You can insult the guy all you want, but M. Night Shyamalan has given us "The Sixth Sense" and "Unbreakable" and the movie world is a better place because of the existence of those films. "The Village" and "Signs" weren't half-bad either. Of course we also got from him "Lady in the Water," "The Last Airbender," "The Happening" and "After Earth," four of the worst movies released in the last decade or so. Those films have greatly affected the latter part of his moviemaking career. They were big-budgeted hogwash machines that ended up putting a negative mark on Shyamalan's reputation. Why would a studio trust him with a big project ever again? They haven't since "After Earth" and it seems to have sparked a fresh new creative freedom in the director.
He made his most "watchable" film in quite a bit of time last year with the low-budget horror movie "The Visit," a film that could creep you out and at the same time have you not take it too seriously, but the real comeback might come next year. "Split" starring James McAvoy had a secret screening at Fantastic Fest last month and the reviews were, shockingly, positive. Like his best movies the less you know the better, but what we do know is that James McAvoy plays a man with dissociative identity disorder, he has 23 personalities and his body chemistry can make him change at any moment to another voice. He ends up kidnapping two women and the plot unravels from there although I figure a major twist will happen by the end of this shindig.
Co-starring with McAvoy are “The Witch” actress Anya Taylor-Joy, Betty Buckley, Jessica Sula, and Haley Lu Richardson. “Split” opens on January 20, 2017.