Split Splat Splut

"So, the girl who uses Splat is gonna review Split?" ---> my mom, upon learning of my intention to write an "as-it-happens" review of the newest M. Night Shyamalalalalawhatever flick, starring that girl from The VVitch and James McAvoy, a man who is either really sexy and fuckable, or who really is not. I can't decide. Also, I recently ruined half the bathroom towels and a good section of tile flooring with my most recent reapplication of Splat's Midnight Rubies. So yeah: Mom: 1, Me, 0.

Ugh. God I hate M. Night Shyamaladingdong. Almost as much as I hate James Wan. James Wan tries too hard. M. Night doesn't try at all. He directs like he's got a severe Nyquil hangover. I've never seen such halfhearted directing. I can almost hear him saying: "Yeah, okay, so, do something for a bit and then maybe, I dunno, mumble for a while. We'll just keep the camera rolling."

Well, I'm just going to go ahead and assume that skirt length = mortality rates. The higher the hemline, the sooner the death.

Is it wrong that I'm hoping that one of James McAvoy's personalities turns out to be Mr. Tumnus?

Do we really need an upskirt shot on Betty there? I mean, she's got nice legs, but it creeps me out to think that the director might have a Gramma fetish.

Okay, so the scene where McAvoy's nine year old personality clumsily kisses our doe-like star and then says "You might be pregnant now" made me laugh. Well, maybe a smirk with an audible exhale. I'll take what I can get.

And the score is currently at Mom: 2, Me, 0 as mom refers to the three kidnap victims as Spluts.

Oh, he's a Kanye fan. That explains everything. 

I'm getting bored. Again. I mean, I'm nowhere near as suicidally bored as I was with Lady In The Water, but fuck, yeah, is something - anything - ever gonna happen?

Okay, mom has been banished from the living room for saying "Well thanks a Splot!" 

These are the calmest kidnap victims I have ever seen. Why is it that all of the characters in every single M. Night film act as though they've just emerged from major surgery and the tranquilizer hasn't had time to wear off yet? Nighty-poo, you've been making films for what, 30 years give or take? Are you ever going to allow your characters to wake up and react the way normal people do?

Nobody reacts this exaggeratedly slowly when when they sense that a violent stranger has just gotten into the car beside them. No girl runs this slowly away from a man who has threatened to kill her. No one ever stops to read a note left on the kitchen table in the house of a serial killer when one has finally escaped their cell. No sane person EVER FOLLOWS THE SLOWLY-BEING-DRAGGED-OFF CORPSE OF THEIR FRIEND AROUND A CORNER IN A DARK ROOM. None of this is scary. All of it is irritating.

I suppose this film would have made more sense if I'd ever bothered to watch Unbreakable. But I'm not curious enough to do so now. And even though I haven't seen it, did anyone else find Bruce Willis' one line cameo at films end just a little "post-credit-sequence-Ash-in-the-Evil-Dead-remake-saying Groovy" too cheesy-esque to be taken seriously? 

Nice to see that her traumatic experience hasn't changed our heroine. At all. Or roused her from the stupor she's been in for the last ten years. Honey, you survived. You're supposed to be all strong and confident now. Anything to say? No? Just gonna stare at us blankly with your glassy eyes until the scene finally cuts away? Okay. I'm just saying, it's a little anticlimactic, considering all you've apparently been through. And I know it's not you, because you had emotional responses aplenty in The VVitch - screaming, laughing, etc. I know you're capable. So tell us...or maybe just show us, on the doll, how M. Night directed you: "Okay Anna, in this scene, I want you to act like you're reading a James Michener novel in a beige room without windows, and you've just had, like, the biggest turkey dinner ever and washed it all down with Dilaudid. Good. Now, hold that for the rest of the film. No matter what happens, don't react in any way. Pretend you're a department store mannequin listening to Kenny G. on an eternal loop. Perfect!"

"Are you as bored as I am?"