The Slop Lord - Split: Media Club Plus S02E09
Transcriber: Jay (jay8325)
Introduction        1
[1:15:00]        44
Introduction
[“Dr Malcolm and Friends” by Jack de Quidt begins playing]
Keith: Greetings from Media Club Plus, a podcast about plunging into the media that thrills us and the stories that chill us. As always, we have been dragged to you by Friends at the Table. Before our next season, we'll be subjecting ourselves to the twisted mind of M. Night Shyamalan.
Sylvi: Subjecting ourselves is right.
Art: Yeah, here it is, the promised twisted mind of M. Night Shyamalan.
Sylvi: Someone should have untangled this guy's mind.
Keith: We all get—
Sylvi: Someone should have untwisted it.
Keith: We all get that twisted mind is a pun on that he does twists in the movie, right?
Sylvi: No, Keith. Yeah. Oh, real? Okay.
Art: Ohhhh.
Keith: Oh. Well, I say it because other people also didn't get that.
Sylvi: Phoenix down.
Art: Phoenix down.
Keith: I can't make heads or tails of this thing.
Ali: Do we want to go over the—
Art: What, this very strange movie we just saw?
Keith: Yeah.
Ali: The production struggles of this episode? I guess people know about it from hearing the podcast, but we were originally not going to do this movie. 
Art: Yeah.
Keith: Right, this part of it. Yeah, sure.
Art: Yeah.
Ali: 'Cause this, Split and Glass, because despite not seeing this movie, I think I've seen like, maybe 40% of it on cable TV sometimes. Watched it fully for the first time. Knew the twist, knew the franchise. 
Art: Is that what you're saying is the twist here? 
Ali: Created here. It's not a twist. It's a little, it's a little, hey, got ya. Hey, I got you.
Keith: It's a little bit of a hey, I got ya. Yeah.
Art: I think if you say there's a twist in this movie, it's, it's something different. I also think—
Ali: Yeah, fair, fair, fair. Well, it's like, it's a reveal. Can it be a reveal?
Keith: It's definitely a reveal.
Ali: Okay, that this takes place in the, uh, Unbreakable universe. Again, a franchise attempt here by, by Mr. M. Night.
Art: The UCU, as we call it, the Unbreakable Cinematic Universe.
Keith: Doesn't it have a name? Doesn't it have a trilogy name?
Sylvi: It does. It's named after the train.
Ali: No!
Sylvi: Yes, it is. I— Yes. Oh, how do I know this?
Keith: How did I know half of this? Uh, the East Rail Trilogy is what it's called. Yeah, East Rail Trilogy.
Ali: Whoa!
Art: Well, if anyone wants to use UCU, they can just have it.
Keith: Yeah, I guess. Do I want them to just have it? I can't— Can we have something for that?
Sylvi: I don't wanna.
Art: I don't think there's a lot of money in that.
Keith: In naming— In saying UCU?
Art: Yeah.
Ali: Sounds like a university.
Sylvi: It does sound like a university. 
Keith: It sounds like a sequel to the Myst game Uru. You are you, and then you see you.
Sylvi: We got mirrors in this one.
Ali: Anyway, I think we weren't gonna do this movie because it seemed kind of mid, and also there's like a lot of— It's just… [laughter]
Sylvi: Mmhmm.
Ali: As we will get into.
Keith: It's fucked up. We didn't wanna do it 'cause it's fucked up.
Ali: It's super fucked up. Yeah. And it's just like...
Keith: In a pure, pure— This movie doesn't have the wild, um, quality control issues that other M. Night movies have had. It like, plays kind of straight, like a movie that you might see in the movie theater.
Ali: That's what I was thinking. Like, technically, it's actually a very good movie. Technically. Like, like, like format and structure and, you know, putting the camera where it is.
Keith: It's at least good enough. I would say good enough. It's good enough.
Art: Look, I think you're all being very nice. It's my fault we watched this movie. I was advocating for this movie. It seems I didn't remember a damn thing about this movie except that, like, there's effective horror movie in it, and I think that that's true, but I did not remember how deeply fucked up this movie is.
Keith: It's extremely fucked up, but I— This is a— Watching After Earth and The Happening and what's the other one? The Avatar one. Those are worse. Those are way worse-ly made movies, like by far.
Art: Oh yeah. And I mean, this— Until last year or whatever, this was the highest grossing Blumhouse movie ever. And I think you could sort of see why.
Keith: Yeah.
Art: Well, I mean, look at the movies they put out. There's a lot of dogs there. Don't— Let's not— Hey.
Sylvi: You know, it fits right in.
Art: But they had a, a semi-bankable movie star. They had Anya Taylor-Joy fresh off The Witch. Like, they're catching a lot of people at the right time here to make— I was— It's like, the first thing I said to Jessica with this movie, and it was like, how— What must it be like to be James McAvoy and have to do so much work in this movie to know what the rest of the movie is, like—
Ali: Hmm.
Art: It looks so hard to do what he's doing. And like—
Ali: He's really good at it.
Art: Yeah, he's usually good at it. But he must have read the whole script and been like, well, this is kind of a dog, but I'm gonna try so hard.
Keith: Yeah, there's really not a lot of movie—
Art: I'm gonna earn my San Diego Film Critics Society Award for Best Actor in 2017.
Keith: There's not a lot of movie without him. Just simply, there isn't a lot there.
Sylvi: Which is also partially my problem with it, is how much he is the fulcrum of everything, in a way.
Keith: Yeah, he's in almost every scene. Uh, any scene that he's not in, it's because other people are talking about him. Uh, and, uh, it really just feels like he's kind of an overwhelming presence in the movie. Um, it doesn't have a lot of time to develop outside of, like, watching him do the performance.
Art: Yeah. Although we finally break the cycle. This is the longest Shyamalan movie—
Keith: Oh my God. What's the runtime? 
Art: By 15 minutes. 
Keith: Oh my God.
Sylvi: I wish we didn't. 
Ali: I know. I sat down to watch this and I was like, I, I did— I got to do this for 2 hours?
Keith: Where are you taking 15 minutes from? I mean, it felt like relatively lean.
Ali: A lot.
Art: I think, yeah, we could cut a lot of the Dr. Fletcher stuff right off the top.
Keith: Maybe.
Sylvi: Oh my fucking God. Yes, we could. 
Keith: Yeah.
Ali: Or just like a lot of backstory that just ended up being like, oh, it's sad because they were abused.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Ali: Don't you get it? They were abused. So you should feel bad about it.
Sylvi: Don't worry. That makes them— That makes them pure. 
Keith: And it makes them powerful, also.
Art: Oh my God. This movie gets a lot of shit for how it portrays dissociative identity disorder. I don't think it gets enough shit for how it treats sexual assault. 
Keith: Yeah, I agree. 
Art: Horrible.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Art: This whole movie is just like dancing on the knife edge of sexual peril.
Keith: The big reveal scene—
Sylvi: I would not say it's— I think it is fully embracing sexual peril.
Keith: Oh yeah. I would—
Art: I feel like sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't.
Sylvi: For sure.
Art: Because it's not dancing on the knife's edge.
Ali: Well, you're right. The threat is always hovering above this movie, and it's almost like, like it feels like it's being clever about the ways that it is approaching that, while stepping back and being like, oh, well, he's not gonna do this thing to these people.
Sylvi: He has, though! He does it multiple times. It's just not in the way that people are expecting him to.
Ali: And yeah, and that, like, you know, the, like, the big thing at the end is still based on, like, his access to her body is fucked. Like, I just— It's not a good movie.
Sylvi: Yeah. [Ali: I don't know.] 'Cause, yeah, I don't know. I don't know how much I wanna get into before we summarize, and we also haven't been like, hey, you should go to friendsatthetable.cash and support the show.
Keith: Yeah, that's what I was about to do. My name is Keith J. Carberry. You can find me online at carberry.deals. You can find the Let's Plays that I do at youtube.com/runbutton. You can also just search Keith J. Carberry. You can listen to all of us in various parts on the friendsatthetable.cash season of Realis, you should do that. There was an episode that just dropped, you know, while we're recording this, it dropped today? Yesterday? When did Realis come out? Yesterday?
Ali: Yesterday, technically.
Keith: Okay. Listen to Realis, it's really good. And you have to go to friendsatthetable.cash and pay us to listen to it. But there is some free episodes, like a big chunk of free episodes actually in the main feed. So Friends at the Table, listen to Friends at the Table. With me as always is Sylvi Bullet.
Sylvi: Hi, I'm Sylvia. You can find me most places by searching for Sylvi Bullet. You should also check out sidestory.show in addition to the regular Friends at the Table show because that's where we talk about video games and it's a very fun time.
Keith: Art Martinez-Tebbel.
Art: Hey, I don't— What have we talked— friendsatthetable.shop, there's merchandise there. And, and stop yelling at Keith.
Keith: Stop yelling at me.
Sylvi: It's okay. He's our friend. 
Ali: Yell at Keith.
Sylvi: We know— Oh, wow, okay.
Keith: Okay. Uh, and Ali Acampora?
Ali: Hi. Hello. My name is Alicia Acampora. I usually do sort of a short plug. I've been a short plug person. I'm gonna save all that time to do a long plug right now. I don't usually talk about this. But me and Austin Walker and Rob Zacny and Natalie Wilson, names you might recognize, do a Star Wars podcast called A More Civilized Age. We recently finished a big, uh, month-long coverage of KOTOR 2. I very much, if that sounds interesting to you, recommend that you watch, uh, listen to it. We just finished it. It's all out there. If you want to check out that show, you should go do it. However, if you're listening to this and you only listen to AMCA and you don't listen to Friends at the Table, you have to do me the personal favor of at least listening to like, two or three episodes of Perpetua. Yeah. You have to do it.
Keith: You have to do it.
Ali: You have to do it. Also, you have to go to friendsatthetable.cash and give us $5 because Janine is playing Kreia in Realis. And you should go listen to that because I think you would like it. So please.
Sylvi: Wow! You’re so right! Oh my God!
Ali: I, I'm surprised I've been the first person to put this together. I've been editing that. I've been like, wow, the timing on this is crazy. [Sylvi: Does that make me Mandalore?] Huh?
Sylvi: Am I Mandalore in that one?
Ali: Wow. Maybe.
Keith: We'll never know because unfortunately Mandalore isn't in KOTOR 2. Sorry.
Ali: Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.
Art: I don’t think we should have a religious discussion on this intro. 
Ali: Hmm?
Art: About if Mandalore— Mandalore Fates. Uh, all right, we just let that one go.
Keith: Mandalore Fates.
Art: Who does and doesn't count as Mandalore?
Ali: Oh, shoot.
Keith: Oh, okay.
Sylvi: I play the video game, and in the character sheet, that's what it says. So that's why I—
Keith: Uh, do we have anything else to say before, uh, a recap?
Ali: I don't think so.
Split [12:05]
Keith: OK, great. Um, Split, written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, director of photography Mike Gioulakis, uh, at this point known for It Follows, uh, but also was, uh, DP on Nope, uh, and becomes kind of a staple M. Night guy after this. Produced again by Jason Blum, edited by staple M. Night editor Luke Ciarrocchi, and composed by West Dylan Thordson. Hold on, someone is handing me something. It says M. Night has not worked with James Newton Howard again since After Earth. He never will work with James Newton Howard again, at least anything else that's out. [Sylvi: Wow.] He didn't even do The Visit. We didn't talk about this because I didn't know. Paul Uh, Cantelon composed for The Village. James Newton Howard is out as the, uh, perennial M. Night Shyamalan composer.
Sylvi: They broke up.
Keith: And it's funny because this movie sounded like James Newton Howard to me, I guess because they were probably trying to go for an Unbreakables—
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: Uh, Unbreakable vibe. Um, but I looked it up and I was surprised that it wasn't James Newton Howard because it sounded like him to me. Anyway, Split is weird. It's kind of a normal movie in some ways. His most normal movie since The Village. Is The Village normal? If not The Village, then Signs. There's no filmmaking gimmick like The Visit. There's no obvious quality concern like in The Happening or After Earth or Avatar. And there's no whatever was going on in Lady in the Water. What there is, though, is another shot at making monsters out of the disabled and traumatized, and never so literally as in this movie. Vincent Grey, Mr. Glass, Noah Percy, arguably all the elders from the Village, Nana and Pop-Pop, and now Kevin Wendell Crumb. The film starts on a birthday party at a mall, a group of happy teenage girls all celebrating except one. Casey Cooke, played by Anya Taylor-Joy, is clearly zoning out, barely present. She also can't get a ride home. The birthday girl, Claire, and her father and her friend Marcia have a brief conversation about the pity invite before going and offering her a ride home. But before she can get that ride home, a man dressed like a waiter, James McAvoy, gets into the car, sprays the two girls in the backseat, depicted here as unobservant and maybe frivolous, with some sort of knockout gas before turning to— [Sylvi: On that damn phone.] And gassing Casey as well. What's that?
Sylvi: They're on that damn phone.
Keith: They're on that damn phone. And they wake up in a weird dungeon. And after an initial assault on Marcia, who is saved because Casey noticed their attacker is a germaphobe of some sort, told Marcia to pee on herself, they briefly try to formulate an escape plan. The friends' ideas are dashed by Casey, who insists they be cautious. They don't even know what the situation is yet. This is when we meet the doctor, Karen Fletcher, portrayed by Betty Buckley. She works closely with her dissociative identity disorder patients and is an advocate for them in the world of psychology. And it is her love and patience for and belief in her clients that ultimately leads to so much of the disaster of the film. Damn, a mental health practitioner whose inability to see the danger before her in an M. Night film? Well, there is one way she's different than Malcolm Crowe. She genuinely believes that DID is a superhuman ability. And I guess she's right. Unfortunately, Dennis—
Art: Definitely right.
Keith: Yeah, she's definitely right. The identity who largely interacts with Fletcher in the film is, uh, is, uh, is largely able to simply be interesting enough to her to avoid her taking more serious action to stop him. Uh, meanwhile, the girls meet more of the alters who share Kevin's body. First, Patricia, a wealthy-seeming British woman, then Hedwig, a kid. These three, mostly the two adults, are the undesirable personalities. Highly traumatized and seemingly ridiculed by the other alters, they have formed an alliance using Hedwig's ability to control which alter steers the ship. Unfortunately, Hedwig comes with some drawbacks. He is a child and thus easy to trick. Casey identifies this immediately and probes him for information. He seems slightly hesitant to cooperate with the other undesirables, but even more hesitant to betray them or to work with the girls. But he does let something slip: there's a way out hidden behind one of the panels in the drywall. Unfortunately, this and future escape attempts amount to very little besides a flimsy excuse for Dennis to both separate the girls and make them progressively disrobe. In another meeting with Barry, who is actually Dennis, Fletcher has cottoned on to him by this point. She gives her best guess and our only real explanation for why Dennis and Patricia have taken control. While he was at work, a couple of teenage girls grabbed Barry, who is treated mostly as the primary alter, though we don't get a lot of information about like, the daily life of Kevin. They grab Barry and make him touch their chests under their shirts, upsetting all the alters due to Kevin's past abuse. Fletcher apologizes and says she should have taken this event more seriously and not moved on so quickly. She compliments Dennis for his control and recognizes his necessity and what he must mean to Kevin. And then she asks about The Beast, a new personality who she believes doesn't exist because he's not visible in the mindspace they all share. The Beast wants to show the world the next stage of human evolution, a stage born out of trauma and pain and suffering. A stage that is reached by sacrificially eating impure, i.e., not traumatized young girls. This is when we learn about— Learn that not all three of the girls are untraumatized. Of course, we never learn the other two aren't. We just don't learn anything about them. [Sylvi: Uh-huh.] Casey, uh, who is in the sole custody of her uncle after her father's early death, has been being sexually abused by him since she was five years old. Uh, this is what the movie posits gives her keen survival instincts, calm under pressure, and a hyper-observant nature. She uses these senses to escape where the others couldn't by being patient in the face of extreme psychological adversity. Fletcher has shown up to Dennis's work to try to reason with him, but after drugging and trapping her, he leaves her to summon The Beast. The Beast returns, kills Fletcher, eats the other girls, is briefly overcome by Kevin and Barry and the other alters, with Casey's help before the undesirables repress him, uh, bring The Beast back out, uh, and chase Casey again. She finds a shotgun but is only saved after The Beast sees her years of scars. She is pure, he declares, and simply leaves, uh, after being— That's another weird M. Night thing. The bad guy simply goes away for no reason.
Sylvi: Uh, gotta have that sequel.
Keith: Uh, she's pure.
Art: Yeah, you're setting up the— It's a trilogy.
Keith: It is a trilogy. They've gotta not have him be killed by a shotgun. Also, he has the skin of a rhinoceros, so how hooked could he be? After being rescued by a zoo worker— Oh, we learned they were at the zoo the whole time, get it?
Sylvi: That's the twist.
Keith: That's the twist. And returned to her evil uncle, uh, we cut to a diner where the news is talking about Kevin, now nicknamed the Horde, uh, and the diner patrons make a connection between him and— Who was that guy from 15 years ago? Oh wait, Bruce Willis is here to remind us. It's Mr. Glass. They call him Mr. Glass.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: And that's the movie.
Art: Um, there's, there's two— I have two corrections to this summary. Great. One, a stone cold bummer, and one, I think, much, much better.
Keith: Okay.
Art: Um, I think she does not identify that Dennis is a germaphobe. I think she's saying that she should pee on herself because of her history of being abused.
Sylvi: Absolutely.
Keith: I disagree. She's watching him clean. I mean, I do think that she has the history of being abused, and that's what gives her the hyper-observancy. But he's like, he's like cleaning everything that he's touching. She watches him do this multiple times. The camera really focuses in on it. I'm not saying it's not your thing. I'm just saying that it's, it's both.
Art: And I think that she tells the cop about her uncle at the end. I think that's the significance of showing her— She gives a very meaningful look to the police officer.
Keith: She does.
Art: And there's also a very strong parallel in that she could not pull the trigger on the shotgun in the woods in the earlier flashback, and then she does pull the trigger on the shotgun here. I think that this is the symbolic— They're symbolically showing us that she's capable of—
Keith: I 100% agree. I totally agree with this reading of this. They say that they're gonna give her back to the uncle, then the long look happens. You can see the cop recognizing what's— It's a woman cop, so they have a connection. And you can tell that something's happening there. I sort of believe that she was gonna go back with the uncle, because I think that in the next movie, she's going to kill or have already killed him.
Art: I, of course, have not seen Glass, so I have no idea where this is going. Uh, but—
Keith: That's my— This is my guess. I think that she's gonna go back and kill him, because she's— This has been a movie about, like, overcoming the thing. We see a scene in the movie where she can't kill him as a 5-year-old, which is a tall— That's a tall order for a 5-year-old to kill your uncle with a gun. Uh, and— But, but the movie— Yeah, the movie is about, like, giving her the tools to kill a man. Um, so I think that she's gonna kill the uncle. That's my bet for the next movie. Um, any first thoughts here?
Sylvi: I hated this. I hated this so much. It's been a while since I watched a movie that made me like, actually mad, but this one made me like, actually mad.
Keith: Um, here's a— I have a question, Sylvi, for you.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: Um, I know that you watch a lot of fucked up, crazy horror movies.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: What is going on in those horror movies that it doesn't make you mad like this does?
Sylvi: Um, they're not— I mean, sometimes they are, but usually they are not trying to have their cake and eat it too.
Keith: This movie is absolutely— I actually deleted that line from my intro. I think I deleted it anyway.
Sylvi: I think that's my big issue with this, is that M. Night's trying to have some sort of like, faux inspirational message about how living through trauma makes you stronger and shit like that.
Keith: And just the sensitivity, like Fletcher is kinda trying to show people how to be sensitive towards people with DID, but is proven wrong. Everything that she—
Sylvi: Exactly, you have to look at what the movie's actually presenting you. You have to look at the images on screen, and you're like, you don't believe this for a fucking second.
Keith: Yeah, her trust in Barry killed Claire and Marcia.
Sylvi: Yeah. And the treatment of those two also just makes my fucking blood boil. I— It is so weird to like— I don't know. I just, I really don't respect this movie at all for what it's going for. I think if it was more of a straightforward exploitation movie, I would genuinely think more of it. [Keith: Yeah.] But like I said, there's like constant shoehorning of the like, like— This very like, um, I don't know, uh, live, laugh, love liberal-type shit that's going on with M. Night, where he's like, we have to be so understanding, but also these people are very dangerous.
Keith: He can't be a liberal! He wrote the cookbook!
Sylvi: Shut the fuck up.
[Keith laughter]
Keith: But this is a— 
Sylvi: I’m gonna beat you to death.
Keith: I was watching it, and I was getting the same thing about like, he's trying to like, sermonize me while also proving all of his own points wrong by making an exploitation movie. Uh, 'cause it's not the first— He just did this with Nana and Pop-Pop, with like—
Sylvi: Yes.
Keith: That just happened in the last movie. But it also happens a bunch, like, The Village is really about this. It's about— They give you the, like, you know, extremely powerful blind woman as a counterbalance to Noah Percy. Which is bad to do. Don't do that.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Ali: Yeah, I've been, I've been, I've been trying to work through this in anticipation for watching this movie and also coming off of the conversation we had about The Visit, because I, I'm sorry to reference a tweet on a podcast in 2025. But I feel like it's, it's a little bit like that, that Jackson tweet where it's like, of course, we all hate the monarchy, but we love when, like, our prince is with the sword or whatever.
Keith: Yeah, I know what you're talking about.
Ali: Yeah. And, like, I, you know, in talking about the way mental illness is handled in this movie, and in horror in general, where it's like, you know, it is engaging, and it is scary, and it is tense to watch a— Somebody on screen who you can't anticipate their actions. They seem like, not in control of themselves. You know, they seem dangerous. And there's a question of like, what is going to happen to the quote unquote protagonist? Like, what's going to happen next? I'm scared, I like this movie, or whatever. But when there's all this dressing around it of like, oh, you know, they're poor victims. We're just going to help them at the hospital. And they were just talking about their kids who— And like, these sick people were so jealous that they had to do this thing to them. Or like, you know, look at this poor guy who, who, you know, there's this woman in his life who, like, really understands him and, like, really wants to help him. Yeah. But like, you know, he just can't let her in because there's this like, other dark part of him. And then to like, sit through this whole movie and to be like, they're talking about this Beast and her talking about like, is, you know, is this the next evolution of humanity? And knowing that like all of this is on purpose to connect to a superhero universe is like— [Sylvi: It's infuriating.] It makes me want to pull my hair out. [Sylvi: Yeah!] I think that—
Art: James McAvoy won't do your movie if something in it isn't about the next evolution of humanity. That's what we have to conclude at this point.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Art: If someone doesn’t talk about how—
Sylvi: That's why he's bald in this. He's Professor Xavier.
Art: He represents the next evolution of humanity, he's not coming.
Keith: I am curious about the comic book thing, because I'm not a comic book guy. Um, like, I think maybe one of the things that I was feeling in this movie is like, this is doing a— Like Unbreakable, this is doing an origin story. This is doing a villain origin story, like Unbreakable was doing a hero origin story. Yeah. And also like Unbreakable, uh, we don't actually get the culmination of the promise of the film until the last few minutes. Although I do think that this movie is like— Works more as a movie than Unbreakable does, even though it's much grosser and worse in a lot of other ways. But I don't know a lot about supervillain backstories, but it does feel— It felt to me, with no real knowledge of comic books, like M. Night was trying to take what he knows about supervillain backstories being, I think, a lot of times very sympathetic and maybe almost cartoonishly sympathetic because it makes their current state so much more— It magnifies it. Like, oh my god, so this horrible thing happened or this really tragic thing happened, this almost like, Shakespearean tragedy in your past, and now you're the Joker or whatever. Um, although probably the Joker, if I had to bet, is the— Is the— Is maybe the guy with the least bad backstory. Although there's those Joker movies. I don't know. I didn't see the second one, and I don't remember the first one at all. Anyway [Ali: Wait, you don't think—] Is he trying to do a comic book villain backstory that, it doesn't work— Objectionable content maybe aside, it doesn't work because we don't know him as a supervillain. And so to give you the backstory for a guy you don't know or care about doesn't work.
Art: Um, I don't think that's what's happening here. I mean, I get it because this is crossing into that other universe, which very much is a part of that. And I could sort of see like a '90s style take here, but this, this is a very odd way to do that, I would say. I would say that if he— That was the intent, it is— It isn't, it isn't coming across properly, perhaps because you don't find out until the end. Maybe after seeing Glass, I'll, I'll feel differently, but I, I don't think at this point that that's a— That that's what I think is happening.
Keith: Yeah, it just feels like an origin story to a story that doesn't exist.
Art: Well, I think that— Yeah, I think Glass is supposed to be that story. [Keith: Yeah.] But it is tricky because, because of all the things you've said, we get very little time with the impressive part of it. You know, this movie cost less than $10 million, and having James McAvoy do a bunch of funny voices is basically free.
Keith: Well, it's not an upcharge anyway, from his normal fee.
Art: Right. And like, the climbing on the walls bit, that's— I mean, actually climbing on the walls is pretty cheap. That's just the floor.
Keith: Yeah.
Art: But, um, but you know, there's effects in the last 10 minutes, 15 minutes.
Sylvi: And they do not look good.
Art: And they don't look great, no.
Keith: No. And otherwise, yeah, you have a couple moments.
Art: And when Dennis is like talking about The Beast, he's like, he's so tall and his fingers are twice as long. And then when The Beast comes, I was like, I can't wait to see these crazy long fingers. And then he uses the same fingers.
Keith: Well, but Hedwig is in there and is small, but Hedwig in the movie is also small. I mean, sorry, is also James McAvoy sized.
Art: Yeah. Yeah. But I feel like they are trying to tell me he's taller.
Keith: I think they are trying to tell you he's taller.
Sylvi: They use a lot of, uh, like camera trickery and stuff to make him feel taller and make him feel larger, which I think is one of the more effective filmmaking like, techniques used in the movie. Um, to give it like an ounce of credit for something. 
Keith: Yeah, damn, give M. Night Shyamalan his forced perspective badge.
Sylvi: Yeah, like, it is kind of it, right? Where it's like, okay, yeah, no, you're doing some— there's some nice-looking things here, and you are like, getting across that he is supposed to be like, big and intimidating and whatever.
Art: I think The Beast visuals work. I think the sequence where she has the gun and he's coming down the hallway and the lights keep going out, I think that's an effective sequence.
Keith: Oh yeah, he's like slashing the lights.
Art: Yeah.
Sylvi: Dude, I thought that was so silly.
Art: Yeah, but it's— But it works for me. It's— It's—
Sylvi: Fair enough.
Art: There it is. That's The Beast.
Keith: There it is.
Art: A normal guy couldn't do that.
Keith: Yeah, a normal guy couldn't do that.
Sylvi: No, you're not— You guys, you're right. Normal guy couldn't do that.
Keith: Um, they do, they do really talk up The Beast, and I just think that we don't get enough Beast.
Ali: Yeah?
Keith: Yeah. It's not that the, the length of the film doesn't like, have— You look at where The Beast shows up and you look how much time to the end, and you're like, yeah, that's not a lot of time. And he is kind of on screen for a lot of that, but there's so much of him like, okay, he turns into The Beast, and then there's like a 12-minute span where what The Beast is doing is running back to the house. And we keep getting like, clips of The Beast running back to the house, and I'm like, I don't need this. I understand that he's going back. I don't need to keep seeing him running through the streets.
Sylvi: Okay, but it did give us the really funny shot where you just see him running, and because there's a police dog barking, it makes it seem like he's barking, which I did enjoy.
Art: And then the cop's like, oh, it's an animal. See, they're underlining the thing with the— [Sylvi agreement] Yeah. Yeah, it's at the zoo.
Ali: I think that the point in this movie where I was the most uneased was I was watching it with subtitles, and when she opens— One of the doors, um, and finds not Marcy? Uh, Marcy is the blonde one.
Keith: No, Claire is the blonde one. Marcy is the brunette one.
Ali: Oh, okay. Then, then, uh, does find Marcy and is like, let's get out of here. And then she gets tugged away. The subtitle on my, my, uh, TV after she is pulled off camera just said “chewing”. And I was like, ah! So I don't know. I mean, I— A beast for sure, and also very scary. Um, movie sucks, but I, I felt scared in that moment. I was like, damn.
Keith: Um—
Sylvi: Damn. Yeah, okay.
Keith: Here's, here's something, you know, a highly qualified, you know, thing I like. You know, I'm grant— I'm just granting the reality of the movie. Something that I found interesting was that, um, the big, um, the big thing that was upsetting Dennis and Patricia and Hedwig, to a lesser extent, is that the other alters were making fun of them. Um, and I think unfortunately we don't get a lot of any of the other alters in the movie. There's only really one scene where anybody besides Dennis, Patricia, and Hedwig show up.
Sylvi: Mmhmm.
Keith: But, like, I do— It is kind of sad, this idea that, like, um— You show up to take on the trauma for Kevin. The movie wants you to feel like this is kind of a heroic thing. At least the doctor wants you to think this is kind of a heroic thing. And the movie is kind of with her on that, I think. And then to have the other people in there making fun of you for whatever reason, like, I kind of would have wanted a little bit more of that, to, like, why is that happening? How does it make you feel? Uh, what was their motivation? And how does that result in the belief in The Beast? Why is it only those two that believe in The Beast? Like, this is all stuff to me that was left on the table that was more interesting than a lot of the other stuff going on.
Art: Oh, I disagree, 'cause that would've just been more Dr. Fletcher scenes. I think—
Keith: No, that could've happened. I think that that could've happened with, the, uh, scenes with the girls. Like, it could have been Dennis talking to them, or it could have been one of the other alters sneaking through, because Hedwig is a 9-year-old boy, and he says that the other alters break through whenever he falls asleep. And so all they would have had to do was, like, have him get so tired that he fell asleep for 10 minutes instead of, uh, five minutes. You know, it wouldn't have been a big lift script-wise to get— I'm blanking on their names— Barry or Jade or whatever out to talk. And it wouldn't have been that big a lift, I think, to get Dennis to like, monologue about what his motivations were as, I guess, seemingly the guy who invented The Beast or who The Beast appeared to or what it represents, or like, what the other alters were making him feel. They just had a plan, and they just really stuck to the plan. It was kind of like— It was like, you have a bad guy who kidnaps three girls, and the fact that they're there is like, very incidental to what's going on. Like, they bare— Like, even though there's a handful of scenes with them, it's mostly the girls are making trouble and are having to be separated, having to be chased down, and there's not a lot of Dennis or Patricia, uh, like interacting with them, uh, apart from bare necessities, like giving them food or whatever. Uh, I don't know, just it felt like there was like— They were just doing their— Everyone was just kind of like, on their track, is what it felt like to me.
Sylvi: Yeah, I'm with you on that.
Keith: Anything about this first act that we want to talk about? They're in this dungeon, they were— What's that thing you put in a rag? He had a spray bottle of stuff that knocked you out. Was this for— Is this a zoo thing? Would a zookeeper have been like, oh, he's using zoo tools?
Sylvi: The zoo thing feels so unimportant.
Keith: Totally unimportant.
Sylvi: So that, like, I— Keith, you could— That's the first time that crossed my min—
Keith: Me too.
Sylvi: When you brought that up, like, maybe, but like, who give a fuck? 
Art: Yeah, I think it's— I think that what the spray is and how he got it is wholly unimportant. It's just the device that gets you to the next scene.
Keith: Yeah, I'm just curious. I just— It's because I couldn't think of the word for the thing that you put on a rag and hold over someone's mouth in a movie. [Sylvi: Chloroform.] Chloroform. Yeah, it's like in another movie it would be chloroform, and in this he's got a spray bottle. Maybe it's a spray bottle of chloroform. I have no idea.
Art: Um, it's crazy that they need a rag for chloroform. I think that's— Yeah, I think it's a spray just because he needs to be able to do it in the backseat. Like, I think this is like perhaps the most comic book-y thing. He just has fucking knockout gas. Like—
Keith: Yeah, yeah.
Art: Like it's off of Batman's utility belt. Like, there's no— There's no need.
Ali: I do really like that car scene though. It's a—
Sylvi: There’s tension and it's quite good.
Keith: Yeah, it's really good.
Ali: Yeah. Um—
Keith: That was the first time I wrote “girls in peril” in this script. Or in my notes.
Art: How many times did you write “girls in peril”?
Keith: Like, nine.
Art: Yeah.
Sylvi: That was also just M. Night's script was just “girls in peril”, and then he kept underlining it.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: And then occasionally he'd write “Take one of their shirts off”.
Keith: Yeah, that was also— I— That's when I, I, I got the feeling that we were going to get a really gross scene later on when everybody had to take off their shirts and Anya Taylor-Joy's character was wearing like, a nightgown, a huge black nightgown underneath. I was like, I think something's probably going on here.
Art: Yeah, yeah, it's like, plot relevant that Casey is wearing like, 4 shirts.
Keith: Yeah.
Art: Because she has to take her shirt off several times, but she can't take her shirt off until the end.
Keith: Until The Beast is there.
Art: Time for the reveal. Yeah.
Keith: One of the early things that they do to like, put Casey as like, not totally aligned with Claire and Marcia is like, after the pee on yourself scene, they come back and they're jazzed up to attack Dennis. And Casey's like, no, we can't attack him. He's way stronger than us. He'll knock us out. Like, we have to wait for the right time. And the movie kind of ends up being about this. Like, it kind of has this sort of— It is like, another weird have your cake and eat it too thing where I think the movie's trying to treat it as sad that like, Casey's tactic is to sort of stall and retreat and not be proactive. But also that that's the thing that keeps her alive. I don't know, I found this kind of confusing. But there was this thread throughout the thing. They say, the only chance we have is if all three of us go crazy on this guy. And then Casey says, that's not how it's going to be in the moment. And then Claire says, why do you act like you're not one of us?
Art: Yeah, this was like, the conversation that, that Jess and I had after this movie, which was, does Dennis have like, exceptional strength? And I was saying yes, and Jess was saying no. That like, could this plan have worked? Could they have overpowered Dennis? Because there's like, the two of them were able to keep Hedwig out of the room. Yeah. But Hedwig has the strength of a child.
Keith: Right.
Art: But then it switches to Dennis, and Dennis is able to like, with one arm, open that door with both of them pressed against it. And then Jessica's like, well, you could open a door if two teenagers were pushing it on the other side. I was— My point was, no, I couldn't. And we don't know many teenagers, so we can't test it. 
Keith: Not to hedge, but according to Dennis, he is the biggest one in there. So I think that he is a particularly strong, normal guy.
Art: Sure. And so the question of could they have overpowered him is, you know, at least a question.
Keith: I think it's a question.
Art: It does seem like they probably could have overpowered Hedwig.
Keith: Yeah.
Art: I don't know if you like, if you knock Hedwig unconscious, does he stay unconscious or does Dennis wake, you know, like—
Keith: Or does Barry wake up? How does that work?
Art: Yeah.
Keith: Uh, yeah, I don't know. And, and it's not like they didn't have anything. They had They had a lot of stuff in that room. They could have broken the beds down into pipes. They were on like metal cots.
Art: Sure. They go through the drywall. They—
Sylvi:Y, they should have started punching it like Minecraft. And, you know, when they, when they finally broke it down, open their crafting menu and make some, some, some clubs to beat him to death with. I don't know, man.
Keith: Yeah, I— They— Two of them treat it like, like this is our only option, and one of them treats it like it would be crazy to fight back. Um, and they don't fight back, and the— And two of them end up dead. So it didn't— It turned out to not be like, a really survivable tactic to not attack him because they died.
Art: Sure, but you— They, they— You don't know how the other path goes.
Keith: Right. You don't know how the other path goes.
Art: Though if you make him kill you before The Beast comes, do you, do you win? Because then The Beast— Did The Beast need to eat people to— The Beast lore is a little, uh—
Keith: Yeah, The Beast— I think for me, this is like, the religion part of The Beast. Like, The Beast was real, but I don't actually think he needed to eat anyone impure. That feels made up.
Sylvi: Yeah…
Keith: I don't know. I don't know. The, the, the, the metaphysics of the movie are unclear, but it seems to me like that's— Ghosts are real. I don't know. Ghosts are real.
Sylvi: It's not a ghost. It's not a ghost. There's no ghosts.
Keith: There's no ghosts, but it's an M. Night Shyamalan movie, so I'm just saying, like, there's a lot of possibilities. 
Sylvi: Sure. But I just wanted to be clear, we are not— Aside from when he gets— He takes the shotguns and just tanks them, like, otherwise there is not really anything supernatural going on until the very end of this movie.
Keith: Yeah—
Art: Well The Beast is a supernatural character all the way around, right? He can climb on walls, he can crush people with his arms, he can—
Keith: I agree. Yeah, he pulled the bars apart.
Art: Rip open the iron cage. Yeah, like The Beast—
Sylvi: Dude's on the right steroids.
Art: The Beast is Spider-Man or whatever.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: Yeah. Um, the—
Art: Spider-Man doesn't need to eat children to live.
Sylvi: Fucked up. No, that's Venom. That's Venom.
Keith: Yeah, that's Venom. Uh, the, the plot of the movie starts to become apparent when, um, the girls hear, um, Dennis and Patricia talking outside their door. Do we want to hear that?
Sylvi: I guess.
Ali: Sure.
Keith: Look, the movie's making me talk about it.
Sylvi: No, no, dude, I know, I know. I'm so—
Art: Do you wanna go home, or?
Sylvi: I kind of do, but it's fine.
Keith: I don't— I, I, I've never not wanted to talk about a movie more so far on Media Club Plus.
Sylvi: This movie, I disliked it so much it made me like movies of his even less.
Keith: The— I didn't think that it was a bad movie, but the idea of having to talk about all the things happening in it is such a mental drain on me. Like, I feel like if we were just talking about it, it would not be a problem. But the fact that this has to go out for people, I'm like, oh my god, this is a nightmare.
Sylvi: I feel you. 
[audio from Split starts playing]
Patricia: Is she in that room? 
Claire: We're here! 
Marcia: Help us! We're in here! 
Patricia: What is this? How many are there? 
Dennis: No, no, no, no, don't go in there. Don't go in there. 
Patricia: Don't worry, I'll talk to him. He listens to me. He's not well. He knows what you're here for. He's not allowed to touch you. He knows that. Mm-mm.
[audio ends]
Keith: All of a sudden he's a woman. Now that's scary.
Sylvi: Whoa! What if a man wore a skirt? That's so awful and scary!
Keith: Uh…
Ali: It's so bad.
Keith: It's really bad.
Art: What if the spirit of foreshadowing speaks with a British accent?
Keith: Uh... Is that foreshadowing?
Art: Well, England would become really transphobic in the decade to come.
Keith: Oh. 
[group hysteria]
Sylvi: High five, man. That was a good one.
Keith: Yeah, this is really used as the moment where everyone's like, holy shit, something is going on.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: This is a— This is the same guy, and now he's a woman and he's talking like a British person, which is what James McAvoy I think normally talks like. Um, and—
Ali: Yeah, I, I, I— Oh.
Keith: Go ahead, Ali.
Ali: No, go ahead. Well, I just like— Well, thinking about what you were saying before, where like there was more— There was more potential in this movie for there to be more interaction with the other personalities or the like, Patricia and Dennis versus the rest of them sort of situation. And, like, I think I sort of disagree just because I don't want to see more of this movie. I guess I don't want a director's cut of this movie at all. [Sylvi: Yeah…] Um, but I just like— The, the, like, the, the reason that that is not available in the script, it feels like, is because there's this slow burn of each of the, like, of each of the personalities in there that like, you know, that this one is such like, a shock value of like, oh, he's a lady now. And now we're all really, really scared because now this guy is really, really fucked up. Like, the, you know, the, like— And then, you know, Hedwig comes later, and then we have to, like, kind of get, you know, like, stringed along by the Dr. Fletcher stuff. And, like— Realizing the whole cosmetology stuff like that, you know, if— There's not a version of this movie that's like, respectful or interesting about the experience of plurality. And the like, thought of thinking of M. Night trying to write that movie is really difficult. Like, it just, it just feels like, it just feels like when, when you look at a picture of food and it doesn't look like, right. [Keith: Yeah.] Like, I just know that that would be such a horrid, horrid experience that like— And you know, you could argue that he's trying to do it here where it's like, oh, people should be respectful of DID. And like, this lady is really advocating for that.
Keith: Yeah, you— I mean, you see her talk, you see Fletcher talking with her, her neighbor, and her neighbor who like, doesn't believe in DID and is kind of dismissive of Fletcher's work, she is like— The script is being like, this woman is a stupid person. That is like the— It is basically text of the movie. She's like, uh, kind of rude, kind of dismissive, fearful. [Sylvi: She's watching game shows.] She's watching game shows, and then she orders a product from an infomercial. And it's like, this is one of the most stupid-coded characters I've ever seen. So the movie's making it pretty clear that this is the— This is the cake. It's showing you the cake, being like, I'm about to eat this cake. And then later it goes, just kidding, I'm actually going to have the cake.
Art: I'm sorry, I can't leave the Wheel of Fortune scene. She spends a lot of time like, lecturing the contestant that you can't spin the wheel with your thumbs.
Keith: I don't understand what that means.
Ali: Yeah.
Art: That must be how you grab the wheel. And I haven't seen a lot of Wheel of Fortune. I'm not a Wheel of Fortune person. I've probably seen fewer than 20 episodes of Wheel of Fortune in my life, but I've never seen this rule come up. [Keith: That you can’t spin with your thumbs?] Let alone that it would be happening more than one time in a single episode. I would think that they would just correct you and then cut it out of the episode.
Ali: No, she's not saying that you're not allowed to do it. She's saying that it's bad technique.
Sylvi: It's like watching an NBA game and critiquing someone's jump shot more than being like, he's fouling, you know what I mean?
Art: All right, if anyone listening knows about this Wheel of Fortune lore—
Sylvi: I don't care.
Ali: I don't think that this is true because you have to like, palm the big stick. Like, I, I'm, I, yeah, I'm not like respecting the script to actually question this. Like, I think  just couldn't think of anything better here. 
Keith: To the point where I think—
Art: Palm the big stick, what are we—
Sylvi: Palming the big stick is what M. Night was doing while writing this.
[Keith hysteria]
Ali: Because each— It's a circle, right? And there, each segment has like those big sticks pointing out of the—
Keith: You're saying you have to grab it by the like prongs?
Ali: Yeah.
Keith: OK. Gotcha.
Ali: Well, you have to like, you have to push it forward. I think she's saying that like, if you're— Oh, my God, now I’m talking about— I think she’s putting, her thumb is in [giggling]
Keith: This is what I'm trying to say. This woman is a stupid person. The script is telling you that she's weird. And crazy, you know? Like, the, the— They're trying to go like, you should have more empathy for a person who may have DID than some idiot who cares about how you spin the wheel in Wheel of Fortune. That's what the script is doing, I think. And so that we're all confused and weirded out by what, what, what she's saying means is, I think, evidence to that. [Ali: I concede.] Um, but go— But going back to Patricia quickly, I do think like, Patricia is such a, um, uh, as written, is like, uh, really malevolent to me, uh, because her goal is like, to comfort the girls and like, tell them like, don't worry, I'll protect you. I'll, you know, I'll keep Dennis from being a weird creep. Um, but this is all to her end of having them be eaten alive.
Sylvi: Yeah, and it also doesn't work when you get to the scene later where she is like, brushing their hair, and it is also played as a form of like, boundary crossing. Yeah, um, it definitely feels like it is supposed to be like, a, another prong of the sexuality that Kevin's alters are sort of forcing upon these girls.
Keith: Yeah, totally agree. Yeah.
Sylvi: And you get that with each of the main alters. Like Dennis, we're very— It's very clear that Dennis is a pedophile. They straight up say it. He likes to watch young girls dance naked. With Hedwig, there's the really uncomfortable kissing scene. Um, and then with Patricia, there's the sort of like, doting upon that happens, and they all feel of a piece to me, uh, personally.
Keith: Yeah. And—
Ali: I kept getting stuck on that because like, I was wondering if the movie in this like, oh, look at this sick, disgusting person, but also you have to respect people who are like this. I was wondering if the movie kept wanting me to question whether it was actually a performance by one guy so he could keep having access to these girls.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Ali: Because the fact that like, every personality keeps going for this sort of like, wanting to touch them, wanting to see them, wanting to, you know, you know, is the umbrella of that compulsion like, who Dennis is, or not Dennis, who's the—
Keith: Barry?
Sylvi: Kevin, I think.
Keith: Well, Kevin is the body, But Barry seems to be the main personality.
Art: Yeah, we only talk to Kevin for like a second.
Ali: Yeah, but like, was I supposed to think like, oh, you know, this is just this guy playing this whole time and he, he's just trying to fuck with them? And you know, is the question of the movie really that you should be respecting them, or is it just like, M. Night has no other way to write peril for these girls that isn't intimate and based on their bodies and, you know, whatever else. And it's not like final girls haven't been in that sort of situation in scary movies that like, it isn't, you know— I don't know. It's just like, people have done these sort of, like, you're playing the hits, but other people have done it better. Like, this is just like a really bad cover band version of it. And it's just like, hearing that drumbeat over and over again throughout this movie, it's just like, God, I fucking get it, man. Like, think of something else. And the thing that he thinks of is them getting eaten because he's a guy who works at a zoo and he knows a lot about animals, so he could— His body could become really big and eat them. It's just like, I fucking hate this movie.
Sylvi: Yeah, I hate it so much. I'm holding your hand. I'm right here with you.
Ali: Anyway.
[loud sigh from Sylvi]
Keith: Um, where, where do we want to skip to to talk about? Where— How far into this movie do we want to jump to get to something? Do we want to talk about— Do we Do you want to hear about sacred food at all?
Art: Do you have a button?
Keith: I do, yeah. Before we— I'm saying before we time skip forward, maybe we'll hear about sacred food.
Sylvi: Yeah, I don't want to skip any of your buttons. You prepared those for us.
Ali: I think this is a good one too, because it is an early line in the film that like, is interesting, like, puts things into context, makes you as a viewer sort of scared of the possibility in a way that you weren't before, where it's just like, women who are in a basement. Yeah. So—
[audio from Split starts playing]
Dennis: No, please keep your area neat. The bathroom, it's unacceptable. Make it easy, I've color-coded these. Use a blue bottle for the floor and the pink bottle for the ceramic surfaces. Patricia has reminded me that I was sent to get you for a reason, that you are sacred food, and I promise not to bother you again.
[audio ends]
Keith: I think sacred food is a fun line. That's like a fun thing to drop on your sacred food. And they don't know anything. They don't know about The Beast yet. All they know is that they're here. Dennis was making them strip, and they were having to fight him off. Patricia comes out and is like, I won't let him bother you. And then he's like, Patricia reminded me, you’re food. It is weird. He sounds kind of—
Art: That's how they're starting to get you to the next bit, right? I mean, they need to start dropping hints that there's gonna be a monster at the end of this movie.
Keith: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, but out of all of the things that this movie does inelegantly, I think that this one is, uh, the least inelegant.
Art: The least inelegant? Okay. 
Keith: I think it’s pretty good. I think it's pretty good. I think sacred food—
Art: I'm just making sure I know what you're saying.
Keith: Imagining, imagining having to puzzle out what sacred food is is scary.
Art: Mm-hmm.
Keith: Yeah. Oh, by the way, this movie has terrifying things in it, but this is another movie that I found this to not be scary at all. I don't know if anybody else was like, scared watching this.
Sylvi: No, I was too busy getting mad to be scared.
Ali: I think there were moments that were like generally sort of shocking in a way that like, you know, I think the sacred food is a moment where it's like, oh God, or the, the chewing moment that I mentioned before, or the— I think another really good scene is when you first see The Beast and it's like a top-down, um, image of him like running under a streetlight, and it's like, you know, it's like his body is being pushed to this limit and like, you know, you don't know what this thing is. I thought that was like, affecting. Um, again, I think like a lot of— Technically this movie is really good.
Keith: Yeah, I think this movie works as a storyboard. Like, I think that you— If you plot out what's going on in this movie, I think that you could like, totally make a good movie out of that. But the, the way that M. Night Shyamalan constructs his plots necessarily was going to turn this into a disaster because he doesn't— He gets latched on to ideas. He has a grandiose vision and his ability to execute on that in a way that like, isn't obnoxious and frustrating is pretty low.
Art: Um, sure. To get back to your like, question, I do think that there's— I don't know about scared, but the movie's deeply unsettling.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: Uncomfortable. Yeah.
Art: Um, because of all the, of all the peril.
Keith: Because of the peril.
Art: The very clear peril. I don't know. This is a hard movie to talk about. Because Ali's right. There's a lot of it that works and then it keeps going. [Keith: Yeah.] I'm not trying to do Jerry Seinfeld here. I want to be clear. This is not like the shtick I'm doing today.
Keith: I'm glad to know this.
Sylvi: [as Seinfeld] What's the deal with The Beast?
Art: [as Seinfeld] What's the deal with The Beast?
Keith: Now, was that you trying to do Seinfeld?
Art: Yeah, I think— Yeah.
Keith: It was definitely more Seinfeld for sure.
Sylvi: [as someone else from Seinfeld] The Beast, Jerry! It was supposed to be the summer of The Beast?
Art: How would Seinfeld talk about this story if it were on the news? I don't know, man. What if— I don't know.
[group laughter]
Keith: The secret food stuff, that's the stuff that sort of like, makes Hedwig necessary, right? Like, they're like, okay, we're, we're being saved for something. This gives us time to like, figure out what's going on. And then Hedwig comes in and is like, I'm a sieve. I'll, I'll just keep jabbering. I can take control whenever I want. I'm working with the bad guys. Uh, they promised they'll get the others to stop making fun of me, and also I can't keep my damn mouth shut, which is why the others make fun of me. And so he becomes kind of like the number one way that the, uh, the plot moves forward, because otherwise it would just be them stuck in the room. But every time Hedwig shows up, they get some new idea to escape or something. Um, and that's how— I found—
Art: Hedwig does all of the exposition in this movie. It's not even like—
Keith: Yeah, and I found him to be difficult to watch. Um, I think the— I don't think that James McAvoy has got being a little kid down. Um, I don't think the acting was good.
Sylvi: Should've learned from Giamatti.
Keith: Should've learned from Giamatti, yeah. Giamatti had it down. Get Hedwig some milk and cookies.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Art: Has everyone read the Wikipedia page? Does everyone know who was supposed to play this part?
Sylvi and Ali: No.
Keith: No. McAvoy's part?
Art: Hold on, let me— McAvoy's part, uh, a few weeks before it began shooting, Joaquin Phoenix dropped out of [Sylvi: Oh my God.] Playing the Kevin Wendell Crumb [crosstalk] slash Dennis slash Patricia slash Hedwig slash Barry slash— 
Keith: [crosstalk] That’s the right career move, I think.
Art: Yeah.
Ali: Jesus. Yeah. I'm stunlocked by the flash of possibility of how much worse this movie could have been. And I really like Joaquin Phoenix.
Sylvi: Same.
Keith: Um, although he's also now most famous for being the Joker twice, so I don't know.
Ali: Yeah.
Art: You mean his Academy Award-winning turn as the Joker?
Keith: That won an Academy Award? For what?
Sylvi: That won an Academy Award?
Art: He won Best Actor.
Keith: What? What?!
Ali: American culture is broken. 
Keith: Are you kidding me? Best actor? For the first one?
Art: For the first one, yeah. Not the second one, that was ignored by everyone, but he won best actor in a movie.
Keith: And it was that movie.
Art: It was that movie.
Keith: I saw that movie. It wasn't good.
Art: No, it sure wasn't.
Keith: It wasn't like, horrific, but it was—
Art: I mean, there's like a couple good scenes in it. Um, I love when he uh, shoots De Niro. Spoilers.
Keith: Sure.
Art: Um, but that's it. I mean—
Keith: Very similar movie to this one.
Sylvi: Sure?
Art: I guess?
Keith: I think it's a technically like, competent movie that could have been good, but is like, stuck in this thing of like, simultaneously feeding you sympathy for a character that it also wants you to view as a monster.
Art: Yeah, yeah, I see where you're— I'm picking up what you're putting down.
Keith: I never saw the second one. I heard it was a musical, which is very funny to me. 
Art: Yeah a jukebox musical. 
Keith: Oh, jukebox— oh, the worst kind of thing in the world. I don't think there's a single worst. I think that it's music biopics and jukebox musicals are the two worst genres of movie.
Art: I don't— I don't—
Sylvi: Yeah, no arguments, man.
Art: Okay, maybe I just want to—
Keith: God, nobody wants to talk about this movie today.
Sylvi: There's a lot of bad shit out there. I don't know if jukebox musicals really deserve my derision that much. I just don't watch them. I'm with you on the biopics though. It's crazy that we're still making musician biopics after Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story came out. Truly insane to me.
Art: I love that movie so much.
Keith: I've actually never seen it.
Sylvi: It is great.
Art: Oh, it's good. Stop this podcast. Let's all just watch that movie right now.
Sylvi: Oh, I would love that.
Art: Um, I can't, I have a sick kid. Um, but, but it's, it's such a good movie and it nails those movies so accurately. And then they keep making them exactly the same way. Yeah, they like— The, the movie opens with like, Dewey Cox has got to think about his whole life before he goes on stage. And they still start every one of those movies with whoever thinking about their whole life before they go on stage. It's—
Keith: The thing that makes me really mad is how it bleeds out into like, people's brains where like, people will look at an actor that kind of looks like a famous person and be like, I can't wait until they play this thing. And it's like, that's not what being an actor is. Being an actor isn't portraying the real guy you look most like. I find that to be a very frustrating cultural tic.
Art: Sure, yeah, great.
Keith: Thanks. Thanks for the support.
Sylvi: Yeah, man, I agree.
Art: Yeah, I think you're right.
Keith: Uh, everyone hates Patricia. No, not Patricia. Everyone hates Fletcher. What's Fletcher's first name? I can't remember. Dr. Fletcher.
Sylvi: Doctor, yeah.
Keith: Her first name is Doctor, yeah. I feel bad because I think in, in every scene except for one bizarre standout scene with M. Night Shyamalan, uh, Betty Buckley is giving a good performance as Dr. Karen Fletcher.
Sylvi: Completely adequate.
Keith: Um, but, uh, she just has the most dogshit to do in this, where Barry show— Or Dennis shows up as Barry, and she knows he's wrong, but she keeps getting emails from Barry being like, we need to talk, and then Dennis shows up pretending to be Barry, and she knows it's not Barry. And it's just this long, drawn-out thing of her trying to get him to admit that he's Dennis, which he finally does. And then she goes, by the way, I could defeat you right now if I wanted to, but I won't. And that's how you know you can trust me.
Art: And then she goes alone to his secret zoo lair.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Ali: Yeah.
Keith: Mmhmm. Um, and she gives that conference where she says, I believe people with DID are supernatural.
Art: Uh-huh. But she is seemingly correct in this universe.
Keith: She is correct.
Sylvi: Do you have a clip of that?
Ali: Do you have this clip?
Keith: I do have it. Yes, I do have it. Thank you.
Sylvi: Thank God.
Ali: Can we put— 'Cause it's just outstanding. Like, it's— Yeah. I didn't mean outstanding. Like, it's just—
Sylvi: No, you're— It's outstanding. It stands out.
Ali: It stands out.
Sylvi: Sure does.
Art: It's doing some standing.
Keith: Yeah, she's at a— She is at a— She's Skyping into a conference where her talk has been downgraded from the main stage to the mood disorder stage. This is like Warped Tour for psychologists.
Sylvi: You know, The Beast would fit right in at Warped Tour. They got similar tastes.
[audio from Split starts playing]
Fletcher: Differences in the identities can be dramatic, as much as the difference between you and me and every person in that auditorium. The identities have different IQs. They have different physical strengths. One personality is a Russian weightlifter and can lift three times his body weight. Their ability to hyperfocus and have different experiences is astounding. Have these individuals, through their suffering, unlocked the potential of the brain? Is this the ultimate doorway to all things we call unknown? Is this where our sense of the supernatural comes from?
[audio ends]
Keith: Is it?
Sylvi: No.
Keith: It's funny, 'cause she's right about— All of the things she believes are correct in the movie.
Sylvi: In the film, yeah.
Keith: Except for this scene, where she says, this accounts for all the mysteries of the world. And it's like, what are you talking about? I get— M. Night Shyamalan, what are you huffing before you're writing this shit? That's not what your movie is saying. Your movie has nothing to do with that, even.
Sylvi: Yeah, it's like, impress— Like, DID is already a thing that, uh, mass culture does not really understand or treat well, but it's crazy how much M. Night was like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna blow y'all out of the water with how much I misunderstand this shit.
Art: Uh-huh. I mean, it's clear he didn't read a single book.
Sylvi: No.
Art: Or even like a magazine article.
Keith: Or a forum post.
Sylvi: He might have read some forum posts.
Art: Yeah…
Ali: It's just like, it's just because like, that whole speech is like an arrow being shot to say this guy is a supervillain. Like, to, to, like, to, to, to, to take a real-life experience that people have and live with, and is already like, misconstrued and disrespected and often really mischaracterized and villainized, to be like, oh, but that's gonna be the reason why the guy in my movie is gonna turn into a beast, and Bruce Willis is gonna have to take him down.
Keith: But all you—
Ali: It's like—
Keith: But it's so confusing because all you need is the part where it unlocks something. That's the only part of this that's necessary. The part where it's like, does this explain all supernatural things in the whole world? That's totally unnecessary for this. Like, you could have a much more effective speech by having her focus more on like, what and how this unlocks. Not— And not even by writing more, just simply by cutting out the part that is like, totally superfluous at the end. [Ali: Mm-hmm.] I think that M. Night Shyamalan lives in a world where people don't listen to the words of the movie. And unfortunately, that is the real world because this movie did great and people pretty much really liked it.
Ali: Yeah. I mean, you got me. Yeah, man.
Keith: Yeah.
Art: I mean, if you went to the movies looking for a— The movie that they advertise this as, you know, a weird person kidnaps some girls. You got what you fucking paid your ticket for.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Art: M. Night Shyamalan brings you girls in peril, like—
Sylvi: Yeah, he sure does.
Ali: I don't know. Like, it's just such a weird thing because it's like, and I have, I have really a difficult time zeroing in on why. But like, there are better movies when girls are in peril. Uh-huh.
Keith: It's because M. Night Shyamalan is an annoying guy who writes bad.
Ali: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I, I, I'm just— I'm not gonna disagree there. And it's not even like, oh, I, you know, this is a bad horror movie because it's disrespectful— [Sylvi: No.] Of people's beliefs and stuff. Like, a lot of horror movies fucking suck in that regard.
Keith: Almost all of them, I think, actually.
Ali: There's just something so radioactive about this, that it just— Well, but first of all, that like, all of the work that it's even doing, like I said before, is meaningless because it's just franchising this guy's experience and being like, oh, he's a beast. Yeah, he's a beast. There's gonna be a second movie about him.
Keith: I think that Sylvi was right at the beginning when she said that like, the big problem with this movie is that it's trying to tell you like, don't worry, don't worry, like, people are actually good and fine and like, you should respect people, but also here's my movie where I extremely disrespect people. It's like, if you're going to make a disrespectful movie, just do it. Like, don't have this kind of ham-fisted attempt to squeeze some pathos out of it, because it— Because that— It only magnifies the exploitation. Like, if you're going to make something like, extremely distasteful, then, like, do it. good. Don't like, do it halfway and be like, but [nerdy voice] I'm actually a good guy.
Sylvi: It just like, like, grow up, make your movie grow up, make your exploitation movie, make it an exploitation movie that doesn't feel the need to be like, but don't worry, guys, I know that, I know that this is bad. 
[1:15:00]
Sylvi: And like, and like, there's a message behind all this. If you want to just make the fucking freaky basement, uh, like hostage movie, do it. But don't try and make it— I don't know. 
Keith: I wonder if he feels—
Sylvi: This sounds like, really anti-intellectual for me being like, just don't try and do more with it. But I guess what I'm saying is you don't— You are not that guy. You are not built to make it into something more, M. Night. This is not your strong suit, and you're working with material that is just going to make you fall flat on your face.
Keith: It’s not—
Art: Do more or less.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: Yeah, it's not anti-intellectual because like, it is the actual problem with the movie that—
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: That it spends so much time, like, hedging and trying to, like, draw, um, uh, sympathy towards the thing in general while also villainizing it, um, that it weakens the overall thing. I don't think— I think that that's— A totally accurate thing to say about the movie.
Ali: Keith, as the recap doer and the clips getter, do you have a sense of when in the movie the abuse plotline with Anya Taylor-Joy's character is starting to be revealed? Because there's something about this that's also just like, just, just really bad.
Keith: Yeah, I do. So, uh, it— They, they do like, the full reveal right after the second major Hedwig scene when she convinces him to take him, uh, to— Sorry, to take her up to his bedroom to show her his CD where he dances to Kanye West.
Sylvi: That's his main man, which got a real good laugh out of me. I'll be real.
Art: I, I had my moment there. I was like, did they really pay for a Kanye West song in this movie? And, uh, they did not.
Keith: They did not. [Sylvi: Okay.] They did not. [Sylvi: Okay. I will say—] Yeah, they implied that they might have, and then they didn't.
Sylvi: I have been very, I think, understandably critical of this movie. The scene where James McAvoy pretends to be a nine-year-old doing choreography in his room.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: He nailed it.
Keith: Yeah, that was really funny and creepy and, like— Yeah. Yeah, very weird and disconcerting and funny.
Sylvi: But also felt like the shit I was doing as a 9-year-old when I got like, a fucking song like that on a CD somewhere, where I was like, I'm gonna do some cool shit. Yeah.
Keith: But also, now imagine that you're an adult.
Art: This is the choreography from the last movie, right?
Sylvi: This is...
Keith: Yeah. Say again?
Art: This is the dance scene from The Visit that they... They had done this whole dance for— What was this? What was—
Keith: The Visit?
Sylvi: Oh, T-Diamond Stiles.
Keith: Oh yeah. Oh, T-Diamond Stylus.
Art: T-Diamond Stiles is gonna do that exact dance in The Visit, I'm convinced.
Keith: This was— I had to look this up because I had heard it as Stylus, and then in the episode we were saying Stiles, and then I— But then I wanted to name— I wanted to name the episode after him, so I looked it up and everything I saw said that his name is T-Diamond Stylus, like that you'd use on a Palm Pilot.
Art: No, that can't be right.
Keith: Everything that I saw called him Stylus.
Art: M. Night Shyamalan has to come and tell me personally.
Keith: Yeah, that's why I called him— If you saw that episode title and you were like, why did he write Stylus as the title? That's because that's what I saw online. It was Stylus. I heard Stylus when I was watching it too. So I wasn't 100% surprised when I was looking it up, but I wanted to double-check.
Ali: Can you double-check the credits?
Keith: He's just listed as Tyler something in the credits.
Sylvi: Damn, that's not his name. 
Ali: I know, right?
Art: They put his slave name in the credits. 
Sylvi: Jesus. Oh my God. 
Ali: What the fuck?
Art: I think that's fine. I think that's probably fine.
Ali: OK. Yeah.
Keith: And if it's not fine, blame M. Night Shyamalan.
Sylvi: Yeah, he did this to us.
Ali: Um, part of the reason I wanted to mention, um, the— This plotline and the way that it's kind of revealed.
Keith: Yeah, I should say, just to head into this, so the, the, the start is that they keep giving her more shirts. Everyone else is naked, uh, or like, is one step away from it. She keeps having another shirt under the thing, so that's like, the first clue. And then they also keep cutting back to the various hunting trips with the dad or the uncle.
Ali: Yeah, this is what I wanted to talk about. The way that this is sort of revealed, and the way that like, the function of her flashbacks in this movie. Because it starts really early. Like, I think maybe one of the third or fourth scenes is one of the early hunting flashbacks where her father is still alive.
Art: Before you get the, the menace.
Ali: Yeah. And, you know, there's this sort of like— There's this suggestion that like, oh, you know, this experience of her life is going to be important. There's something like when she is disagreeing with the others, we are supposed to trust her more than the others because it's like, oh, this is the girl that you want to root for. She is someone who can take care of herself. She knows her way around a gun. She knows how to hunt. [Art: She was in The Witch.] Right. They are in this dangerous situation, but there's this person who is capable of getting them out of there because she's like, capable of violence or whatever. And I was like, okay, well, I guess that's interesting. Sure, I'm in for the ride here. And then, like, to, like, to get— To get halfway through this movie and then have that be like, oh, this is also the beginning of her abuse. And also, well, the only reason people have mental illness is because they've been abused, right? Is just like, what are we doing here, man? 
Keith: Yeah. Yeah. And it also kind of affirms, and I feel like this is gonna maybe end up being structurally important for Glass, it affirms what the Horde, the undesirable personalities, who we will learn are called— They call themselves the Horde, or the other alters call them the Horde, and The Beast—
Art: And then at the end, purely like, the, like, we've heard from the inside that they're called the Horde. It's like, the only person who's gonna repeat that to you is the doctor, and she died.
Sylvi: Well, no, we, we're forgetting Kevin's alter that's a news, uh, room correspondent.
Keith: We're also forgetting that Anya Taylor-Joy heard the word the Horde. 
Sylvi: Yeah, but come on.
Ali: Oh, sure.
Keith: But, uh... Sorry, I can't. What was I talking about? The… Um...
Sylvi: We were talking about the abuse subplot with the flashbacks.
Keith: Oh, yeah, right. So, it affirms kind of the mythology of The Beast, that like, being traumatized did help her get through this and did cause her to be saved at the end, not just by him seeing her scars and leaving, But by having like, been the girl who made it through to the point to actually try to get away from him. Um—
Ali: Yeah.
Keith: So it has this weird message of like, oh, so there is something about, like, having been like, abused that makes— Makes you a better person? Okay…
Sylvi: That is the vibe.
Keith: That is the vibe.
Art: That is definitely what The Beast thinks.
Sylvi: But the movie also seems to think that. It seems to be—
Keith: Yeah, the movie affirms that by making it about— Making, um, uh, Casey's survival about her trauma.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Art: I don't— I don't know that that is necessarily the filmmaker asserting something about reality.
Sylvi: I don't know, man. It feels very personal.
Art: I think it's asserting something about The Beast.
Keith: Maybe. There's a lot of flashbacks to that.
Art: I don't think you're just walking out of that movie thinking, you know who's a good guy? That Beast.
Keith: I don't think that it's saying that he's a good guy. I'm just saying that it affirms his assertion that being traumatized makes you a stronger human.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Art: I think it just makes you someone who will not get eaten by him.
Keith: Because Fletcher also says this, but she just says it as like, in like, she's like the light-sided version of the same idea, where, like, being, uh— I have the exact quote. Um, uh, we look at people who are shattered as less than. What if they're actually more than us? That's what she says.
Art: But Fletcher—
Sylvi: I genuinely do think that's a thing. I don't know, man. I feel like that's a thing that Shyamalan, like, has brought up and genuinely believes.
Keith: In multiple movies, too. This happens in The Village, and it happens in, um, uh, I guess it happens in Unbreakable too with Mr. Glass.
Sylvi: It kind of happens in, in Sixth Sense.
Art: Uh, but Fletcher, Fletcher is, is, is incorrect. Her worldview is incorrect, and you know her worldview is incorrect because it leads to her being crushed to death by a superpowered Beast.
Keith: Well, but then the— but, but that Beast is more than human because he was shattered.
Sylvi: Yeah, and then the girl who has the self-harm scars gets to live because she is also a victim of abuse. And like, like, I don't know, I, I just, I just personally disagree. I think that the movie is saying that. I think the movie, like [Keith: Even if by accident.] It really feels like the movie believes that, yeah, it might be by accident, but—
Ali: Well, no, I, I mean, like, the movie also doesn't care about the other two girls. Like [Sylvi: No, it absolutely doesn’t.] Keith’s point today that— I mean, before that like, not only, you know, we don't even get the option to see if they have this backstory because the movie is so dismissive of them because they are not this exceptional version of being a person is. And that like, you know, the fact that there is no sort of like, path to salvation for them because it's cut off from all of these ways. Like, the movie does not give them any respect. 
Sylvi: Oh, no, very little. They're there to be sexualized, and then they're there to die.
Keith: It portrays Claire as proactive and intelligent, uh, but not in a way that helps her survive. And it again just feels like another Shyamalan half-step of being like, well, we're gonna totally ignore and sideline and sexualize and kill this girl, but we are going to like, make sure you know that she is like, an A student, I guess.
Ali: And it's like, just dismissive of the like, mundanity of their— Like from the first start of the scene of like, oh, we're having a big birthday party and we had to invite the other girl, but we're not really gonna engage with her. And then like, oh, we're in this car and like, teehee, we're teenage girls and we're giggling about boys. So we don't— We're not aware of the danger that we're in. And like, oh, we're in this situation, we're not going to take the time to sit back and think about it. We're going to be, like, reactive and impulsive and just get in trouble and put ourselves in more danger. And that like, the silver bullet that Anna Joya— Taylor-Joy's character has is that she was sexually abused by her uncle since she was like—
Keith: Five.
Ali: Five. 
Sylvi: Maybe younger. 
Ali: Like, it's just like, you know, that is the limit and the root of her, her ability. Like, you know, it's just— It's gross.
Art: Yeah, I agree with you that the supporting characters in horror movies are underwritten, but I think that you're just— But like, putting, putting that on to the theme of this movie and not just like, the trappings of the genre, I feel like is giving it more than it is owed.
Sylvi: I guess my counterpoint then is like, what would the theme of this movie be then?
Art: Um…
Keith: Don't work at a zoo.
Sylvi: Like, don't work at a zoo. You know what, like, right, you come away thinking that that's—
Art: Don't trust the mentally ill is more like—
Sylvi: I mean, yeah, fair enough. That is kind— That is also what he's saying. 
Keith: Yeah, I definitely feel like I came away thinking that what M. Night wanted me to take from this movie was that, um, your, your pain is a strength that you can use to overcome obstacles in your life. That's what the movie seems to be saying.
Art: I think I can agree with you there. I also think we're back at M. Night's recurring pattern of therapists are idiots.
Keith: Yeah. I'm reconsidering the is After Earth Scientology movie.
Sylvi: Oh, same, man. I, I had a note about that where I was like, are we sure? Are we sure?
Keith: Are we sure?
Art: Um, I think we're pretty sure, but you're, you're certainly— I certainly think it's something we could talk about.
Keith: There's only so many movies that can, that can have, um, being failed by psychology as its central, uh, uh, motivating force. I mean, is he— Is it— It's three. It's The Village. It's, uh, Sixth Sense. And this now, are like, movies where the main thing that happened is a psychologist failed a person or a group of people.
Art: Isn't there another one? Um, what happened? Oh, and The Visit too.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: Oh yeah, and The Visit. Yeah, totally.
Art: Um, I mean, mistrusting psychologists is not exclusive to Scientologists. I think if he were a Scientologist, he would cast more Scientologists.
Sylvi: Yeah, you're right.
Keith: It's true. But again, but then you have to add in the, the, the Smiths question, though. The Will Smith— is Will Smith a Scientologist question?
Art: Yeah. And I, I still think I'm no on that. Um, I think he might just be a weirdo.
Keith: He's definitely a weirdo. We can all agree.
Art: It's a, it's a Venn diagram thing, right? All Scientologists are weirdos, but not all weirdos are Scientologists.
Keith: I wish I had my Wild Wild West button.
Sylvi: Aw, man.
Keith: Um, the, uh, the— Do you want to talk about the Horde? I have a button called the Horde. I don't even know what's on there, but I think that this is—
Art: I want to talk about everything you put on a button.
Keith: Okay. I think that this is the scene where, right before Fletcher goes to— So Barry and the other non-evil alters have been emailing Fletcher. For some reason, they can't think of anything to email other than, we need to talk, and will sometimes even email that 20 times in 10 minutes and still not give any details. Yeah.
Art: Wait, don't we find out that it's one alter who sends all of the emails? Isn't it Jade or something?
Ali: Yeah.
Art: That's the one who's sending the emails to, like—
Keith: Oh, maybe. I thought it was a mix of them.
Ali: No, there's this sort of— Once Kevin is sort of disarmed and is revealed after years, question mark?
Keith: Years, yeah.
Ali: There's this sort of like, rapid fire of different personalities coming out. And the assumption, I think, is that Patricia, Dennis, Hedwig has like taken control of this for so long that like Barry and whatever the other— What other alternatives are in there have just been like completely shut out.
Keith: Oh, that's definitely true.
Ali: Aside from emails.
Keith: That's definitely true. But yeah, what they say is that every time Hedwig falls asleep, someone else takes control for a few minutes. I had thought it was a mix of the other alters that were sending the emails, and that's why they were emailing like, every night, we need to talk. And then the final time, they sent the same we need to talk email like, 12 times instead of giving more details. I don't know why they're not doing that. That's— That is my— I only brought the emails up to be like, why didn't they write one email that had more information in it?
Ali: Yeah, there was— There, there's like this quick line of it's like, oh, I'm Judd. Did you get those emails I sent? Before it moves on, it's like, OK, man.
Keith: Yeah.
Art: I think it's Jade, not Judd. But yeah, 
Keith: There could be a Judd, you don't know. Uh, but yeah, so there, this is where, uh, uh, Fletcher's accusing Dennis of not being Barry because, uh, oh, by the way, you know how last season we were collecting sad Killawas? This season we can collect homophobic faces by James McAvoy because he pretends to be Barry, and Barry is, I think, heavily implied to be gay. 
Sylvi: Oh, very much so, yes. 
Keith: He is making the I'm-a-gay-guy-est faces of all time. It's nuts. I think it is... It flips back and forth between being, um, really bad and really funny.
Art: Yeah, I'm with you on that.
Keith: This is where Fletcher's like, come on, Dennis. I fucking know that it's you.
[audio from Split starts playing]
Fletcher: If this is you, Dennis, I understand why Kevin needs you. You are strong and disciplined. You are precise, and you will not be taken advantage of. You can trust me. For example, I do have the ability to use Kevin's full name and bring him forward as he has in the past, but I wouldn't do that. I know that that would be chaos for all of you. Everyone would grab the light. I don't want to hurt any of you that way. You don't have to hide. I know you are someone who cares for Kevin. You are not evil to me. You were necessary. Dennis, is that you?
[long pause]
Dennis: They keep calling us the Horde. The others, you know. Miss Patricia and I, we are ridiculed. Now, we're not perfect, but we don't deserve to be ridiculed. We're all struggling. They have to admit that.
Fletcher: I am pleased to meet you, Dennis.
Dennis: You too.
[audio ends]
Keith: If they don't stop making fun of me, I'm gonna start eating girls!
Sylvi: Yeah. 
Art: Yeah… yeah.
Sylvi: Yeah. He got his incel personalities in control. We need to say his name to get, uh, so another alter can take the wheel.
Keith: It's so funny to me that they— That, like, she introduces this idea of, I can say his name, to get Kevin out, to stop all this. And they even give her a perfect time to have said it, uh, right before she gets drugged, uh, gets knocked out with the knockout gas, and she just doesn't do it. Oh, it's so annoying. What an annoying thing. Just don't have a— Just don't have a secret weapon then.
Ali: It, it's, it's like, it's so— I I, I fucking hate that so much of this movie is distracted by the act of making a movie that it just ends up being a worse— Because like the, you know, the actual human body experience of I am in danger, I, I am coming out of a weird chloroform nap, I, you know, there's only one thing on my mind and it is that the only path to safety in this situation is saying this guy's name. So I'm going to write it down in case anything happens and nobody knows. But in the two seconds that I have available, I am not going to do it. I am going to end up doing these, like, placating, like, I know you're a good guy. Like, you're— Like, her body is so fully driven on like, just say the name, it's the way that you're safe, that she is scribbling it on a piece of paper, but that her mouth isn't able to do it in the scene is not— It's just like, oh, well, the script says so, and not even like her trying to say it and not getting there, or like, her voice cracking and like, actual interesting things that could happen that would be like— Aagh! It just— [Keith: It's very irritating.] I don't like it.
Keith: And then the name ends up being not a way to solve a problem, but actually a way to introduce the gun. And the gun also isn't the way that he's defeated. So it's such an— It's like a train of unnecessary things. Like, he has a name that can be used to defeat him. Defeating him doesn't work because the therapist is dead, and Anya doesn't— Taylor-Joy doesn't really know what to say. But Kevin tells her where there's a gun, and then the gun isn't how you beat The Beast. The Beast just has to see your scar. Like, it's just a bunch of— Just so irritating.
Art: No, that doesn't bother me. That's fine. I'm— For that, that part I'm fine with.
Sylvi: Which part bothers me?
Ali: Which part?
Art: That it doesn't like work.
Keith: It's not that it doesn't work, it's that it wasn't there to not work. It was there to introduce a gun that also doesn't work. That's the part of it that bugs me.
Art: Hmm. Well, but, but you need that— The gun needs to be there to mirror the flashback. [Ali: Does it?] There needs to be a shotgun in this movie.
Keith: It— 
Art: I mean, once we're at this point and that's happened, yes.
Keith: I'm— Here. I'll— This is what I'm positing, that the construction of the movie is weak enough that you're better off not following through visually on your themes than making the movie worse by following through on them.
Art: Oh.
Ali: I mean, it's just like, it fucking sucks because, like, you know, the, the, the, the reality of the hunting trips and that, that part of her life is not empowering anymore. Like, the thought of having this movie without the rape plot in it and being like, oh, fuck, the hunter that I really want to live has a gun now. Yeah, she leveled up. Yeah.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Ali: And, like, that would be great. But instead, it's just like, oh, I, you know, this is so defanged, and it's like the, the, the— It's a disgusting movie, so there's like, nothing to root for or feel satisfied by.
Keith: Like, by the way, she could have just found a gun. [Ali: Uh-huh] She didn't have to— Like, I like the, um, I like the— This is what I mean, I said a few episodes ago that like, I think M. Night like, thinks in set pieces, and so I can see on a storyboard where you've got like, OK, he's got the secret name, you say the secret name, it unlocks this thing. Like, I can see how like, that's a good thing to include in the movie, but then it just like, leads nowhere. And so you have two choices. You have to like, cut the stuff that doesn't lead to anywhere or make the stuff— Make it work better. And so either way could have worked. And I think it's sort of like Sylvia, like you said, like— Or Art, you were like, either do more or do less. It's— That's— I'm sort of in that space with this where it's like, do more with the name or don't have it. Like, have it lead to something important or have it just not work. Have it be like this like, red herring of a trump card where you think you have a trump card, it doesn't work for whatever reason, and you're still fucked. Uh, like, it didn't— You didn't need that train to lead to a gun. You could have gotten a gun in any number of ways.
Art: I think it's breadcrumb for the next movie.
Keith: Maybe.
Art: I understand that's not like, more satisfying, but that is why I think it is that way.
Keith: I think that's probably true.
Art: Because otherwise, you're right, it doesn't make a ton of sense because it's, it's very brief. It's treated as this big thing. It happens. It leads to almost nothing important except giving James McAvoy a scene where he gets to do all of the voices in a row. Which I guess they, they thought was— Seems like they felt was important. And then, yeah, it just gets you to the conclusion that they had to get to anyway. But I, I think that's a breadcrumb. I think at the end of Glass we'll be like, ohhhh.
Keith: Yeah. I think that you're probably right. If you take Glass into account, which I don't think makes it better for this movie, if you take Glass, I can 100% see a scene where Casey comes back. I don't even know if she's in that movie. I assume that she is, and I assume she kills her uncle. Casey comes back, she uses the name. I bet that it's the last— I bet she uses the name. This is my— Okay, I'm gonna— This is a sniper shot. This is what I'm gonna say.
Art: Okay, go for it. Yeah.
Keith: She uses the name when The Beast is like already hurt, but he's The Beast, so he can't die. And she uses the name to bring Kevin out, who can die from pain and from wounds in the way that The Beast can't. And so she'll use the name to like, kill him, basically. That's my— That's my best guess.
Art: Great. I think that's a fine guess.
Ali: I can't wait for this character to not be in that movie.
Keith: That would be so funny. Oh my God, that would be so funny.
Sylvi: I'm fully anticipating it.
Art: I— There's— I don't— It would only happen if she got— I, I think based on where I think all the steps in Anya Taylor-Joy's career are, she had basically had to do the next movie.
Keith: Why is that?
Art: Because, um—
Keith: This might be my first movie I've seen with her in it.
Art: Um, she's in The Witch. That was her like, breakout movie.
Sylvi: Yes.
Art: Or The VVitch.
Keith: The Vitch.
Art: Um, styled as two Vs in the poster. And then I would say her like, oh, she's really gonna make it movie is, she's in the 2019 or 2020 Emma.
Sylvi: Oh, sure.
Keith: Emma 2020. Yeah.
Art: Yeah. The last movie I saw before COVID.
Sylvi: Wow.
Keith: Congratulations to Emma.
Art: And by clicking on her Wikipedia page to see what year Emma came out, I can see that she is indeed in Glass.
Sylvi: Yes.
Keith: Yeah, I've never seen a movie with her in it.
Art: Um, there's some good movies in here. There's some bad movies in here.
Sylvi: Yeah, I know, we just watched one.
Art: Yeah, um, she had the Furiosa movie she was in last year I thought was pretty good. Um…
Sylvi: I did not.
Art: Uh, well, we'll get to that in our season on the— Our George Miller.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Art: Um,
Ali: Oh, the Split cover fucking— Or the Glass poster fucking sucks, man.
Keith: I gotta say, you know, I didn't like— And we've talked about how I didn't like Unbreakable, but I do get a charge out of Mr. Glass. And that ending monologue, I still fucking love his delivery on “they call me Mr. Glass”. I fucking love— No, I've talked every time it comes up, I talk about how much I like that.
Ali: But then you're like— But then you're like, Samuel L. Jackson was incapable of acting in that movie.
Keith: Well, that's— In the episode I said he saved it all for this one monologue, which was amazing.
Ali: I see.
Keith: Yeah, I always liked that scene. It's the best scene in the movie. They should have just made a short film.
Sylvi: This also should have just been a short film. This should have been like— If you really want to do the one actor doing a bunch of voices and stuff, just do a movie where it's It's, uh, a— Two people. It's James McAvoy, it's the psychiatrist, and you have to figure out the mystery— Like, the psychiatrist has to figure out the mystery of what's going on by talking to all the alters. Um, but they didn't do that.
Keith: No.
Sylvi: Uh, yeah, I don't know.
Keith: Um, I have, I have two more buttons. One is the scene with The Beast and Casey at the end, or, you know, when that happened. And then the second one is the post— Not the post-credits, but the like, teaser for Glass at the end. Is there anything else that we want to get to?
Sylvi: Um, the gore in this movie looked really bad, just to be on my horror fan pedestal.
Keith: Yeah, there's not a lot of gore, but it—
Sylvi: Yeah, but the ones that you see are really bad. Like Casey— 
Keith: The leg.
Sylvi: The, the leg, the girl who gets her stomach torn open, the gunshot wounds on The Beast all look super, super shitty. And like, you couldn't even get that right, M. Night. You couldn't even do that part.
Art: Yeah, it's a low-budget movie and it really feels low-budget when it comes to any visual effects, frankly. It's like they spent all the money on the zoo.
Sylvi: It's wild too, because like, fake blood is not that hard to make.
Keith: They, they budgeted out the zoo first and then they realized, oh my god, we've got nothing left over for blood.
Art: So we've got $9 million and the zoo wants $8.5 million.
Sylvi: Please help, my movie is starving. Spend less on zoos. Fuck you.
Art: I mean, I came out of that movie saying, wow, do you really get to walk under the tiger path at the Philadelphia Zoo? That sounds awesome. [Keith: That does sound awesome.] I should go to the Philadelphia Zoo. Yeah. I don't know if it— I didn't look into it.
Keith: Um, so there's a long chase scene. The Beast chases Casey. Um, there's a few like, set piece things, like we talked about, the, you know, slashing out the lights. Uh, I didn't think it looked that good, but I thought it was a good idea. And I did like the way that they were having him hide in the darkness like a predator. You know, that stuff all theoretically worked. And then she's trying to get shotgun shots out. She locks herself in a cage that we have no idea why it's down here, and kind of blows two holes— No, not holes, because they don't go through, and they make very sure that we know that. Blows two chunks out of him. He bends the bars and then sees her scars.
[audio from Split starts playing]
The Beast: Your heart is pure. 
[group laughter from MCP cast]
SLYLVI: Right. 
The Beast: Rejoice! The broken are the more evolved. Rejoice!
[audio ends]
Keith: Uh, I forgot The Beast's voice.
Art: I’m sorry, I forgot The Beast's voice.
Keith: The Beast's voice is so stupid.
Sylvi: It is maybe one of the most offensive parts of the movie when you really think about it. Like, that's some real like, bad, uh, I'm doing an audiobook of Of Mice and Men and reading for Lennie in the most offensive way I can vibe.
Keith: And they gotta— He can't help himself but really fucking, you know, hammer it home with the, like, the broken are the more evolved, or whatever the fuck he says. It's like, come on. Like, can't anything in the movie speak for itself, please? In any one of these movies, can anything stand on its own and speak for itself?
Ali: Yeah, I, I, I've— I, I just want to say, if you were listening to the podcast from like, 15 minutes ago and you were like, Ali, no, you're wrong, it's empowering that she gets a gun because, like, she couldn't pull the trigger as a child and now she can. And, like, you know, she's weaponizing her, her own abuse and she's gonna get out of this. She shoots him twice and nothing fucking happens.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Ali: The only reason she survives is his judgment. [Keith: Right. He judges her to be pure.] Like, like the, the, like the, the, you know, that we keep going over, like, oh, she has so many shirts on. She has more shirts on than other girls do. Isn't that weird that she wears a lot of shirts? Um, and that the reveal of that is that, like, he's gonna see her scars and then, like, value her differently at the end of this? Like, that is her salvation? It's just like— It's— This movie is rotten. This movie is, like, decaying. This movie is sick. This movie makes me sick. Like, it's just—
Art: It's not empowering that she shoots— That she has the gun, shoots with the gun, but it is—
Keith: Thematic.
Art: Significant that she does it. It's important to the character. If we believe that the character arc is going towards her vanquishing her uncle, that's an important moment.
Sylvi: I just don't believe in the character arc.
Keith: Yeah. Well, yeah, at the moment where she's pulling the trigger, at the moment she's pulling the trigger, we don't know it's not gonna work.
Art: Right. And I gotta tell you, her life would have been weird if she shot her uncle to death at five. That would have been a— It would have been a— It would have been, you know, good. I was rooting for it to happen, although I was pretty sure it didn't because I did see this movie before. But, you know, it would have— It would have been a rough time.
Keith: Yeah.
Art: For her.
Keith: Although she would have been so young that it—
Art: No, it would have been definitely better. I'm just saying that shooting someone is going to— It's just gonna be a weird couple months.
Ali: Sure, sure, sure.
Keith: Or a weird the rest of your life.
Art: Yeah. I 100% think she should have shot him. I don't want to be—
Keith: We're all pro-killing uncles.
Sylvi: Yeah. Yes!
Keith: Go kill your uncle today. Friends at the Table Incorporated says, go kill your uncle.
Art: I wish that they had closed that story here.
Keith: Yeah.
Ali: In terms of—?
Keith: The uncle.
Art: I wish that we had found out what happens to the uncle in the cut. But I mean, Shyamalan's way over his time. He must have been so uncomfortable turning in a 118-minute movie that he couldn't have possibly given us 90 extra seconds to cover that.
Keith: Every minute that he goes over 100 minutes is a, is a minute that whatever goblin granted him fame takes off of his life.
Sylvi: Oh.
Art: Yeah, so when I tell you that Glass is 130 minutes—
Keith: Oh my God.
Sylvi: Fuck.
Ali: We're in hell. We're in hell. Sylvi was right. We shouldn't have covered these movies.
Sylvi: You know what? That's the main takeaway. If anyone has any takeaway from this episode, make sure that it is Sylvi was right.
Art: I'm sure that That Glass, a movie with a Rotten Tomatoes score 40 points lower than the movie we just watched, is really gonna turn this all around for us.
Sylvi: Weirdly enough, I bet Glass is gonna be less offensive to my sensibilities, it's just probably gonna be boring as fuck.
Keith: The, the thing that I want to make sure that I— That we say this, I can't remember if it's already come up. I know that we talked about how bad the sexual assault reveal for Casey is. [Sylvi: Mmhmm.] It's so bad. It is in such poor taste. This guy, this actor who was made to like, hide behind the rock and like, do animal noises and whatever, is like— Man, I know, you know, you're working actors, you gotta take the job, I guess. I mean, this is horrible shit. I cannot imagine being, like— Telling my family I'm gonna be in a movie, and it's this. Ugh, god, it was so bad. 
Ali: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And it’s like—
Art: Um, I mean, you look through his— You look through his IMDb page, you're like, well, this is a job he definitely had to take.
Keith: Yeah, sure. Yeah.
Art: He's a guy who's been like, one episode of a lot of shows and… 9 episodes of Justified? Who's this guy? Oh, sure. 
Keith: Uh, I like when The Beast awakened in a trap.
Art: And then he got a regular role on Orange Is the New Black. So, you know.
Ali: Sure. Okay.
Art: They were like, get me that child rapist from the Shyamalan movie.
Keith: Do you want to hear about Mr. Glass?
Ali: Yeah.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Art: Yeah.
Ali: I want to talk about this because it's so funny.
[audio from Split starts playing]
Newscaster: Kevin Crumb suffers from the controversial psychological disorder DID. The rumors coming out of the scene are almost unbelievable. There are conflicting stories if the suspect is alive or dead after sustaining two point-blank gunshots. Reports even indicate one of his personalities is an amalgam of the various animals in the Philadelphia Zoo. [Sylvi laughter] The press is already referring to the alleged attacker by a dark name leaked by a source close to the case. Because of his many personalities, he is being called The Horde.
Woman: This is like that crazy guy in the wheelchair that they put away 15 years ago. And they gave him a funny name too. What was it? 
David: Mr. Glass.
[audio ends]
Keith: Ding! Crowd goes wild. 
Sylvi: Crowd goes mild.
Ali: There's two things here. Yeah, go on.
Sylvi: I was just gonna say, M. Night loves some clumsy exposition in a diner. I immediately thought of our friend from The Happening, our LiveLeak friend.
Art: Yeah, it's the same diner.
Sylvi: Is it really?
Art: No, I made that up. I just thought it was funny.
Sylvi: I’d believe you.
Keith: It was a totally different diner. It was totally different.
Ali: I— The two things here is, you know, the, the, the point we were making just a second ago of like, we can't have 90 more seconds of this movie to, to close the book on some of the deep trauma and real interest that we have in our main character. 'Cause we get to have Bruce Willis kind of smirk to himself in the last of this. But also just like that, like, what that woman says is so unnatural and makes no fucking sense.
Keith: Right, because she says, this is just like that guy. The cases don't have anything to do with each other except for that they both have nicknames. It's the only thing that ties them together. This is just like that guy. They give him a funny name too. Remember 15 years ago? Don't you remember there was that guy? I don't remember his name, but I remember that they— Who's this guy? Oh, right behind me there's a man?
Sylvi: Mr. Glass.
Keith: Mr. Glass.
Ali: But this whole movie is like a baseball bat moving towards the hit that is this scene, and you're gonna be like, whoa. And you can't even make her say something that makes makes fucking sense. Like, you can't— What do we see?
Sylvi: It ends up making the entire movie feel like an Aristocrats joke.
Ali: Truly. It's truly, truly, truly— It's just like that guy from a couple years ago!
Keith: It's astounding to me.
Art: Not a couple years ago, though. It's like you would never pick that out. 
Sylvi: 15 years ago.
Ali: Yeah, she's in her 30s, like, she's— Or younger. Like, it's just— Oh my God.
Keith: It's astounding to me.
Art: It's like saying, it's like that mobster they arrested in Chicago 60 years ago. What was his name? And Bruce Willis is like, Scarface. And they're talking about Al Capone. It's like, it's simply not what that would be like.
Sylvi: Who let him cook?
Keith: It's astounding to me that this ranks solidly in the middle of M. Night Shyamalan's filmography. [Sylvi: Really??] Solidly in the middle. I mean, God, I mean, I hated this movie, but watching— I would, I would definitely not watch like, The Happening or After Earth again. I would way rather watch this than After Earth.
Sylvi: I can laugh at those ones.
Keith: Those, I found nothing funny about those movies.
Sylvi: I was, yeah, I was— I was aching for the Narf during this. I was like, man, where's my, where's my friend with one buff arm?
Keith: Oh yeah, I would, I definitely— This is, this ranks for sure below Lady in the Water, for sure. 
Sylvi: Yeah.
Art: It depends what we're— What's, what's the point of my— Am I— I mean, what movie— If you're like, you have to watch one of these movies right now.
Keith: Yeah, for me, it's—
Art: Not right now. I just watched this, but like—
Keith: What would I be least unhappy to have to spend the time watching?
Art: Oh, see, I don't— Lady in the Water is so boring, but I just like Paul Giamatti. I think I would be more offended than bored.
Sylvi: Baby's on the half-tip.
Keith: Baby's on the half-tip?
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: I know, I gotta think about it. Baby's on the half-tip! That's maybe the funniest thing M. Night's ever written, is a bunch of stoners who think it would be cool to get the phrase baby's on the half-tip going.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Art: We're going into my— We're going— I haven't seen any of the next three movies. This is, this is my—
Sylvi: Yeah, I'm so curious about this next stretch because I have seen a few of them. I haven't seen all of them. Like, I haven't seen Glass. I actually haven't seen Old yet. But then after that, I think I've seen the last two. Or maybe I'm missing one.
Art: Has anyone seen Glass? Are we all going into Glass cold?
Keith: Wow.
Sylvi: Dude, I heard about the critical reception to Glass when it came out. So no, I did not watch Glass.
Keith: I have a theory.
Art: That must have happened to me.
Keith: I have a theory about M. Night Shyamalan.
Art: Go for it. Yeah, that's what we're here for.
Keith: Yeah, so I was watching the reception to the movie Weapons, uh, the Zach Cregger movie, and I can't remember who— I haven't seen it— I can't remember who it was that was talking about this. I think that it might have been Ethan Hawke talking about that movie, and Ethan Hawke said sometimes with an early director who you're like, confused why his movies are so good, it's because they have a really, really strong DP, and the DP is taking on a lot of creative decisions that would traditionally be the job of the director. Now I thought this was kind of a weird and rude thing to say about—
Sylvi: Oh, that's a very interesting thing to say.
Keith: I thought it was a very weird thing to say about a movie that was, like, currently in theaters and getting really positive reviews. But it did make me think about The Sixth Sense and, um, how that was, uh, uh, DP'd by Tak Fujimoto. And why is it that nothing feels like a good movie in the way that The Sixth Sense did? And I kept thinking about how, what if Tak Fujimoto like, really was the reason why The Sixth Sense was good? That he was doing a lot of help directing this movie and that he just simply never got that help from another DP, including Tak Fujimoto, because he has a fucking smash hit with The Sixth Sense and then goes, I'm a real director. I'm a real director. I can direct. This is my theory.
Ali: There's something to that. It's like how all The Weeknd albums got really bad. [group laughter] He stopped bringing in that one guy. So I believe it.
Keith: Because there's— It is kind of insane to me that you could have a movie as good as The Sixth Sense was, and then everything else has such a clear move downward. I know that some of us like some of the other movies different amounts. I, you know, for the sake of undermining my own thing here. I loved the last 10 minutes of, uh, Unbreakable, and I loved the first half of The Sixth Sense. Um, but every other thing that—
Art: That can't— That can't be this. You must—
Keith: I'm sorry, uh, of Signs. I love the first half of Signs. Um, not The Sixth Sense. I loved all of The Sixth Sense.
Sylvi: Hated the first half of The Sixth Sense. Oh, okay. [laughs]
Keith: Um, the, the, the, the thing that I keep coming back to is like It's the team. It's the team is bad now. Like, what? But a lot of the team is the, is the same. You've got James Newton Howard, you've got M. Night Shyamalan directing. What's the big difference? It's that Tak Fujimoto worked on the first movie and then he didn't work on another one until, you know, after M. Night Shyamalan was suddenly a really big deal.
Art: I don't, I don't buy that because I don't think the directing is what's the problem in the bad movies. I think the writing is—
Keith: I think it's the writing and the acting. But what if they're— But like, what if a lot of that creative choice that's going on is like, what's my good take? What's my ad-lib that I'm including and not including? Tak Fujimoto's here giving me really good advice.
Art: I don't know. Yeah, I think there's something to that. But, but—
Keith: And The Sixth Sense, I think, benefits from mostly being dialogue scenes. It is— There's not a lot of action. There's not a lot of, uh, uh, there's nothing thrilling happening. You've got one guy talking to one kid or one mom talking to one kid, and that's your whole movie. And so— And that is where M. Night seems to thrive, is in one-on-one scenes.
Art: Well, but also in just like, he picks very good shots. I mean, I didn't want to really bring it up here because, because like, we're all just trying to go home here.
Keith: Yeah.
[Sylvi hysteria]
Art: But like, I think there's, there are several shots in this movie that I, that I was like, oh, that's a very interesting way to take this. There's one in particular. I don't remember if it's going up or down the stairs at the doctor's. And there's like, this spiral staircase, and there's a really good shot of that staircase.
Sylvi: He loves—
Keith: It mimics the same— A similar shot in The Sixth Sense. 
Sylvi: Yeah, I was gonna say, M. Night loves a spiral staircase shot because I feel like he's done it in something else too, but I'm blanking on it.
Art: Spiral staircases rule. People should put them in their buildings more.
Ali: I do think this is part of what I was saying before, where like, especially coming off of some of— I mean, The Visit was great. Uh, but coming off of some of the other movies that we've seen here, like, they're structurally— It feels like there's not a lot to complain about in this movie because like, the environments are all framed really well. This sort of, like, basement space is really scary. The, like—
Sylvi: Yeah.
Ali: The reveal of, like, oh, I'm gonna show you my CD player by the window, and it's this, like, child's drawing of a window that can be— That's two pieces of paper that you can either have it open or closed. [Keith: Yeah, I liked that.] Like, the settings are all really fun. Like, there's even the scene that stood out to me a little bit is when the Doctor is in this sort of base zoo. I guess we know it's a zoo. God. And she's kind of like moving through the hallway and she, instead of going to the bathroom, decides to go into another door. And we like, it switches to her POV like, to the point that like, we're seeing her hand open the door and it's like, parts of that are so much fun. And like, you know, the, the, the— Where the camera is looking at is always really interesting and, and stuff like that. And like, you know, I don't feel like the scenes are too long and I don't feel like things really drag on for too long. And I don't feel like, you know, there were, there were missed opportunities in that way. But like, again, there were the, the, the ideas and the themes and everything else in this movie is so rotten that it just, like, is— It just, like you said before, it's corrosive to the experience of watching it. And it feels like such a shame. Like, I, you know, I wonder when we'll come to the end of this if we'll have stronger opinions on, like, sort of this idea that Keith is bringing up. Like, is this somebody who was able to borrow techniques earlier in his career? Or, like, with some of the stuff that came up in The Lady of the Water, is it just like, is this a creator whose ego got so ahead of his capability that like, we keep seeing the spaghetti that's kind of thrown at the wall? And like, there's talent there. There's moments there where you can kind of see that talent because he is really good with a camera and has been since he was a kid. Like, you know, that really boring student film that we watched had a lot of really interesting scenes and set pieces in that way too. Yeah. And is it just like, you know, is The Sixth Sense different because, you know, there is a lack of confidence or like a wanting to show that confidence or like a, uh, like a hunger and creativity and proving yourself that's just like gone by the time he's in the middle of his career and he— I don't know. He's also always gotten a bad reaction, so I don't, you know, I don't know.
Keith: It's hard to— It's hard to be a guy who's like, reacting to reactions to his stuff. Like, I see how that is always changing artists' trajectories when they're like, doing what they seem to want to be doing, and then it's getting really negative reactions. And then you have to figure out like, well, who— How do I put out a movie that I want to put out that people aren't gonna be mad at me over? But also just like, I don't know, the quality of the writing in The Sixth Sense versus a lot of the subsequent stuff, like, I think a lot of Signs is written really well. Like, the quality of the word— The dialogue that people are speaking, is very high in The Sixth Sense. It's fairly high in Unbreakable and Signs, despite those two movies having massive structural issues for me. And then in every subsequent movie, it's get— It's almost getting worse. It really— But it really— You start to see like, this guy has real weaknesses in how he's constructing plots and the words that he's giving characters to say. And I would say at this point, he's maybe even leveled out his dialogue issues and it really is like, plotting issues. He's got a lot of bad plotting and then he has to force himself to write words for the bad plotting. And then you're like, well, these words suck. And it's like, okay, is the problem the words or the plotting? It's kind of hard to detangle.
Art: And, you know, like last, last time I said that The Visit felt like M. Night Shyamalan was sitting around and saw the Paranormal Activity movies and was like, I can make a much better version of this. And I feel like that if you take Split in the like, context of 2016 horror, you get sort of like, this idea that this is sort of in conversation with the, the movies they were making at that time and the, the things they had to say. I think especially if you look at this with, um, it's not right, but It Follows has like, not the same but like a similar—
Keith: Same DP.
Art: Idea. 
Sylvi: Same DP, yeah.
Art: And this movie comes out the same year as Don't Breathe. Which I think the reason I might not remember this movie being as gross as it is, is that Don't Breathe is like 100 times grosser.
Sylvi: It's pretty bad. Yeah.
Art: And that, that just seeing these 2 movies within the span of like, oh, 6 weeks. That can't be right. Oh no, they're, they're the other way around. It's like 6 months, but like the, the— You know, we're just in a period at this time where these movies are this gross.
Sylvi: Yeah, my counterpoint to that is just that like, there are horror movies that came out around the same time that are doing this better. Like, Green Room is a locked room like, sort of thriller in a similar way that is like, leagues better than this. Like, I don't know.
Art: Oh yeah, there's better movies released every week better than this. Not every week, but every month.
Sylvi: It's just one of those things where it's like, I don't know, I don't know. It's hard for me to really give him the credit of like trying to— Of like, oh, it's better than, the, the standards of the genre. But because like— 
Art: Oh, I wasn't attempting to give credit. I was trying to like say that like, well, maybe—
Sylvi: Okay.
Art: Maybe this is like, Maybe M. Night Shyamalan has become deeply cynical and is making movies—
Keith: He's in the soup.
Art: That he just sees— Yeah, he's just like, well, if this movie's gonna make money, I can make money. I can make a better version of this dumb idea.
Keith: Yeah.
Art: It doesn’t super work because they're, they're, you know, thematically we're in conversation with a lot of other stuff from way earlier. But like, if he's just like, yeah, I can make slop, I can make better slop than these other slop merchants. I can be king of of slop.
Sylvi: And he's doing a superhero movie. Oh shit, you might be onto something. He might be the slop lord.
Ali: I do think that, like, you know, I— There is something to that idea because what I was coming to while we were talking is such a thing of like, this does feel like such a departure from the themes that he usually cares about. Mm-hmm. And, you know, even when his movies haven't been good, there's, you know, this sort of interest in this family drama. And there's— Even when relationships are broken, there's, like, a tenderness that people kind of want to treat with each other. And, like, the— He doesn't do, you know, this sort of like, complaint that we've had of like, if you're gonna do an exploit movie, just do an exploit movie. And I don't know that he has, like, the guns for it. And his earlier work certainly wasn't in that vein. Like, I guess, fucking— an epic connection, Screen Rant's connection between Unbreakable and Split, that you should have known earlier that they were the same movie. Girl gets kidnapped. Remember that?
Sylvi: Yeah.
Ali: So I don't know. But I, you know, I just think that like, this is such a departure from those. And like, The Visit was a departure structurally and, and, um, camera-ly. I don't know. I don't have a better word for that.
Sylvi: Formally.
Ali: Formally. You know, um, yeah, uh, prospectively, like the, the sort of found footage thing of like, oh, I can do a found footage movie, but still, I'm going to have it in this sort of like, tender family story that like, gets, gets corrupted over time. Where this just isn't that. And it feels like not only is— It isn't that, but it is so ambitious to be like, this is going to be the movie that is going to secretly push forward my attempt at a franchise. Like, I'm going to go back to this, like, beloved sleeper hit of my youth— Youth, quote unquote— And be like, oh, I'm bringing Mr. Glass back. Mm-hmm. I'm bringing Bruce Willis back. We're going back to the— We're going back to the good old days.
Keith: If he wanted to do that, why didn't he just do it? Why do we need this whole movie to set it up? No one would have been confused.
Sylvi: Because nobody was buying a movie that was like, we're gonna do a sequel to Unbreakable so many years later. Like, you have to do this.
Art: No, I mean, I think the real answer is Disney didn't want to— Wouldn't want to do it, and Disney owns—
Keith: Wait, but didn't he self-finance this movie?
Art: Yeah, but he doesn't own the— He doesn't own the characters from Unbreakable.
Keith: Ohhhh.
Ali: Well, he has to if he made this movie and then Glass, right? Or did he make this with Blumhouse and then convince—
Art: Glass is a co-produce— Not a co-production, but Disney distributed Glass internationally, as like—
Keith: So he had permission to use his characters. And this movie isn't connected enough to that movie.
Art: Well, like the handshake— The story is there was like, a handshake agreement that in exchange for letting him use like, 10 seconds of Bruce Willis as that character, they would get the— They would get money in the sequel.
Keith: Got it.
Ali: And then this is successful enough to be able to successfully pitch and produce.
Art: Yeah, but this movie was wildly successful.
Sylvi: It was really successful.
Ali: Yeah, I don't know.
Keith: I mean, hey, there's worse movies that have been more successful, so I'm not like— I'm not, I'm not shocked, I guess, that this movie was successful. People seem to, despite his reputation as being a bad director who makes garbage for so many years, people really want to like M. Night Shyamalan.
Art: Well, people really liked The Visit. The Visit, I think, got him a lot of goodwill back. And I think that, yeah, he, he was, he was back. This was his upswing.
Keith: He's maybe more back now than ever.
Art: I mean, this movie did three times the business of The Visit, it looks like.
Keith: Damn. And cost about the same. Oh, it costs like $4 million more. So $5 million to $9 million, which is not a huge increase when you're, when you're working in a box office of $100 million plus.
Art: Yeah. And I mean, you have to pay— I would think a lot of that money went to James McAvoy.
Keith: The $9 million? Yeah, for sure. What do you think his quote was in 2016?
Art: I mean, I'm sure he didn't get his quote for this, but I'm sure he got a couple. Oh yeah, I think—
Keith: You think his quote is more than a couple?
Art: Oh yeah.
Keith: Yeah, I guess.
Art: Um, yeah, he's Professor X.
Keith: Yeah,
Art: Professor X doesn't get out of bed. I mean, looking at the, the like, M. Night Shyamalan box office history, it's like, oh, Split made less money than The Last Airbender. Split made—
Keith: Yeah.
Ali: Jesus. 
Art: Barely more than The Village. I mean, yeah, but I mean, it was much cheaper.
Keith: Yeah, much cheaper. The Last Airbender made $320 million, but it cost $150 million, so it cost 15 times more and it made 35% more.
Art: Yeah, I'll tell you, after Split, he probably could have made any movie he wanted to that didn't cost $150 million. He was probably all the way back. Yeah. And he decided to use that juice to make Glass.
Keith: Which people didn't like.
Art: And people didn't like it.
Keith: Any final thoughts on this before we close the books on Split?
Sylvi: My final statement on Split is [raspberry noise] I didn't like it. I thought it was a real stinker. M. Night, I don't like you right now. I'm mad at you right now, man. I'm looking— I was a bit— I was a real supporter going into this because I like your newer stuff, but man.
Keith: Yeah, you've been a big advocate for Knock At the Cabin, and Trap.
Sylvi: Yeah, I really like both of those movies, and I'm like, worried about now like, rewatching them.
Keith: Like that maybe you were— Maybe you weren't paying attention.
Sylvi: I thought I was!
Art: Yeah, Trap was so good. There's no way Trap is gonna let me down. I've seen it so recently.
Sylvi: Yeah, I think Trap I'll probably still enjoy. I'm more worried about Knock at the Cabin because I remember being like, oh wow, this is like— This actually has like, some interesting stuff going on, blah blah blah. But we've done so much about his writing now that I'm like, oh no. Oh no.
Ali: I'm deeply curious about Glass now. Like, I cannot imagine how much of a stinker this fucking movie is gonna be.
Keith: What if I really liked Glass?
Sylvi: That would be the funniest thing.
Keith: That would be so funny. I'm prepared. I'm always prepared. I, I hope people know I'm always prepared to love these movies. There's no version of this where I'm like, oh, Keith didn't like this because he went into it expecting to hate it. Like, that's never happened. I want to— I want to make it clear, this, you know, Sylvi went [raspberry noise] I said middle. This is in the total middle for me of his movies.
Sylvi: It's not—
Keith: It's disgusting, but it's a— It's a— It's not an annoying movie to watch.
Sylvi: It's such a weird— It's a weird place to be in where I'm like, this should have either been more disgusting or less disgusting.
Ali: A hundred percent.
Keith: I get it though. I totally agree. Yeah, but— But M. Night has never been able to not pull his punches. He's always pulling his punches. I think that he resents being a horror guy. Because I don't think that that's what he wants to do.
Art: I don't think this— I think this is the opposite. I think he's not— I think he's punching too much. Too much punch in this.
Keith: I feel like the whole, the whole having his cake and eating it too with the like, how are we supposed to feel about the mentally ill? That is like the punch that he can't stop pulling. Uh, and the same thing with The Visit and, and gross-out things like the shit on the face that we talked about. And I think After Earth pulls a lot of narrative punches. I think that like The Visit pulls punches with the elders. [Art: Oh, I agree with you going back.] Like, I don't know that we've seen him— I don't think that we've seen Shyamalan unleashed.
Art: Oh, I think weird creepy sex pervert might be Shyamalan unl— I think—
Keith: Yeah…
Art: Yeah, I think two hours of well, obviously someone's about to get raped is the— Mm-hmm. [Ali: But it's also—] Yeah. The unimportant part—
Ali: Sorry.
Art: No, I was trailing. I didn't know how to end that sentence.
Ali: Um, I just— And I've said this before, and this might be rude to say about, like, an adult man who's like, a successful creative, but I just don't think that he has anything to say. And like, the fact that like, the height of thought that, you know, that we get from his movies is like, war is bad and people hurt each other. People with mental illness are scary. Like, the— Like— [Keith: But also good, and strong.] If you're a young girl, some guy wants to look at your body. Like, you know, there's— It just feels like the— It is such things that are already culturally existing in art and in movies and in this format that he really likes to do and is talented in terms of the directing part of it. But to be like— But there's just no substance ever.
Keith: Yeah, it feels like what he should be writing is video games. He's a video game caliber writer.
Art: Who's that guy? Who's that guy who makes those games that are bad?
Ali: Which one?
Keith: Yeah, which one? Narrow that a little bit.
Ali: Yeah, you have to narrow that one down a little bit.
Art: Um, oh—
Keith: Oh, David Cage?
Art: Yep, that's who I meant. Thanks.
Keith: Got it in one. David Cage.
Art: But I feel like the same way that I feel like Shyamalan sitting around being like, I can make Paranormal Activity. I feel like if you saw one of those games, he'd be like, yeah, I can make that. 
Sylvi: Oh my fucking God. 
Art: And he'd probably be better at it.
Keith: He is like living David Cage's dream, which is be a guy as smart as David Cage, uh, and keep being able to make movies. Instead, David Cage is as smart as David Cage and making video games. 
Art: Yeah. 
Keith: No, M. Night's better than David Cage. That's horrible to say. But it is what I meant. He should be making games.
Art: If he was making games, he would be doing better than that. I mean, that's a low bar, but I think he could clear it.
Keith: Do we want to go around the horn and give predictions for Glass since we've all not seen it. I already gave one of mine, but I, I'm going to predict— This is a negative prediction, this is my fear that I believe will be true is that we're still going to get not enough Samuel L. Jackson being a supervillain named Mr. Glass in Glass.
Art: He's the middle of the poster!
Keith: I know!
Sylvi: I know, still, man.
Keith: I know.
Ali: I think we're gonna about to get like, a Silence of the Lambs slash Joker and the Batman thing of Bruce Willis going to Mr. Glass and being like, I gotta take this guy down. And instead they're gonna be like, in cahoots together.
Sylvi: Damn. I can get behind that. I thought— That seems believable.
Art: I think we are gonna get not one good enough action beat.
Keith: Okay, I believe that too. I totally believe that.
Art: Zero successful action beats.
Keith: Yeah.
Ali: I'm so curious about what Anya Taylor-Joy's role in that movie is gonna be. I would prefer that she actually wasn’t in it.
Keith: I think that she's going to be hunting The Beast or The Horde. I think that's what her role is gonna be. She's gonna be out hunting The Horde. It's gonna be a role reversal. Uh, Sylvi, do we have, um, reviews that you want to read?
Sylvi: Shit, man, I can find one. I've been, I've been, I've been in my, I've been in my anger for this episode. So. The podcast review that makes you old from Dr. Worm. 5 stars. [pretending to be old] Now that you have read this review, you are old. Sorry. Oh God.
Keith: Oh God.
Sylvi: [pretending to be old] Guys, I'm old!
Keith: Thank God it doesn't hap— It doesn't affect anyone that just hears the review.
Ali: Damn.
Keith: No one go and read a review. You have to just leave a review.
Sylvi: Yeah, please go leave a review. Yeah, I'm, I'm not old anymore. I'm normal again.
Keith: Oh, that's good. It only lasts for a minute.
Sylvi: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got it off my screen. And—
Keith: Uh, by the way, you should go review. There's gonna be 15 more reviews to hit 700. If you're hearing this and you haven't reviewed, you must go review. You must go review.
Sylvi: Please do.
[“Dr Malcolm and Friends” by Jack de Quidt starts playing]
Keith: Um, bye.
Sylvi: Bye everyone, see you next time.
[“Dr Malcolm and Friends” by Jack de Quidt plays in its entirety]