.
Especially after, he had basicallyhit a home run with the last film.
He probably didn't even anticipatethat people would be so Hyped
up for a sequel to unbreakable.
And then he immediately was like,I'm going to wrap up this trilogy.
That's going to be my next project.
And it's like, and I'm not really goingto give you anything you want to see.

(01:21:59):
I'm like, Hmm, okay.
The weirdest fan service of all time.
Yeah.
, for fans service, what you'resaying, like in a way it's
annoying and I'm not in his head.
So who knows if this is what isreally going on in his brain, but
to just assume that he can throwsomething out there just because he's

(01:22:23):
him and then be cheered on for it.
, I don't love that
that's in 2019.
And then of course, in 2020, we have thepandemic and he shoots a movie in 2020.
And he wanted to shoot something.
He funded it himself.
Surprise, surprise yet again.
, budget's pretty high forwhat it is costs 18 million.

(01:22:46):
It comes out during the pandemic.
It's actually a minor hit.
This is when theatersjust started reopening.
And of course the reason it was evenshot during the pandemic was because he
came up with a concept intentionally.
What's something I couldshoot outdoors completely.
And he shot the movie old, which onceagain was another one of my blind spots.
I caught up with this one too.

(01:23:07):
And I really was hoping I've heardreviews for this when it came out.
We're not very kind.
The audience reaction was pretty low.
It only got a C plus cinema score.
So I wasn't running out to see it.
And then I was like, I'll wait.
Eventually I'll catch up with it.
And I finally caught up with it.
It's on HBO Max, by the way.
Anybody who wants to see it,very easily available on HBO Max.

(01:23:27):
And I have to say that I was hopingto be one of those people going like,
this is actually underappreciated.
This movie is so ridiculous that Ican't take it serious for one second.
It's so dumb.
take any one aspect of the plotand think about it for one minute,
the whole thing falls apart.

(01:23:49):
The whole thing.
It's not one thing undoes the plot.
If you think about any one of theseindividual plot points, these important
plot points, and you're like, butwhat, why, none of it works at all.
It's ridiculous.
I agree.
I was watching that going,why am I watching this?

(01:24:10):
, first of all, I don't reallycare about these people.
They're not presented in a waywhere you're very invested in them.
with them.
Right.
No.
So I'm like, okay, sothese people, I don't know.
are getting really old.
, that's really it.
That's all that's happening.
He needs someone to helphim with his scripts.
I would fix this plotimmediately in a couple of ways.

(01:24:31):
Number one, they areaging, but not this fast.
Right?
Number two, we don't need an explanationas to how they're trapped on this island.
Like they just can't get off.
Like make this purely,Metaphorical, right?
Because that's what thefilm is trying to be.
It's about watching your childrengrow up, letting them go, being

(01:24:53):
terrified, coming up with every possibleexplanation for, I don't want to die.
I'm not going to die.
We're going to fix this.
And then eventually justaccepting it in the end, which is
.what we see.
It's the progression.
It's what works in the material.
And there are a handful of scenesin the movie that are really
powerful and really beautiful.
Mostly Gabriel Garth,and, what's your name?

(01:25:13):
Uh, Kreps.
Um, her first name, both great actorsand them reconciling their marriage.
And he's like, I don't even rememberwhat we were fighting about.
So those scenes are reallybeautiful, really poignant.
And in the right movie, They wouldhave made me cry but like you said, the
movie's an hour and a half long and it'staking place over the course of a day.
And it doesn't feel like a day.

(01:25:33):
It feels it's so rushed.
It feels like this is taking placeover the course of an hour and a half.
I'm supposed to care about these people.
I've known them for 25 minutes.
What are you talking about?
Yeah.
It's just, it was strange because I'mwatching it with high hopes I always
have high hopes with his movies.

(01:25:54):
Cause I'm waiting for something reallyout of the box to happen to be like, wow.
So they're gonna, so they're gonnaget really old and they can't get
off this island and like I stillfeel like they could have got off
the island like the whole time.
I'm like, can't youjust like go over there?
And then I think they tried,

(01:26:16):
There was only one way through,which was through the coral.
So, okay.
through the coral, that's the other thing.
They have to, they made
The only way
deal about the coral.
, it was the only way out.
If you tried to swim out,you would get killed.
If you tried to climb therocks, you would get killed.
You wouldn't the blackoutbasically, and then die when you're
swimming or climbing the rocks.
I have to put, throw in a couple oflogistics here because it's so ridiculous.

(01:26:38):
First of all, there's the whole, whydon't they make people age, but let's
say they're aging 10 times faster.
So everything that happens, the kids.
growing more distant, gettingpregnant, all this is happening
over the course of a week.
As soon as you're saying they're aging10 years every hour , , well, they're all
going to be dead in five or six hours.
Even if they get off here,they're going to be 85 years

(01:26:59):
old at the end of this movie.
. So it feels so pointless, . In a way.
So it doesn't give you that urgencyof like, they have to find a way
out when within a time period,that would make some sense.
Like I said, you can do allthe things that happen here.
If you just say they, they're aging10 times faster, you'd wake up the
next morning and oh my God, thekids are older instead of being

(01:27:21):
like, you're talking to them.
And then they put new actors in there.
It's like, you didn't seethem growing in between.
I go on travel for a week andI come home and I'm like, Oh
my God, my daughter's taller.
You would notice.
I'm just saying these people growing,
Obviously, time is of the essence.
So, so what if you mightget killed by the coral?
Wouldn't you just be like, all right,

(01:27:43):
, they didn't know about the coral.
The coral is the twist at the end wherethe leather kid had given them the escape.
Oh, but anyway, I do
zoned out somewhere during the boredom
I have to call out, I have tocall out some of the stupidity.
Like I said before, my screenplaymind, I'm saying here, I can fix this
script and maybe he should have run itby somebody else just with a few tweaks.
I think it could have been better,but then I have to call out the

(01:28:06):
absolutely ridiculous things here.
If coming onto this beach and thentrying to escape crushes your brain
or whatever, and you cannot escape,which I don't think there's any
physical way that would work or that youwould age more quickly on this beach.
Let's take all that for grantedregardless, even if that's the case, how
did someone actually discover this beach?
How did they escape?
How many thousands ofpeople must have eventually.

(01:28:27):
Wandered through the beach andthen maybe one person finally
flew, swim, swim through the coral.
And then if that happens, that nowthey've built this resort nearby.
And on top of that, it's allthis facade for this research
for this pharmaceutical company.
And all of that is just so hilariousto me that reveal at the end where

(01:28:48):
we're supposed to be sympatheticto the pharmaceutical company.
It's like our experiments here have.
Saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
And so we're supposed to be like, oh, byrevealing this, , that this is happening,
first of all, in a way you're killinghundreds of thousands of people who've
been saved by these , pharmaceuticals,but more than that, think about it.

(01:29:08):
There are people right now whoare intentionally living in
isolation, inside of mountains toprepare for maybe going to Mars.
People are willing to sacrificethemselves, to go on a Mars
mission and possibly die.
. Could you imagine someone is goingto die of some congenital disease?
And you tell them that this place existsand they're like, will you sign up?
Because then you're going to die.

(01:29:28):
Anyway, we can see if thischemical actually works on you.
. And some will be like, I'llbe dead in three months.
I'll definitely sign up for that.
My point is you could getpeople to sign up for this.
You don't have to murder peoplesecretly for this whole project.
It's so ridiculous on its
like entire families.
Yes.
Children and everything.

(01:29:49):
Like it's so crazy.
that going to earn sympathy?
The whole thing made no sense.
Right.
As soon as people know about this, right.
talking about it.
They're recruiting these people,sending them these brochures
because they have these diseases
.You couldn't find someone who has MS, who doesn't have any kids or who's divorced.
And
,or just give people the opportunity you're going to die most likely, but you

(01:30:13):
can do some good in the world and we'llgive your family millions of dollars.
People would be like, sure.
Yeah.
That's exactly.
you know, what's the worst case scenario?
I die a little earlier and mywhole family gets millions of
dollars because they can afford it.
Right.
we, we just watched house of the,we just watched house of the,
with sympathy.

(01:30:34):
we just watched houseof the dragon this week.
And those people offeredthemselves up to be burned alive.
Cause maybe there's a chancethey're dragon riders.
Maybe
.Well, they have nothing else to really hope for.
I mean, they're in asituation that's so dire
I'm saying that if you're monthsaway from dying from some uncurable
cancer, you may also be like,Hey, give my family 5 million.

(01:30:58):
Hey, , I'll take that chance.
And I might even get cured.
No, you're gonna lure touristswho really just want a
It's so, so ridiculous.
And who's the guy, who's the guy who's,
whatever they're hoping foron this isla a barbecue?
It's M night
I don't know, it's not great.

(01:31:22):
Yeah, it's so weird.
This movie was weird in theway that I don't approve of.
Yes, this is
I felt like I wasted my time and thatmy intelligence was being insulted.
Yeah, I didn't
not great.
Yeah.
Okay.
That takes us only one morebetween there and here.

(01:31:45):
And this film is mixed.
Although I think this one's a step inthe right direction for him for sure.
It's a knock at the cabin, which isa adaptation of the Paul Tremblay
novel, which I've also read.
And I think we had a conversation, whichI never published about this very film.
And, , the big mistake this film makesis by changing what happens in the

(01:32:05):
book at the end, it negates the wholepoint of the book to a large extent.
Aside from that, until the finale, thisis actually a really strong film, I think.
And more resonant now in theface of the pandemic, obviously.
But terrific performances in this movie,really, truly terrific performances.

(01:32:26):
Yeah, we talked about that.
Honestly, I don't remember what weremy main objections when you told
me that the ending was different?
Because I remember being annoyedthat they changed the ending.
Yeah.
So once again, spoilers for all thesefilms, but spoilers for this one.
In the book.
In the end, when it's irrefutablethat this is happening.

(01:32:50):
And as I mentioned, I mean, Inever published that conversation.
So I guess I have to add it ascontext in the film, there are
early signs that something weirdis going on and it's very apparent.
pretty early on that this is a trueworldwide apocalypse that's happening.
In the book, there's moreplausible deniability for a while,

(01:33:11):
for part of the way through.
And the, and we, we're alsoinside the character's heads.
So the Jonathan, Jonathan Groffcharacter has hit his head and
he's having, uh, spiritual visions.
He wants to sacrifice himself becausehe believes but then his husband,
uh, thinks that He's just, you know,concussed, right, which is possibly true.

(01:33:35):
So there is plausibledeniability throughout the book.
And then of course, at the end, when it isirrefutable, but everything has happened.
And of course, once again,spoilers, the daughters died,
She actually dies in the bookthat they basically decide that
I don't care if this is real.
I don't care if we do sacrificeourselves to, uh, thieve.

(01:33:58):
Humanity that we don't care.
Like they are so at their wits end andthey feel so used and tormented by, this
God that's judging them or whatever it'sdoing that he says, screw everybody.
We are not going to comply basically.
And that is, quite a choice, obviously.
And it speaks to the fact that oncethey've lost their daughter, they

(01:34:20):
don't care, they don't care anymore.
So it's very nihilistic, butprobably emotionally true.
The ending that you proposed what,cause I didn't know there was two
endings sounded so much better thanthe ending that the movie gave us.
But that being said, themovie was pretty good.
Here I am again, present tense Victor.

(01:34:41):
I needed to cut offthe conversation there.
We had some technical issues and weneeded to get back to work, but I
did want to close the loop Unknockat the Cabin, and a few interesting
correlations in watching Trap lastnight in preparation for this review.
First of all, Knock at the Cabin,as we were mentioning in the
discussion, fails in its ending.

(01:35:01):
I don't know why he changed the endingversus the book, but until the ending, it
is a very convincing and fascinating film.
It actually does have thesethemes of faith, which have
been in many of Trap's films.
And of course, a family and what we'rewilling to sacrifice for our families.
So this does feel like oneof his more personal films.

(01:35:24):
It's definitely one of his better films.
It is beautifully made Dave Bautistagives a terrific performance, just
this big brute, but with this verygentle heart, and it could be contrived
character, but he totally pulls it off.
And for me, Home Invasion is alwaysa touchy subject because it hits some
raw nerve in me and honestly, I haven'ttalked about the box office yet.

(01:35:47):
Unlike, this is his least successfulof all of his major releases.
I mentioned that The Visit hadmade 98 million dollars on a very
small 5 million dollar budget.
Once again, this one wasself-finance knock at the cabin.
He made it for $18 millionand it made only 55, $60
million around there worldwide.
So it probably broke even,but it didn't make any money.

(01:36:09):
And that's a little disappointingbecause I did think this was one of
his better films as to why it failed.
This is not actually a home invasionfilm, but it does, uh, the easiest way
to market it is as a home invasion film.
And home invasion films in generalhave limited box office potential.
There's never been a blockbusterhome invasion film unless it's

(01:36:30):
hiding inside of another film.
Like Signs is kind of a homeinvasion film, but it's hiding
inside of an alien invasion film.
But even something like The Strangers.
Which just got a reboot this year isnot ever going to be a blockbuster and
even the original is not a blockbuster.
And I think that is probablythe most successful home
invasion film of all times.
Purely home invasion.

(01:36:52):
There's slasher films that couldbe considered home invasion.
That's very nebulous though.
And I think that's part of the reasonthat the film didn't attract an audience.
And those home invasion sequencesearly on are very troubling.
Pretty soon it revealsitself to not be that at all.
And yeah, this is a good one.
If you like his more serious films,and this is definitely grimmer in

(01:37:13):
tone than most of those, then docheck this out or check it out again.
If you were disappointedthe first time you saw it, I
believe it's still on Peacock.
It might be on Amazon prime now as well.
The other thing that only struck mewhen I was actually watching trap
and I was discussing after earthhere in the conversation with Celia.
It's how strange that, andhopefully this is not something

(01:37:34):
that we're going to see happen to M.
Night, I hope not.
But Will Smith really had a roughpatch in his career where the
focus of his career was to try tomake Jaden and Willow into stars.
He was trying to prop them upand he took the focus off of his
own strengths as a movie star.
And I think fans felt like they werehaving the kids shoved down their

(01:37:57):
throats, and it hurt him, and it didn'tpay off, necessarily, with the kids.
I mean, the kids are still young, theycould still have very long, successful
careers, but this forcing them intoblockbusters early in their career did
not seem to work out the plan, at leastAnd I think it even hurt the marriage.
This is all tabloid stuff, but it's justinteresting that he hit that rough patch.

(01:38:20):
And then we have M.
Night having worked with Will Smithand his son on a film that was the
nadir of their careers, basically.
And looking at that and saying, Hey, Ishould try to do that with my daughter.
So I don't think he tookthe right lessons from that.
And I do hope that this isn't putting astrain on his marriage because we're going

(01:38:42):
to get into the spoilers momentarily.
And it doesn't seem that it'shealthy in that marriage either.
In the fictional marriage.
I should say.
All right.
One more thing I wanted tobring up before we move on.
We have Jordan Peele's fourth filmcoming early 2025 was supposed
to come out in 2024 pushed outto 2025 doesn't have a title.

(01:39:04):
Doesn't have anything.
Just the poster right now with thedesiccated hand with the four showing
four fingers and in my review of Nope.
If you never heard that, do check it out.
I think that was an interesting episodehere on the podcast available in our feed.
I mentioned that there was a realcorrelation between Jordan Peele and M.

(01:39:24):
Night Shyamalan, and I continue tolook at the parallels in their career.
The first film, The Sixth Sense versus GetOut, a generational film, one of the few
horror films that come every decade orso, that are the cultural conversation.
They're not just big hit movies.
They don't just make money.

(01:39:45):
a cultural moment for theyear, for the years to come.
And that happened for The SixthSense, and it happened for Get Out.
So, the curse of that huge success.
Second film, Unbreakable, for M.
Night.
For Jordan Peele.
Follow up film is Us.
Now, Us is as financially successfulas Get Out because there was so

(01:40:06):
much anticipation for this, butaudiences were disappointed.
Unbreakable, nowhere near as successfulas The Sixth Sense, but again,
this disappointment from audiences.
But then in both cases, filmsthat in retrospect, out of that
anticipated context, are consideredone of their very best films.
Of course, Jordan Peele, at this case,only has two films to compare, but there

(01:40:30):
are some interesting parallels there.
The hype, the anticipation, and themuted reaction from the public at least.
And then the third film, an alieninvasion film, in both cases.
So now I do wonder what's going tohappen when we have A fourth film,
if we're going to correlate it to M.
Night's career, this is the village.

(01:40:50):
This is when the critics and the cultureat large starts to laugh openly at M.
Night.
Of course, M.
Night courted this to a large extentby making that weird mockumentary.
Jordan Peele seems very down to earthin all of his interactions, and he is
constantly propping up other filmmakerslike Oz Perkins, for example, long
legs, he's producing his next movie.

(01:41:11):
So it doesn't seem to be.
A personality thing, but it is stillinteresting that in both regards to
both of these filmmakers, they areconstantly having a conversation.
And Tarantino does this too, by the way.
You can be successful in this veinwhere the pressure of their own persona,
the pressure of their own mythology isbaked into each one of these projects.

(01:41:38):
I think that it can be harmful sometimes.
Last point with the Jordan Peelecorrelation that I want to call
out here is that, as I was watchingthe movie last night, I was
thinking, man, Jordan Peele and M.
Night need to work together.
Not work together.
They need to do what Tarantino and P.
T.
Anderson do, where they sharetheir Scripts in progress with

(01:42:03):
each other and go back and forthand give feedback on the scripts.
And here's the reasonwhy M nights got ideas.
He's got concepts and we're goingto get into the spoilers now in
just a few minutes, but he needs toput some more meat on these bones.
Just hinting at a theme, just having onescene that is an emotional culmination

(01:42:25):
thematically to the film is not enough.
You need to build up to that.
And on the other hand, you haveJordan Peele, where his films also
have big hooks and are fun, literallyjust joyously fun, surprising and
exciting to watch in theaters, at leastthrough those first three, obviously.

(01:42:46):
But simultaneously they are so overloaded.
He is so overanalyzing the material andputting so many layers of reads onto it.
Which I love, by the way, and filmcritics obviously love to have multiple
reads on what notepad represents.
And also that it's winking atblockbusters at the past, like
Close Encounters and Jaws.

(01:43:08):
So they love all thefilm history in there.
They love some of thetechniques that are being used.
They love the use of music.
They love the comedy that's baked in, andthey love the thematics that are ownership
of image and how that's been used.
Taken away from the african americanpopulation in this country since
the birth of film Basically justsome of the themes that are in

(01:43:31):
nope, and it's so overbaked.
It's so overly thought out So I thinkthat two of these together these two
filmmakers together would be good foreach other because peel would be like
man That scene there And trap and thatscene there great, but you need to
cut out like 50 percent of this andyou need to like connect those themes

(01:43:51):
somehow and you need to work on that.
And he would prop up this verythin, uh, thematically, , film
like trap for example.
And alternately, you could take theseven or eight sociological reads
on each one of peel some films.
And be like, let's peel that back liketo two or three and save some of that.

(01:44:13):
Say some of that thematicsfor another film.
So they could balanceeach other out basically.
All right.
Finally, finally, here we go.
We're getting to the spoilers of Trap.
So the inspiration forthe film itself Trap.
Shyamalan has described it as Signsof the Lambs being set , at the
Iris tour, the Taylor Swift tour.
And he had also seen his daughter inconcert, and as he was writing the script,

(01:44:37):
he started to integrate her into the plot.
The songs, by the way, if you listen tothem, the lyrics, which Salika wrote for
the film, are referencing the internalturmoil within the characters or directly
referencing plot points within the film.
This is a little bit of a cornytechnique, but it is also something

(01:44:58):
that happens in Bollywood films.
So there is maybe I'm being, or maybeI was being overly critical in my
analysis in how they don't cut awayfrom a lot of the music and how it's
continuously running throughout thewhole entire film, or at least the first
half or a little more than half of it.
So maybe there's more intentionalitythere to use the music to give

(01:45:22):
some interiority to the characters.
I don't think it works that well.
It's a little too on the nose.
I do see what they're going for, andit does work sometimes, to be honest.
The setup, as I mentioned, they end upat this Tanaka arena, I think it is.
By the way, even thoughthe film is supposedly.
In Philadelphia, this was shot inCanada and Ontario at an abandoned, uh,

(01:45:47):
arena that I think was being renovated.
So this is not in Philadelphia, didn'tshoot there, although in the plot of
the film, yes, this is Philadelphia.
I guess they needed to, I didn't eventhink about it, until I read that
factoid, but You do need to basically beinside of this arena for months, right?
There's so much of this filmthat is shot within there.
So you do need to have full accessfor quite some period of time.

(01:46:10):
And that would be almostimpossible at some active arena.
So that all makes sense.
And they probably got it at a budget.
If they go to some semi abandonedlocation, this father and
daughter end up at this arena.
They're going to see Lady Raven,this fictional pop star, and
she only sings trap music.
No, I'm just kidding.
That would be actually aninteresting, uh, decision.

(01:46:31):
And we see a very large police presence.
We see that Josh Hartnett, hischaracter Cooper, is very intrigued by
this, or wary of it, uh, definitely.
And outside of his purview, we see moreand more police showing up probably
15 minutes, 20 minutes into the film.
He takes a break from his daughter.
He says he needs to run to the bathroom.

(01:46:53):
And while he's in thebathroom, he actually has an
app installed on his phone.
with a camera, and you see thathe has somebody trapped somewhere.
Another trap.
Oh, we've discovered over the courseof time that his daughter , is
having a fight with one of the girlsin her class, and the mom and that
daughter are here at the concert.
He runs into the mom, who's a verypushy, Identifiable character.

(01:47:16):
We probably all have.
I mean, it's a little chilly.
I know someone who looks like this.
That reminds me of this character ina lot of ways in her performance as
well in real life, but this overlyenthusiastic, a Karen, basically the
stereotype of a Karen and interestingly,throughout this early part of the film,
we are always empathizing with it.

(01:47:38):
Someone that we know is a killerand not just No, he took somebody's
money or he actually raged outand bonked somebody on the head.
He apparently is Viciously butcheringpeople so he has some compulsion
to dismember people Oh, I forgotto mention in the opening credits
There is actually pretty cleverbut doesn't pay off later on.

(01:48:00):
I was actually hoping it would thatwe see Uh, the credits are just
implied that it is a torso we'reseeing and that it's being cut up.
Like you see those diagrams ofthe cuts of meat on a bull.
And of course the butcher that correlation, , and then , the names on the, in the
credits have pieces of them missing.
So once again, very grizzlyjoke that put into the.

(01:48:24):
Credits themselves but fun init of itself and it doesn't even
call attention to itself It's justdoing it in a very subtle way.
So I did appreciate that very stark blackand white credits, but we are very much
sympathetic to this Supposedly brutalmurderer we all can empathize with going
to a concert or going somewhere with ourdaughters And having to smile and grin

(01:48:47):
and yes, I'm having a great time, honey.
And then the encounter with themother of the bullying girl.
So our empathies are very much, oursympathies are very much with this killer.
Cooper goes and befriends, and we see thisin the trailer, one of the workers at the
arena who tells him, I'm not supposed totell anybody, but he tells him, uses that

(01:49:07):
facade of the doting dad to get him to.
Explained well, what's going on right now?
And this is when he lays it all out.
This is a trap that's being set.
They know he's going to be here.
It's a little questionablethat they know he's going to be
there, but we'll get to that.
And this is the butcher.
Have you heard about the butcher?
And he tries a few different escapes here.
Initially, he knocks somegirl down the stairs.

(01:49:27):
Once again, the juststraining credibility here.
We see that they have put cameraseverywhere and that any kind of suspicious
behavior is going to be Identified so heis being really suspicious anybody who
looks at the video footage of this girlgetting knocked down the stairs and by
the way anybody who Dozens of people whowere standing around her would see that

(01:49:49):
it was him and later on when he's able toHe changes costume, and when he's able to
rig up an explosion in a fryer, go throughaccess doors he's not supposed to go to.
This guy's behaving in exactly the waythat this profiler, another character
I haven't brought up yet, but there'sa profiler that we see too, played
by Hayley Mills, the child actress,Hayley Mills, who is in their ears.

(01:50:13):
Explaining this is thepsychology of this character.
This is what he's going to try to doas he's doing it on screen basically.
And yet no one, it doesn'traise any alarm bells.
So once again, these copsnot great at their jobs.
Maybe the most egregious moment here whenhe does this is when he wanders in, he's
stolen the access card from that friendlyt shirt salesman without murdering him

(01:50:35):
and goes backstage to go get some coffee.
I just got to grab some coffee guys in aroom full of nothing but police officers.
And the fact that he is never scrutinized,they are picking people out of the stands.
We got to question this guy.
We got to question that guy.
And at no time are they questioningthis guy who just randomly shows up in

(01:50:55):
these places he's not supposed to be.
Of course, if he's one of the employees,then that gives him some coverage.
But still, you got to just say, I'mgoing to question everybody because what
if he's pretending to be an employee?
What if he is?
What if he bought a ticketand he also is an employee?
You still got to question these people.
Maybe they were pre vetted.
It doesn't matter.

(01:51:16):
You got to double,triple, quadruple check.
If you are pretty certain the guy's goingto be there and they are taking this
seriously, they have basically everypolice officer in Philadelphia is there.
Then you got to question this guy.
That's just me nitpicking.
I mean, these types of movies,you got to have huge gaping holes.
Unless you are signs of the lampscheck out my review re review of

(01:51:37):
science and lamps because that movieis pretty tight That's a tight script.
By the way, the whole interactionsbetween This woman with Cooper.
She keeps running in to her andthe daughter and all of that I am
pretty sure there is a cut of thisfilm when Cooper kills this woman
I'm pretty sure there is becausethere's just too much going on here.

(01:52:00):
That is not exploredfurther I'm And that's it.
And if I'm right about that, it'sinteresting that it's not here because
once again, I think they're tryingto make us sympathize with this
guy, which is pretty strange, right?
We are get to hear that he'sthis horrible, brutal killer,
but we never get to see it.
So it allows us to sympathize with him.
And that is pretty interesting thatthe film is making us sympathize.

(01:52:22):
Sympathetic to him in, in many ways.
I'll get into some of theother ways it does as well.
Even seeing him as a victim in some ways.
So it's an interestingchoice to say the least.
He steals a police radio at some point.
So he's listening in on theirinvestigation, this profiler who's feeding
them information, what to look for.
They somehow know that hehas a tattoo on his wrist.
That is not explained.

(01:52:43):
I mean, I can't imagine how thatpossibly they have that detail.
He does do some clever things here.
I don't know how he, nobodynotices that the oil is boiling
in the deep fryer for that long.
, I do like when he sneaks up onto the roofand then he has taken off his jacket and
stupidly left the card he needs in thejacket only to realize that the apron that

(01:53:07):
he's stolen Has someone's wallet in it.
And of course, luckilythere's the card as well.
So there's these narrow escapes.
This is all fun stuff.
The once again, interesting thatthe actual suspense is coming from
our alignment with the killer.
Pretty weird.
And that flips.
Uh, so that's an interesting,this, the design to the story.

(01:53:27):
Early on, we hear that there's onlyone way that anyone gets in and out
without being thoroughly screened again.
And that's through backstage.
So as soon as you hear that, youknow, that's going to pay off later.
And of course, it turns out thatsomebody in the audience is going to get
pulled up on stage to sing or dance, Ishould say, with, you know, Lady Raven.
So, of course, Cooper finaglesthis, running into her quote

(01:53:51):
unquote uncle, who's played by M.
Night Shyamalan, of course.
Always has to be in his own films.
He makes up some story.
She had cancer.
Don't bring it up.
It's very sensitive for her.
Of course, conveniently.
And, of course, he gets her backstage.
It all works out perfectly.
This seriously pisses off her bullyfriend in the crowd, which we witness.

(01:54:11):
Oh, I forgot to bring upthe fact that he is haunted.
Ted Cooper is haunted by this.
old woman, and that the profiler,who's also an older woman,
sends him into panic, basically.
And we know M.
Night is afraid of old people.
That's a theme in all of hisfilms, or almost all of them.
So once again, I'm not sure what I, theremight be a Freudian read on this film.

(01:54:33):
And some of that is actually interesting.
There is a tension in the filmwhere I thought that they were
going to be able to pay that offin a better way than they did.
But once again, maybe hints at adeeper film around the same material.
At this point, the concert's ending,he has successfully gotten backstage.
Very funny kid cootie for me.
Anyway, very funny kid cootie cameo.

(01:54:54):
And at this point, we're morethan halfway through the film.
It looks like he's about to makehis escape and in my mind, I'm like,
well, these idiots have just given aclear path to him out the back door.
None of these people get scrutinized.
He's finagled to have her evendrive them out of the place.
So it looks like he's going to, Hey,I'm gonna exit through the back door.
Thank you so much for everything.

(01:55:15):
But then this assistant, thispersonal assistant to Lady Raven
mentioned the fact that you seethose like 20 guys down there.
Hey, we just have to do a little extrascrutiny, a little extra talking.
Now we just have to get asecondary interview on the way out.
And then we'll be on our way.
And of course, this is when he knows.
that there's no way out.
He's basically requested, explicitly bentover backwards to set up the circumstance.

(01:55:39):
And this is when he'sfinally truly trapped.
Oh, we also see here, like reallythrown in out of nowhere that it's not
only that this was an arbitrary Okay.
So, event that Lady Raven wasn't evenaware about this whole sting operation.
She's deeply vested in it.
She's talking to the profiler.
She has apparently spokento the profiler about this.

(01:56:00):
So good for her for preparing,I guess, for the night.
And we see them speaking here.
And this is when Cooper takesher aside and says, Oh, can
I talk to you one on one?
I got to ask you a couple questions.
I don't want to talk infront of my daughter.
And this is when the story takes oneof its dumb, this is how it goes for
the rest of the film, a dumb decision.
And then, Oh, well, that's clever.

(01:56:20):
And then a dumb decision.
And well, that's clever.
The dumb decision is that to write atthis moment, that the way he's going
to get out of this is to show her avideo and saying, this guy's going
to die of carbon monoxide poisoning.
He's a firefighter.
So he knows about carbon monoxide.
I've put one in this room.
You see it right back there.
That guy in this video, I'm the butcher.

(01:56:41):
I'm the guy you're looking for.
And this guy is going to dieunless you do exactly what I say.
You are going to escort us outthe back, say, we're clear to go.
We're not going to be questioned.
The cops, by the way, are justgoing to take her word for it.
They're not going to belike, hold on a second.
Maybe she's under duress.
Maybe something's going on.
Maybe they would have a phrase thatyou could say in the same way that they

(01:57:05):
have phrases for whether you're allowedto be in a part of the arena or not.
Maybe they have a phrase where atany time if you encounter the killer,
because they literally say this, one ofyou right now speaking to the killer,
maybe there was a ripcord you can pullto say just the word that would alert
them that this is going to happen.

(01:57:25):
I am pretty sure that there would bea safe word that they could call out.
But that doesn't happen.
Instead, she decides, and by the way,she doesn't decide, well, I'm going
to let this guy escape because evenif that guy dies, even if this guy's
not bluffing, at least that's onemore death instead of dozens more.
This is what's going throughmy mind at the moment.

(01:57:45):
And she says, okay, I'll do that.
No problem.
Let me escort you out of the building.
And I'm like, okay, thisis A dumb plot point.
And it did turn me off here, but itdoes set up an incredible turn here.
He says, Hey, why don't you justdrop me off at the next block?
We're parked right down the street.
Thanks so much for all your help.
We loved your concert.

(01:58:07):
Now what's crazy about this is that.
Now again, she could let him exit the car.
He just wants to get out of the car.
As soon as he gets out of the car, shecould just follow him be on the phone
or on the radio with the cops and say,I am in pursuit of the killer right now.
He's parked in this parking lot.
He's with his daughter.

(01:58:27):
This is the color of his car.
Or if they're on foot, cause hedoesn't want to get into his car.
Then of course, exacerbatesthings right there.
So once again, she could havestopped things inside of her.
the facility.
She could have stoppedthings at that moment.
The only reason she doesn't doit is because she doesn't want
that kid that's trapped to die.

(01:58:48):
Even though who knows if thatvideo is even a live video,
maybe the whole thing is.
is a scam, but she takes him athis word for whatever reason.
And she does turn the tables hereby saying, Hey, you know what?
I'm going to drive you all the way home.
And of course the girl immediately,his daughter immediately picks up the
phone, calls the mom as she would do.

(01:59:09):
And she has turned thetables on him a bit.
And this is when we get to the part ofthe film that I said is kind of spoiled by
the trailer because you wouldn't have seenthat there was going to be a another whole
section of the film outside of the arena.
If you hadn't seen it in the trailer,maybe there was a decision that people
were turned off in the first trailerwhen they thought, well, nothing

(01:59:30):
else is going to happen here, but no,we're only in the arena for about half
the time, a little more than half.
And they show up at Cooper's house.
And once again, I don't understandhow she has not sent an SOS on
her text, even to her driver.
I don't know why shehasn't done a lot of this.
She just walks into the house.
He keeps threatening.
If you do anything, if you callthe cops, if anything happens, if

(01:59:52):
the cops show up, that kid is dead.
Okay, fine.
But how does she walk into thathouse and what does she think
she's going to accomplish there?
She's walking into another trap.
So this is kind of interestingthat the movie is moved from one
trap to another, and this is tense.
As the scene plays out, thisis where there's a hint here
of a more interesting film.
You can imagine another scenariowhere this is the trap, where

(02:00:16):
somebody is now in a circumstancewhere they know they're in danger.
They're trying to protect the peoplein the house and get them out of there.
And how do they do it with Warningthem without playing their card too
much in a way, she would need to benaive to what's happening here for
this tension to be even stronger.
Potentially, that's not the film we get.
This is just a simplerversion of that same dynamic.

(02:00:38):
But these scenes are tense, by the way.
They are definitely tense . Andhonestly, it's just because I don't
know what's gonna happen next.
And another thing I'll compliment thisfilm for is that in modern horror
films, oftentimes they will ignorecell phones because it's like, you
know, there's no radio signal here.
I dropped it when I was running.
I, it got smashed.

(02:00:59):
Oftentimes, we have to remove thecell phone from the circumstance
to move the plot along.
And what I'll say is thisfilm is the opposite.
Everything is so technological.
Everything is so cell phone based.
We have Josh Hartnett saying, you can'tsay anything right now because I can
remotely kill this guy on my cell phone.
Second cool thing that happens with thephone is when she invites the daughter,

(02:01:23):
Riley, I think her name is, to sit byher and play at the piano together.
Just one more song before she leaves.
'cause he's def definitely tryingto get her out of the house.
And honestly you have to assumethat there's a real chance that he's
trying to kill his family off here,so they may be in danger as well.
Like the movie, the stepfather,better to kill them off than

(02:01:44):
let them know his true identity.
And she steals Riley's phone,importantly because she says,
Hey, let's take a selfie.
Ri can't find her phone, so ofcourse she grabs dad's phone.
Let's just take a couple of photos.
And then she jumps into the bathroom.
She now has three phones, by the way.
She has her phone, she has Cooper'sphone, and she has the daughter's phone.

(02:02:06):
She goes onto the app.
She starts asking.
I'm not sure why there's two waycommunication on this murder app.
I guess it's, you know what?
I guess it's just like ananny cam or something.
So I guess the technology'snot as nefarious, despite
the logo for this thing.
It's not just for serial killers anymore.
So they have two way communication.
She starts speaking to this trapped guy.

(02:02:29):
He has enough information, prettyslight, but hey, what if you
could have millions of detectivesall looking at the same time?
So now she pops out her phone and she goesonto Instagram live and she Reaches out to
all of her fans and says, Hey, anyone inthis area near Philadelphia, outside New
Jersey, does any of this sound familiar?

(02:02:50):
And she stays on the phone.
By the way, Cooper's freakingout, trying to kick down the door.
Of course, that would make too muchof a show and panic his family.
So he doesn't kick down the door though.
That probably was the rightchoice given how things turn out.
And she stays on the phone until somebody,one of her fans says, I'm on my way.
My uncle's with me.
We're heading to the house.
We're going to go check it out.
And when the door opens here, finally,HeartNet gives a really good performance.

(02:03:13):
You just see him tryingto keep things together.
This controlling monster that's so usedto keeping everything so well defined.
And it's as if we see him in a reallyimposing light for the first time.
This is very well done, I think, by hisperformance and the way he's photographed.
By the time he looks at the app again,This happened very quickly, by the way.

(02:03:33):
He victim has been released, beenrescued, and he decides the jig is up,
and he's going to take Lady Raven asa hostage, probably for leverage later.
And here's where we realized thatLady Raven has done her homework.
And like I said, there's a lot of actingrequired here on her part, surprisingly
that this should become so central tothe plot here, even beyond the being

(02:03:56):
on stage, she's been coached by thisprofiler that she probably had, he
probably had a domineering mother, andshe starts to play the part of the mom
and simultaneously Um, reach out to thiscompassionate side of him, potentially
not sure how this profiler knows that.
Well, maybe he knows he has a family now.

(02:04:16):
He's a family man now.
So there is a paternalside of him as well.
And Hartnett plays us pretty well.
He is both acknowledging the factthat you are messing with me.
Get out of my head.
I know what you're trying to do, but itis still throwing him off a little bit.
And this is actually a pretty effectivescene, especially on his part.
And then we think, well, here it is.
The movie must be coming to an end.

(02:04:37):
And the only reason I think that,by the way, he, he lets her go.
She's with the family now.
He walks back into the houseand closes the garage door.
The family obviously is freakingout about the circumstance.
And the dumbest cops in the world, again,are surrounding the house, they can see
him through the windows, he's washingthe dishes, his OCD's kicking in, and

(02:04:58):
it really does feel like, well, thisis where it's gonna end, even though
I knew right away, I'm like, well,there's, he's gonna blow up the house,
or he's got some other escape, speakingof that Silence of the Lambs reference,
here's at least one place where They'retrying to make this connection to
signs of the lambs with these escape.
They don't pull off the brilliantescape sequence from signs of the
lambs, obviously something theyshould have tried to emulate more.

(02:05:21):
I think not in itsdetails, but in its effect.
And for whatever reason, they take areally long time to get into the house.
They say, Hey, get the family out of here.
They don't even have twoSWAT members in the car.
They only have one.
And of course it's Josh Hartnett.
It's Cooper.
Who has escaped from the housebecause I thought there might be some

(02:05:42):
kind of distraction in the house.
He actually just turned out to have atunnel that he had that connected him out.
He had taken out one of the SWATteam members and of course jumped
into the car with Lady Raven.
She's handcuffed, butescapes using her fame again.
She's able to just barely reachthe windows and in there at an
intersection, people recognize her.
This is how popular she,this is how famous she is.

(02:06:03):
She'd be like Taylor Swift orsomething in this universe.
That no matter where she is,people recognize her immediately.
In defense of the film, theSWAT team's not that incompetent
that they completely lost it.
They immediately know where he is.
He's escaped with her and they showup at the scene just minutes later.
But he, of course, has escapedwith the Lady Raven paraphernalia.

(02:06:24):
He's changed into a cap and a hoodieand left his SWAT armor behind.
They think he's inside thecar, but he's escaped again.
Again, incompetent policing here.
I mean, honestly, There is absolutelyno reason he should have escaped
these 10 times already at this point.
They are within feet of himand they cannot catch him.
And then we get to areally interesting scene.
I guess this is probably the last 10 or15 minutes of the film, which initially

(02:06:47):
looks like an incredibly stupid, Scene.
There's this convenient talk betweenthe psychologist and the wife.
She's going back to the housethe kids have been taken away
conveniently, but intelligently.
They say, you sure you don't wantus to put you into a safe house?
She says to the psychiatrist,no, I just need to be alone.
And at first I'm thinking, this is A,going to be the dumbest mistake she makes.

(02:07:12):
And of course, seeing the trailer,I know that there is, this scene is
coming, a spoiler from the trailer.
B, it's going to be some crazy twist.
They did it together.
She knew the whole time.
This is Alison Pill, by the way, whichI didn't mention in my mini review.
Giving a really goodperformance here at the end.
And this is a really good scene.
This is where the film hints at a moreinteresting version of this story.

(02:07:35):
He feels betrayed by her.
It turns out she was suspicious of him.
I do wonder about all those womenout there, wives who watch too much
Dateline, that are going to now takeany suspicion they have about their
husband and immediately think, Aha!
He's the butcher!
Or some version of it.
And they lay it all out.
I was suspicious of you.
There was something wrong with you.
You lied too easily.

(02:07:57):
I saw it multiple times.
I thought you might be cheating.
And this back and forth is really good.
Allison Pill giving a great performance.
And there are parts, like I said, therethere's Josh Hartnett leans into this
certain version of his performance.
Which is a little too repetitive.
That's the same kind of dead eyes withthe grin that you see in the trailer

(02:08:21):
that gets used over and over again.
Not only his, obviously it's thedirector's choice and the editor's choice.
So it's not just him doing that,but this is where he's at his best.
When you see the mask is slipping, yousee that he's losing control or he thinks
he's still in control or wants to be.
and understanding that theend is nigh, basically.

(02:08:41):
And his betrayal he feels from hiswife, even though he's a mass murderer.
And he basically announces that thisis going to be a murder suicide and
that he's most angry at her becausehe will not be able to see The
children again, which speaks to the,you're not all bad theme of the film.
This is a really weird thing.
She gets him to eat a piece ofpie, which I mean, you don't

(02:09:04):
eat anything that this person isgoing to give you just by 2 cents.
I saw this coming a mile away.
She's poisoned him.
He's either on death's door orat least highly intoxicated.
And yet somehow gets tasered multipletimes and all of a sudden has
superhuman strength and almost killsone of the officers who tasers him.
But when he's intoxicated, by theway, there's this actually very cool

(02:09:25):
effect, once again, hinting at whatcould have been a more interesting
film, where he sees this ghostlyvision of his mom again, telling him,
you're not all bad, you can be saved.
And he's saying, no, I can't be.
And just these hints, just these hintsof this trauma he must have felt.
suffered when he was younger.
And of course, this is another trap.

(02:09:46):
No, there's the theme again, that henow thinks that he's in the clear.
Oh, I forgot to mention, of course,that in this excellent exchange
with, uh, Alison Pill, that it turnsout that she in a way trapped him.
She followed him to this place.
It wasn't a place where he held people up.
This is actually an interesting detail.
He, it's not a place where he wastorturing and dismembering these people.

(02:10:11):
It was just a place where he sat.
And he calmed himself and he plannedand just that aspect of his personality
troubled her so much that shesays, well, maybe, maybe it's him.
And she left a clue.
She's the one who left theticket, which was the clue that
triggered this whole entire thing.

(02:10:31):
Because she thought either it's him andthey'll catch him and I won't feel guilty
for not having done anything or it's not.
And then I'll know that it's not him.
Yeah.
And of course he sussed this outas well when he found out over
listening in on these police radios.
Another dumb thing in the plot, bythe way, that do not be talking on

(02:10:51):
the open bandwidth or, or during thetraining sessions or wherever this
data, this information leaked aboutall these details of the investigation.
You only need the amount of informationyou need to know, and that's going to be
that this is the age range of this guy.
He's going to be at this place.
He may be trying to imitate an employeeor somebody else while he's there.

(02:11:12):
That's it.
Focus on those things.
Don't worry about all these other things.
So it's convoluted to say the least thatany of that information would leak out.
But it is the thing that clued himinto the fact that His wife was
the one that probably gave him up.
Anyway, he gets tasered, finally arrested.
He's in full shackles and they're aboutto put him into an armored vehicle.

(02:11:33):
When he sees his daughter's bicycleknocked over, please, please just let me
fix this one thing, which of course we'resupposed to think it's his OCD, but I
immediately knew what was going on here.
Look in silence of the lambs and Mnights making this correlation himself.
openly when he's talking about this film.
Hannibal Lecter is notallowed to get a pen.
This guy murders with a pen.

(02:11:54):
Hannibal Lecter could have killed an armyof people with the spokes on a bicycle.
You do not let HannibalLecter next to the bicycle.
And you don't let this guynext to the bicycle either.
He just takes one spoke.
But of course, that's enough for himto release himself from his prison.
handcuffs.
And that's where we leave things.
He's in the back of that armored vehicle.
He's being transported to whoknows where for processing.

(02:12:17):
He has freed himself from his shackles.
He's there by himself, by theway, no one else in the back with
him, of course, conveniently.
Uh, there's no cameras back thereeither, surveilling him either.
So, is he going to springout and escape once again?
Are there going to be 15 cops and he'sgoing to be able to take them all out?
Who knows?
Who knows?
It's all pretty silly, but I hada lot of fun with it in no small

(02:12:37):
measure for its very silliness.
All right.
A couple of things here at theend that I want to call out.
Oh, of course, there's a bonus scene, bythe way, in the credits, if you missed
it, is a bonus scene where that t shirtsalesman freaks out when he discovers
on the news that he had helped Cooper.
He's like, I helped that guy.
I helped that guy.
Speaking of the.
Connection to Jordan Peele.

(02:12:58):
He's obviously trying to get someof that finale of get out humor in
there with little, you know, littlerel much more effective in that film.
So any question that this is supposedto be comedic, obviously we have
answered here to a large extent in thatfinal moment, but I want to call it
a couple of things as I was watchingthe film, when I saw the Haley Mills

(02:13:21):
character show up, the psychiatristat first, I thought, wait a second,
is she possibly the psychiatrist from.
Split, Glass, or some correlation.
I needed to double checkthat when I left the theater.
Because in its tone, this film couldvery well exist in the universe of Split.
And I honestly think the reason thatwe have this potential redemption

(02:13:44):
arc, that this serial killer can beredeemed, they're still good in you,
that I think he wants redemption.
M.
Night, that is, wants to turn this intoa recurring character in other films.
I predict that if this film isa hit, and I don't know if it's
going to be big enough to warrantthis, but if it is a hit, I predict
that we will see this characterextended in the mythology of the M.

(02:14:08):
Night films, because thiscould very well be M.
Night.
You know, he's very strong.
Uh, I actually thought at one pointin the film, he says that he has a
sense, he has an urge, a need to kill.
And I thought about the BruceWillis character in Unbreakable
and how he touches somebody andthen he can see that they're there.
Evil.
So could you imagine that somehow thischaracter becomes like a Dexter character

(02:14:32):
where he can use that power not to killgood people, but to kill bad people?
And there was even a second where I'mlike, well, maybe he is killing bad
people and he's actually one of thesesuperhumans, a superhero maybe even,
that we saw in those other films.
But then when he explained that he hadthe urge to kill Lady Raven because
she's someone who had this aura, thissense of being complete, and that he's

(02:14:56):
a butcher, he cuts people up to tellthem that they're not complete because
of, you know, theoretically, if we'regoing to psychoanalyze this legitimately,
that he has this missing piece himself,and he wants to remind everybody else
that they also do, um, This does notsound like the power of a superhero
But the pathology of a super villainor maybe just a run of the mill
villain, but maybe they can turnthis power around, or maybe there'll

(02:15:19):
be some other character that canchange his behavior in the future.
I do think.
M night.
If this film makes money is goingto want to extend this universe
or even intersect it with thesplit glass unbreakable universe.
All right.
As I'm writing this, it's tooearly to know how this film is
going to perform at the box office.
I'd like to make box office predictions.

(02:15:41):
I feel if audiences connect with this,this could be a 30 million opening weekend
and this could make 70 or 80 million.
If people reject it, if they laughat the inclusion of his daughter, M.
Night's daughter in the film, forexample, it could only end up making
50 or 60 million, maybe 100 millionworldwide, which is still a hit for

(02:16:01):
a film of this scale, but I don'tknow if it would be an extended
universe style hit, but we'll see.
Does it perform like The Visitsor does it perform like Split,
or does it split the difference?
By the time you listen to this, some, uh,box office numbers should be rolling in.
If I'm going to give this film anykind of earnest read, I do think, is

(02:16:23):
this about the way that being a parentchanges our relationship to ourselves,
that selfishness, that focus on our.
own internal dramas and drives issubverted by, uh, being a parent.
I mean, I think that's actually true.
So it's an interesting metaphor to putin place here is M night making some

(02:16:45):
kind of commentary on himself, this OCDcontrolling director and how he needs to
code switch when he is directing versus.
He does not have a reputation,by the way, of being an abusive
and controlling director.
I think most people who work with him are,actually say he's very nice to work with.
So maybe he's just beingself critical there.

(02:17:08):
But he wouldn't be the first filmmaker,whether it be Hitchcock or in the
movie Peeping Tom or Lars von Trier,for example, to make a film in which
the director surrogate who tormentspeople for his own viewing pleasure.
I just saw old recently, for example,and we literally have a scene where
M night is watching the people ageand die on the beach in terrible

(02:17:30):
ways from a distance via camera.
So this would not be the first time thata filmmaker, even this filmmaker has.
used the connection between a killerand the director who is puppeting
these people for his own sadisticenjoyment and hours as an audience.
So maybe M nights being a littleself critical, , self reflection,

(02:17:52):
or maybe it's just him winking at.
Rear window or winking at keepingTom or people winking at other films
in which the director is correlatedto a killer and Exploring those
themes although very lightly here.
I think all right mixed bag avery silly film Entertaining you
can't take any of it seriouslyfor a minute Which is unfortunate.

(02:18:15):
I'd like to see him to make somethinga little more, a little deeper,
especially after Knock at the cabin.,which was definitely more earnest
despite its failings at the end.
But once again, didn'tmake a lot of money.
And if he wants to keep subsidizing theseself funded films, he needs to have hits.
And this one's probablygoing to be a lot bigger.
I guarantee it'll be bigger,uh, maybe even a lot bigger

(02:18:38):
than, uh, Knock at the cabin.
All right.
That's the episode.
Thanks for listening.
I hope you enjoyed it.
And I'll talk to you soon.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Dateline NBC

24/7 News: The Latest

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}From 'The Sixth Sense' to 'Trap' : Exploring the Highs and Lows of M. Night Shyamalan's Career

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Dateline NBC

24/7 News: The Latest

All Episodes

From 'The Sixth Sense' to 'Trap' : Exploring the Highs and Lows of M. Night Shyamalan's Career

On Purpose with Jay Shetty