WUHxKC: Knock at the Cabin (2023)

Wake Up Heavy is a weirding Way media podcast. Welcome to Wake Up Heavy, the world's greatest horror movie podcast. On this episode, my weird dad and his friends will be talking about there, can I talk to you for a little bit? You come and say right now? There were four of them?

What are we saying? You shouldn't make things up when we're talking about can you open the door please? Because you're ready. I'm not here to hurt you, but you have to stay here in the cabin with us. Families throughout history have been chosen to make this decision.

Your family must choose to willingly sacrifice one of the three of you to prevent the apocalypse, not sacrificing anyone forever. No, you give us hundreds of thousands of people are going to time. It's really happen. Speed up, blose your eyes. Will you make a choice?

You have to show trust us more normal people just like you. It doesn't matter, none of us pifrif you we will never choose anyone where where where. I'm afraid the rule is that no one's allowed to leave until you choose. I do really think it's all just a coincidence. I have to believe that my son is going to die.

His name is Charlie as a mugger. I am begging you farely a the worter can tuck Andrew. I saw something. There was something in the light. I feel it now.

I'm taking my family and if you failed to choice, a world will perish you. We've been given the chance to decide the fate of everyone conjuring it out in the world. There is nothing more flawed and perfect in this world than our family choice. Always together, always together. I will ask for the last time, will you make a choice?

Hello, and welcome to Wickapevy Recollections of Horror. This is Mark Beagley, your host, joining me in this crossover episode. Once again, have we done any require I haven't done any recording without you and what seems like months, mister Chris Stashu all the way from the Culture Cast, where these episodes can also at least the last couple we've done can be found, but more specifically the Shamalan movies, because that's why we're doing this episode. I wouldn't have gone out of my way to watch this movie otherwise, mister Bagley. Wow.

On today's episode, we are talking about knock at the Cabin strange title written by Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman and then written or rewritten by m Night Shamalan. Directed by m Night Shamalan, based on the novel The Cabin at the End of the World which makes much more sense by Paul Tremblay, Starring Dave Bautista, Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldridge, Nicki, Amuka, Bird, Abby Quinn, Rupert Grint, leave him for the end, Baby, leave him for the end baby, and Kristen Quee or q or qui Queen it's probably I would say it's probably que Yeah, I'm not sure how to pronounce the young woman's name or young girl actually, and Paul gees for probably mispronouncing it all three ways. This is the latest Shamalan and came out only in theaters quote unquote in February and is already on vod as of at least a week ago, if not longer, so you can catch it.

We will be spoiling the film because you have to talk about the end of his movies in particular, but this one because it's based on a novel, and then novel, as I understand, has a very different ending he does, and we will be spoiling the novel as well. So if you haven't read the book and you want to read it, if you haven't watched the movie yet and you want to see it without spoilers, shut this off. Go do that, come back later. If you don't care about spoilers, as I don't generally, then keep on listening. So, as you mentioned, we're doing this because we did the first three Shamalan movies crossover event with wickap Hivyan Culture Cast a little while ago.

When was that September or something? August September could have been yesterday for all it feels like it was yesterday, but I want to say it would have been sometime in October last year. I think around Halloween time could have been. So yeah, it could have been after the great migration to Speaker and weirdingway media for me and I am a fan of m Night Shamalan and I was planning on going out of my way as much out of my way as possible to catch this. I have been curious about each new release of Hit since Split came out, and we had the kind of big oh, he's back in forum and not nicking weird shit.

After Earth and the Avatar film and things like that, and sometimes big budget don't work for some people, and that might be one of those people. Man Like we talk about how bad his movies are, some of his movies, those movies stand apart. After Earth and Last Airbender are strange entries into this man's filmography, to say the least, both of which I have yet to see. Not a big fan of Will Smith, so I highly doubt I'll ever watch After Earth. Avatar is a possibility because my daughter watched that show.

Bro, don't push her towards that. If she likes the show, she's not in the movie will be a and a front probably to her fandom, as it should be. She has been asking to watch more of his movies, though we watched The Village this weekend. We watched The Village. We've watched you know, the three When we did that episode, I'm trying to think and old and oldest kind of where now I'm like, I got to see what's going on in his brain with every new movie, because that movie is bonkers.

But we had a lot of fun watching it and we'll definitely be watching it again at some point. So when this came out, I had heard about the book haven't read it that you have, which is helpful because I do want to pick your brain about a couple things. In regard to that, I knew that the book was pretty popular. I remember seeing it a lot when it came out, and that was twenty eighteen. I believe, Yeah, it's right pre pandemic, which is interesting.

Part of the story involves a pandemic of some sort. You're much better at reading books than I am these days. I used to go through them like water through a duck, but not more so. The basic plot is four strangers converge in the woods where a same sex family is on vacation, and they task them with making an impossible choice to save the world. So it is an end times story, not a post apocalyptic story, which I appreciated pre apocalypse.

Is it really happening or are these people having a shared delusion? What's the deal going to be? And that's pretty much it. So it's sort of a self contained, one room mainly what seven character story. Simple.

Like you mentioned, this is not big budget Shamalan. This is akin to Signs in my mind as far as limited cast, limited location, same kind of idea where they're trapped in this one spot for most of the movie, get some flashbacks and things like that. Since you weren't going out of your way to watch it, what did you think of it? I thought it was fine. I like the book a lot more.

And you know what the funny thing is, because you kind of already mentioned it. The changes that they made are so drastic that in the ultimate way that the narrative is presented, it's the same journey, but the destination is very different. Could not be any more different if they tried. And I remember when I was reading the book, and I think I must have read the book. Probably it was before I was using good Reads as much as I am now, so like twenty twenty one, maybe twenty twenty.

Probably I only read it a year or two after it came out. I remember reading it and thinking, what an ending, and this would this only works in the book, like it's like No Country for Old Men? Right, the ending of No Country for Old Men? And I've come back to a plenty of times. I'm maybe on this show, but I know I've talked about it on my show.

I understand why everybody doesn't like the ending for No Country for Old Men, but I respect the Cohen Brothers for sticking to the way the narrative is presented more or less directly throughout the entire story, because the ending of No Country for Old Men ties directly into the themes of the book in a lot of ways, the Cabinet, the end of the world's ending, ties into the themes of the book, and what the book is getting at a lot better than the ending of the movie ties into the narrative that the movie is presenting. I think the movie is fine. I think it works for a Friday night crowd, and I think m Night Shamalan has another quote success on his hands here with a movie that it doesn't really challenge the viewer to ask many questions.

It more or less gives the viewer all the answers that they need, and they're there's no ambiguity as to what's going on, and in the book there's a lot of ambiguity. Paul Tremblay isn't necessarily interested with the destination as much as the journey. Look. I was more surprised than anything else that A Headful of Ghosts hasn't been adapted yet, because that had been talked about being adapted for a lot longer than this. A Headful of Ghosts has been out since twenty fifteen.

I think they talked about with him, like a year of that coming out, and I know that Oz Perkins has said he's directing A head Full of Ghosts. That was five years ago. Now. I like Paul Tremblay a lot. He has a very specific style and the way that he writes.

He is very much Shirley Jackson in a lot of ways, Like that's the kind of writing that Paul Tremblay does is similar to what I would get out of when I would read Shirley Jackson when I was in high school. I liked the movie as much as I could, but I couldn't help but feel like by the end of the movie, it was like, man, they really don't want there to be any ambiguity to what's going on here, and that's a failing of the movie, not of the book. Because I get why they did it for the movie. I guess there's an assumption that film audiences just can't take it right. I don't get that sentiment, but this is a movie that I get why the ending wasn't what they wanted it to be for the movie, but like it feels like a cop out.

That's all I could think when I watched this movie. By the end of it was like, what a cop out ending? It kind of sours my enjoyment of the entire journey because by the end of it, I'm like, and this is where we were getting with all this, Like, I don't know, the journey was more fun than the destination, that's for sure. What about you. I knew that the ending was different, just from the little bits and pieces that I pick up on Twitter and stuff, and I expected it to pretty much go the way it went.

And I also knew in my head that it wasn't going to be ambiguous that what these four strangers are is not a delusion, It's really happening. And I sort of ruined it for myself because I was wanting to get to the realization of the family Andrew Eric can Win. I wanted them to realize that it was really happening quicker, because that back and forth of is it really happening? Is it not? You guys are crazy?

All these clues that they pick up on to suggest that it's not really happening. For me, in my head already having made my mind up that it was really happening. Sort of ruined that suspense, but it also frustrated me because I just wanted them to realize, oh, it is happening, and then go from there as to what they're going to do, because they have this awful choice to make. So basically, the four strangers that converge on this cabin, and it doesn't matter who's at the cabin, it's just they've been led there by these visions. People across the country or maybe even across the world, are having visions of the end times.

These four individuals in particular, have had visions of this cabin, this exact location that the family is vacationing in, and they meet there and they explain to the family, you have to sacrifice one of your members to save the rest of the world. That's the basic premise of the film. With that, you have a lot of options, one of them being the families obviously not going to who would believe this, right, The family's not going to believe it. You can show them all the proof you want. They're going to go to the end of the film without ever believing it, or at some point they're going to realize, Okay, this is really happening and they're not going to make the choice, or you know, they find out this is really happening and they do make a choice and it doesn't stop it from happening, etc.

There's all there are variations of what we can do here. It just seemed to me that I kind of commented on the title of the movie and how it seems incomplete to me, knock at the Cabin seems like an incomplete sentence for one thing. I always want to call it a knock at the cabin door. And it made me think while I was watching it, at least for the first time, it's kind of an incomplete movie. It feels truncated, and it feels like there's a lot of missing pieces.

That's why you, having read the book, I'm curious about what might be missing. So during the film we get flashbacks of Andrew and Eric's life. They're mainly used to show their states of mind or their personalities where we see that now I'm probably going to get them mixed up. Eric is Jonathan Groff, I believe, so. He seems a little bit more level headed and has some religious background.

He was raised maybe in a Catholic home or something, so you get the idea that, Okay, this is the one that might buy into this. Andrew's a lot more defensive, a lot more aggressive, very much dismisses any of this religious stuff. So the flashbacks serve that purpose. They also show them adopting when so you get bits and pieces of them, but you get nothing of the Four Strangers, the four horsemen of the Apocalypse basically in the movie. Yeah, and I wanted to see flashbacks of them, at least of Leonard, who is Dave Bautista in the movie, the leader or I mean, I mean he's the leader of the group basically takes control of the situation.

For the most part. I wanted to see flashbacks of their normal life, but also something of the experiences that they report having and have them be ambiguous, like you're talking about are they really having visions or are these things all explainable. I think that's missing from the movie, and I don't know if it's in the book. The movie takes a pretty hard stance on what's going on pretty quickly. Right in the book, there is the thing where they're looking at the TV and there and Andrew and Eric are bold like this is bullshit, This is just happening.

It's already happened. Yeah, it's or I think in the book they lean on it more, is like it's a coincidence that you're here and this thing is happening. And I kind of mentioned that in the movie too. There's still a fair amount of ambiguity in the book. You don't see flashbacks of the characters outside of the main ones.

There is still the scene where they're at the bar and the guy played by Rupert Grint comes and clocks, and I mean that still is in the book. The stuff that the book does more is the book lets the narrative inside the cabin between the seven of them play out more. I don't think the Ruper Grid character is dead immediately. I don't remember if it's like five It feels like five minutes into the movie and he's dead, no exaggeration. It happens pretty quickly after they show up.

But right at the beginning of the movie, where Wynn is outside catching grasshoppers and then Leonard shows up, that's a pretty lengthy scene. Yeah, we're about ten minutes or more into the movie before she senses danger. When the other three arrive with their homemade tools and or weapons as they call them, and runs into the house to warn her dads. And it takes a good while for them to get into the house as well, which I actually appreciated that whole scene of them coming to the door, and it led to some interesting camera work and blocking and stuff in this film. This is I don't think Shamalan does too much in widescreen.

I believe Unbreakable as wide screen, but I think most of his movies are in the one point eight five to one ratio or one six six to one. There was a lot of stuff going, a lot of interesting camera work. My wife and daughter were both really flummixed by the focus polls in the movie get stuck out to them. I didn't notice it at all because it's a pretty normal film technique. But I guess maybe it's not used so much these days like it used to be, where you've got a character very close to the camera in focus and then something or someone behind them and then they switched the focus.

And I really like when that's used, and I guess maybe it's just not employed as much as it used to be. Saying the seventies or eighties that stuck out to them. But there's a couple of shots in here. There is some Shining esque shots. Two in particular, one where the group first shows up and Jonathan Groff goes to the door and is about ready to grab the handle, and you have that underneath shot.

Yep, it's a different angle than in the Shining parallel as opposed to perpendicular or whatever. And then when Leonard swings his axe and the camera actually tilts and then follows the action of the axe down and you can you know, I mean that just automatically brings to mind Jack Nicholson swingeyed his axe at the door and the camera following him. I don't know what else it could be. Right, it's even more than that, because the camera has actually done this great forty five degree angle till it's effective. I liked it a lot, and I thought, boy, he's really having fun with the camera this time.

In this single, mostly single location where you're getting that shallow focus, you're getting a lot of close ups of people, not like overwhelm in close ups, not Jonathan Demi Philadelphia where everybody's shot close up. There's quite a few at the beginning with Leonard and when it's like I found it to be particularly effective because at the beginning of the movie you don't know what Batissa is up to and what I mean, even if you have seen the trailer, you're still not aware as to what the entire play is. I just want to mention it before you do. Dave Batista is really good in this movie. Maybe the best part of this movie.

Actually, he is the best part of this movie. He is the standout in this movie. And that is something that I had read. If people didn't care for the movie all that much, their note at the end was always, but Dave Bautista is amazing in this I totally agree. But yeah, that first scene where they're talking and there's a lot of close ups between the two of them, but even again in the cabinet with those focused polls where you've got the dads one in focus, one behind and then they switch that.

And the cinematography is really wonderful on this too. A lot of play with light, and that has to do with the story as well, because Eric gets can cussed at one point, and so his sensitivity to light plays a part in the plot and what's going on and what he's seeing and things like that. This is one I'll definitely watch it. Again, but I'd have to put it in among things like, oh gosh, I'm trying to think of Lesser's Shamalan and it's not as bizarre as the happening or anything, but that's maybe lower tier Shamalan. For me.

It's like Signs. That's what it reminds. Yeah, and maybe it's the whole the end of Signs took place in the cabin or like their basement of their house, or the fact that Signs more or less takes place in their house. The entire right that can't be overlooked. But this is a movie that's this movie and not the book so much.

I mean the book kind of, but the movie I think clocks you over the head with a cross. This movie is about belief and what do you believe? And what does it mean to believe in something that you can't comprehend or understand or even begin to have the smallest inkling of an idea of your place in the universe. That's what this movie is about. It's understanding your place in the universe, what it means to believe in a higher power, and what it means to also reject the belief in a higher power.

And the book does a better job of the rejection part of it and that conversation between a believer in a nonbeliever, because in a lot of ways it is about a group of people who believe and a group of people that don't believe, and finding a way to find the middle ground, if there is a way to find said middle ground, And again, I think the book makes better case that there maybe is. I think the movie more or less says the religious folks are right, which is like a fucking strange place to be coming down in twenty twenty three. At the same time, I appreciate that someone is willing to make changes to a narrative, even if I don't agree with them, but they're making it their own. It feels, I'll tell you, the movie feels towards the end of it uniquely m Night Shamalan, maybe to a maddening degree, because the whole I saw you in the light and it's like, fuck this shit movie, don't don't it's just oh, I like that part, but it's so ham fisted, you know what I mean, Like it's it's trying harder to pull out the heartstrings than Sixth Sense does, and that movie is ten times more successful at being emotionally engaging.

If this movie had gone the route that the book did, I think everybody would have been like, oh man, what a choice. Because in the book, when dies, she's killed by accident in a scuffle with the gun that gets loose, and there's a scene in this movie where that could have happened, and it doesn't. There's a scene in the movie where Andrew gets in the car and he gets his gun. In the book, he kills the woman who goes out, but the woman who goes out there is Adrian, the other woman, not the nurse. And so they make some changes to keep certain characters around longer or not.

It all is in service of this weird pseudo religious message because in the book they go, hey, you know, if when dying wasn't enough, then we don't give a shit, Like fuck God. Then if our daughter dying was not a willing and worthy enough sacrifice for God, then fuck God. Right, And like that's an interesting message and an interesting point to get to that the movie just goes, yeah, no, it was actually happening. I think that was happening the whole time. It's like, WHOA, Like, I get it, And it does work when we're talking about the movie version, but it feels like one message is getting highlighted while the other one is more or less getting ignored.

Well back to your point about the belief. For me, it's the belief of something bigger than yourself. It might not even be a higher power per se, a godlike image. But and the nurse says, you know, my mom used to somebody used to tell her her dad, maybe trust in something bigger than you. Andrew absolutely cannot do that in the movie.

I don't know if it's as hard hit in the book. His idea or his view is, like you said, fuck everybody else, it's the three of us. I'm not making that choice because I don't give a shit. I don't have trust in anything other than our family unit. I get that.

I totally understand that idea, and I think it's more of a modern idea. If this movie came out, like say this was a Shirley Jackson book or something, and it was filmed in the sixties or seventies, I think you'd have a harder time showing a family that wasn't willing to make a sacrifice for the rest of the world, for seven billion people as they say in the movie, you know it's you three or it's seven billion. And I think in the past people would be shown as more willing to sacrifice one of themselves for the good of all humankind. Nowadays, I think you'd be hard pressed to find people that are willing to do that, and so I found that interesting. But you also bring up another point about the end of the book and when dying in the book.

I don't want to get too much into the end of the movie just yet, but I know in the movie they say, we can't do it for you, and you can't kill yourself. It has to be an actual choice. That is the rules of this. You have to choose someone to die when wasn't chosen, not a willing sacrifice. It's what they say, like multiple times, right.

So that's why in the book it doesn't stave off the apocalypse or the supposed apocalypse, or does it. The book is more ambiguous. They drive off and there you go. There's no all the stuff that happens afterwards in the movie that feels like somebody was like, we've got some notes here for you a night, Jamalan, We need you to get your actors back together and go do some pickup shots in a diner somewhere. Yeah, that's what that felt like, because the idea that, you know, you have a group of people that believe so vehemently or I guess they believe so strongly that the world is going to end.

They've seen these visions. The visions are haunting them. They need and feel like they have to do something about it. So their path is more or less set. You know that they've committed to the point where they have all signed and essentially signed themselves up to die because they've made peace with themselves about what they need to do to prevent the end of the world.

It is interesting the interplay between Eric and Andrew in the movie because it's a little different than in the book, because I don't remember if in the book there's this whole I saw the future and I saw when and you and like taking the book out of it and just talking about the movie. I get what they were getting at, But where is this coming from? He hit his head, he was maybe kind of religious, but the direction that the narrative takes by the end of it, I kind of had a hard time believing that Eric makes that decision. I don't know's it's strange, like the movie is not earning its climax or conclusion because it doesn't do a very good job in setting it up. The emotional weight and stakes of the movie are not Is this really happening?

Are these people for real? Can we take them seriously? It's who's going to make the choice and how? Because you know it is happening. That's two different, two very different stories, because an ambiguity behind what's going on leads to a question of the motives behind the people doing it this it's like they are good people in a bad situation.

We see that when they find their car, and all of a sudden, it's like again another pickup shot of there's the ID and there's that this. It's like, come on, movie, Like, you don't have to drip beat us everything as an audience, And when the movie isn't drip beating you everything, I think it works better. When I watched it again yesterday, I thought that that's scene at the end in the truck in redmon Or O'Bannon's truck, the Rupert Grant characters truck with all of the different bags, because at first I thought, wait, I thought they all just kind of showed up on their own like an met in the woods, but it would appear that they were all in his truck, which find whatever that may have just been me misunderstanding what was said, but to find those individual items of each person that reiterate the point that yes, they were all telling the truth, at least about their past lives, which then leads you to the conclusion that the rest of it was true too.

That's why I wish that there was something in the nature of a flashback for at least a couple of those people that made it more ambiguous. Right. Okay, Let's see Leonard as a second grade teacher and maybe having a vision or maybe being on the message board that they mention that these people all connect on, or they mentioned a boardwalk at some point they're all out on a boardwalk. Maybe show that, but make it so that it's still people doing something via the message board. This message board is their connection.

But who created the message board, Who's planting these ideas about these things? Who's taking maybe stuff from the media about the X nine virus or about possible earth quakes and combining it all together to say, oh, well, this is from revelation, This this is from the Book of Revelation that you know it's the end times, let's all go meet at the boardwalk. Make the case for O'Bannon finding where they are. That seems like a stretch to me, And I don't know how they deal with that in the book, But that becomes part of the issue, is that Andrew, after Redman is already dead, realizes, oh wait, this is the guy from the bar that attacked me. Get his wallet.

I can prove it. His name's O'Bannon. He assumes that they were targeted because of that. But how would he find out where they're vacationing, their air being being it From what I can gather just from the right. Nothing's ever explicitly said, but they show a shot there's a car that says welcome or enjoy your stay or something like that.

And they mentioned the view is much nicer than it was online, and so on and so forth. It's a vacation spot. How would he have found that? Maybe show him doing some kind of search online. I don't know.

The ambiguous stuff that they bring up in the movie like that, like the implication that the stuff that they're seeing on the news is either prerecorded or repeat of a show. I don't know how you would know necessarily exactly when something's going to be shown about an earthquake or about the X nine virus. These are the plagues that are occurring. I enjoy apocalyptic stories, like I mentioned earlier on, this isn't post apocalyptic, which I enjoy also, but you don't see too many of these stopping the apocalypse type things. As far as I'm trying to think of something, and I was, I've been in the Woods, and that's a subversion of it, right right.

This movie made me appreciate Cabin in the Woods a little bit more. It really did. And I don't like that movie. I kind of find that movie to be frankly detestable in a lot of ways because it feels like it's just the biggest pandering, pandering thing I've ever seen to pander to people like me and you. I have issues with that movie.

Joss Whedon, like, well, you know, and I mean the Joss Whedon thing aside, Like I don't know, Captain in the Woods always felt like it was You're gonna like this because you're a horror fan, and it's like, I'm not. You're you can't get me that easily, and there are plenty of people just like myself and you that aren't gotten that easily, just because you throw random horror references into the movie without actually being horror references, like the Hell and the Pinhead Guy. I mean, there's a lot of it in that movie. My issue with that movie is that they show their hand way too early. That should be much more mysterious.

I'm a similar problem with this movie. Uh, the whole stuff with Richard Jenkins and what's his nuts from West Wing, Oh, the guy with the weird balls. We know too early that they're manipulating things. Let that come out maybe at the end of the first act or later. Mystery is gone.

So anyway, that's my It's still pretty fun. Actually, my daughter and watch that a couple months ago, and shit, but it is similar to this, right, there's a level of ambiguity that Cabin in the Woods has up until the end. That knock at the Cabin could have benefited from that the book does, which is me knowing the intention behind the people who have come to the cabin should not be something that you reveal to get me going on the narrative path. It should be something that's revealed later on in the narrative to kind of maybe subvert what's going on or help kind of lead you maybe there is a different path this is going down. Instead, they show their hand very quickly.

How could half of these things happen unless they're happening exactly the way that they said they're happening, Because, like you said, how does Rupert Grint find them? I mean, how does half of the stuff that Leonard's talking about? How do they not just believe him when they turn when he turns the TV on? In the book, there's a level of ambiguity that they just don't have to explain everything. In the movie, it's like every time to sit down to have a talk with Leonard, he is half expository dumping and the other half just saying vagaries like, oh, you know, the end of the world started long before this and this was just a spark.

Like those are really great lines that are written really well that I'm glad Batista can deliver. But for this narrative that they're telling, it doesn't make any sense. It doesn't jive with the rest of the narrative because this has been made very clear this is happening. There's not a question of this happening. We don't need to have like an existential crisis as to whether or not we're actually preventing the end of the world.

You are, which is why the choice that Jonathan Groff makes doesn't seem like that big of a deal. In a lot of ways, He's like, all right, I know that my sacrifice will prevent the end of the world, simple as that. What are the stakes here? Then? What are the stakes if you know how to fix it and you fix it?

So I watched it twice and I still miss where Andrews coming from. When he talks about this is he doesn't say prerecorded, but he he mentioned something the first plague is tsunamis and they turn on the TV and there's been earthquakes on the Aleutian Islands, so that border of Canada and America off the Pacific northwest. He's looking at the time stamp on the broadcast or something, even though it says live up on top, and I'm going, what is he talking about? Where this is something that happened before they arrived, but they're watching it now, so that confuses earthquake already happened, but like the tsunami takes a while to get there. In the book, some of this they don't go like like the more you go into this, the less sense it makes, which is why you just kind of leave it hanging like you said.

I mean, there's he's like, oh my god, this is this already happened. It's like, yes, it did already happen. But for a tsunami to occur from an earthquake, there has to be some lag time for the earth quake to happen, and then the tsunami too follows. The whole thing with the TV shouldn't have been a sticking point for the character, and it is, and it just like constantly is. The more interesting message and dialogue is when Andrew and Eric are talking towards the end of the movie and he's like, we don't owe them anything.

They have done this and that to us, and I look, you know, as someone who's bisexual myself, I do appreciate that they kept the same sex couple in the movie. They could have changed it. I'm glad they didn't. I appreciate that that remains that dialogue towards the end of the movie where they're talking about, you know, we don't owe them anything, I agree with you that we live in times now where this is a total thing that I would get behind. I actually agree with the way the book ends, and I think the movie should have ended that same way, because I think in twenty twenty three, I think a lot of us have been shown it's okay to be selfish because we are really out not out for ourselves, but there ain't going to be a lot of people who care about us other than us specifically, we should care about ourselves and be selfish in that way.

And I appreciate that message because it's a hard message to say out loud, but it's one that I think needs to be said louder. It is okay to be selfish. It is okay to worry about yourself and put yourself before others because nobody else is going to in a lot of ways. And I appreciate that the movie kind of starts going down that road very quickly stops more or less like pumps the brakes immediately. But I appreciate that that message is in the movie because it's an interesting counterpoint to everything that Dave Batista says and everything that Jonathan Groff's character is seemingly feeling.

I wish they had played at the angle that he was more religious more because it would have felt a little less not like a jump, but it feels like a little bit of a maybe taken the stairs two steps at a time type of thing, like you're getting a little ahead faster than you should. Without really building up this idea that he's susceptible to this and showing his religious parents who are disappointed with him being gay, ain't enough, Like it's not enough, And it's not even clear that it's because they're religious. I mean, there are plenty of non religious people who would have a problem with that as well. The only real clue is during the flashback of them picking up when and Andrew says you can pray if you want to, I won't make fun of you.

Basically is what he says, that those aren't the words you use, and I'll put the clip in probably to clarify that you can pray if you want I will be comment. That's one of the only indications that Eric either grew up religious or still has maybe some religious beliefs himself. They do that in another flashback, and it's the part where they show Andrew getting attacked in the bar, they're doing kind of a pro and con list of and at first I thought it was pros and cons of should we get married, but it was more pros and cons of being a arrant and they're listing each other's cons and Eric sayst Andrew, sometimes you're kind of violent or you have a violent streak and it's a little bit scary, and you have a temper, not in a scary way, just it's there.

And you could have said, well, sometimes your religious beliefs bother me or whatever, and they don't do that at all. We have the one character in the movie who's religious saying they're the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, which drove me up a wall. There are four people in your house talking about the apocalypse? Does the audience need you to tell them that's what they are? And then it does the thing where it's like this one was this, and this one was this and this one was like even for Shamalan, that's surprising because he doesn't do stuff like that very often, where it's like completely just like airplane spoon feeding you like that.

Well, signs, I mean we've signs kind of yeah, but smell Gibson at the end, you know. Yeah, but it was right at the end and sign right. I get that it was the thing that leads out the movie. In Signs, it felt like the movie was building to that. The movie after that little aside goes further down into the direction where I was kind of not on board anymore.

Signs. It's like the movies over go for it. You're gonna make your point now this movie there's like another twenty minutes left. It's like, God, come on, like you're gonna do this. At least end the movie with it, like just have that be like, Oh, there were the Four Horsemen the a podcast.

Okay, got it. My daughter picked up on that and she may have read something. I'm not sure if she was looking at the trivia or something while we were watching, but she said, well, he's wearing red, she's wearing black, he's wearing white, and she's wearing yellow, and those are the colors of the four Horsemen and they battle. Lap sounds like, yes, they are. Don't spoil it for us.

It's not subtle. And it's four people and it's the apocalypse. It's the apocalypse. There were there were a few things that have things tied to them. Religiously like four and the Apocalypse and four people who are the harbages of it in solid colored shirts.

Right, He's malice and knees. It's like, oh yeah, Redman's malice. Adrian is nurturing, Subrinas healing, and Leonard his guidance was the bit at the end that we got. You know, it's funny. I was going to mention this earlier.

I used to have apocalyptic dreams of the rapture, and I haven't had one in decades, but yeah, I would have weird dreams about being out just walking around or at school or something outdoors usually and hearing trumpets, Blair and seeing people like wholly lifted off the planet, and they were anxiety inducing dreams. I would wake up and just be like, oh god, you know, I'm relieved when I finally realized I was having kind of a nightmare. You know, you know what movie does this better? And this is totally a movie that we should rewatch at some point. I don't know if you've ever seen it.

This movie could have been a companion piece to Red State. Whenever I think about that, I think about Red State because they blare trumpets to basically get them out of their compound, and I'm like, probably would have worked on me. Even then they're like there is some ambiguity to what's going on writing with that. Yeah, this movie has those moments where it's like what you're seeing may not be on the level, but the people might be on the level. Like what they're actually talking about may or may not be happening, but yeah, they are invested in it the way that they've been told to be invested by the visions, And like Red State had that feel to it where it's like Michael Parks is committed to this, even if it's at the end it's like, well that was us doing that.

Motherfucker. He's like, I don't care, Like it didn't change anything, Like, as far as I'm concerned, it happened. Like I'm not going to say Kevin Smith is a better writer than m Night Shamalan, but that's an original script Evan Smith. So you know what, though, just think about since twenty twenty, actually since two thousand and sixteen when What's His Nuts got voted into office, how much doomsday reporting there has been in the last seven years, even before COVID, Oh yeah, before COVID twenty sixteen to twenty twenty was not fun, and it was not fun for a lot of people, not fun for the group that's represented in this movie by these two dads. And it's not gotten much better since then.

And then we have COVID, and then you've got natural disasters happening a lot more. We've had massive fires in my state, in particular in Australia. You know airline stuff. I mean, it's all that's it's all that stuff that dooms day say years can find biblical references too, and I'm surprised there's not more of it. I get ads every once in a while on Facebook or on Twitter for those tubs of macaroni and cheese to put in your fucking If anything, it should make you think, well, what would I do?

How would I respond? If I was Andrew or Eric? So I have a three unit family, me and my wife and my kid, what would I do? Yeah, there's part of me that says I would be an Andrew and say fuck it, we'll survive. As there's grocery stores all around here, there's canned goods are going to last for a long time.

We'll be fine for a good while. I'm fine being alone with just my family. The rest of you can fuck off. I mean, it would be I'm right there with you, bro, And that's what I would have done, like fuck you, like for real, like fuck you like I don't know society shit to society clearly doesn't feel like it owes me shit. If it plays out the way the movie plays out, the decision that I'm making is I'm not doing it even if I know what's happening.

In the book, I'm making the same decision, but in the book, the decision that I'm making feels it feels less aggressive. If you're doing it in the movie, It's like you are aggressively rejecting the apocalypse happening even though you're watching it happen, which is a message in and of itself about people and their ability to comprehend the realities of the world going on around them and their inability to process it. I would be of the same mindset either way, like fuck this, fuck all y'all, And it ain't nothing personal against you or anybody else, Like I would hope if you were in that position, you would choose self preservation. Well whatever that means, because you know what I'm doing, I'm choosing self preservation because I'm not an idiot.

Even though they stress, Leonard stresses you ain't gonna last much longer yourselves. You're going to live in a world that's basically demolished. I mean, if you think about it, really, if there are more tsunamis like this, if all of the planes in the air, that's the third plague. If all of the planes in the air drop, what's going to be left? So you have to wait against that.

But still there's I know there's a part of me that would be like Andrew, like, fuck, I'm fine being in my house by myself. Yeah, I don't, which is why I said that early on, back in the day, back in the fifties in sixties, you know, you'd find more people that are like, oh, yes, I will be noble and save the planet. Kill me right. I've lived a good life. I'm forty two years old and I've been working half my life.

Think about all the characters in movies that we see, like the one that always comes to mind because they really subvert the expectations Shay Wiggham and King Kong Skull Island. You remember how in every movie we have that scene I I'm gonna go and sacrifice myself for everybody else to get away gets killed, and it's like, yeah, it's one of the best scenes in that fucking movie for a lot of reasons, but it's also a really funny meta textual commentary on that kind of scene in movies. But we see it here where it's like I'm gonna sacrifice myself for the good of whatever group, mankind, our group, these people, whatever. Like you said, I feel like in this day and age, it's harder to get people to get to that point because it's like, you know, you know, like Freddie's chasing after us.

Fuck y'all, I just gonna run faster, like I'm not gonna turn around and stop like I used to in my mind feel oh, I could never understand why you get to that point, But now it's like, not only do I understand it, but I completely support your decision to do so. I don't know how much the times have changed me or if it's just like you said, it's just a matter of a perspective thing and distance from a more jovial and kind of quaint time. But when we live in dog eat dog times, even if the dogs aren't eating one another in the streets, and the movie does kind of mention that again, like the whole this was just the final spark. This wasn't necessarily the catalyst or the beginning of the apocalypse. Apocalypse has been happening for a while now.

I like that sentiment more because that I feel bad every day. I feel bad every day. It's a believable thing. I still a lot of times when I see that kind of stuff brought up by extremists, you know, these signs, and I'm like, they've been saying that. They've been saying it's the end times since shortly after Jesus ascended to Heaven, right, I mean, the apostles had to like send letters to people that's raid your Bible, folks, you know, they were telling them, cool it, it's not the end.

It's only been a year. Let's relax a little while. Here. It's ongoing, and you can create all kinds of connections to those vague vagaries in the Book of Revelation. So it's fun to see how those connections are maybe, but it's also a little bit scary to see people like wholly buying into it, right, which I wish they had done more in the movie show.

That's why I think I would have really appreciated not necessarily a flashback for all of the strangers, at least for Leonard, because he seems to be the most level headed. The nurse I mentioned at one point that she's not really a religious person, but she couldn't get this stuff out of her head. More of that, but really, in particular, I would have liked to have seen what they were experiencing in such a way that it's still very ambiguous and vague as to why they felt so compelled to do this well, and I don't understand why they changed the narrative so much, but they didn't do that. If you're going to make all these changes, you're gonna make it unambiguous. You're gonna make effectively Leonard a hero in the movie more so than he is in the book, because he's a little bit Again, he's not like a villain in the book anymore than any of these characters really are.

But there's a level of ambiguity to what's going on. If they're going to do what they did in the movie, why not do that? Like I just I don't understand the reasoning of not doing it, because if you want to explain everything else, why not just explain that too. At this point, what does it matter? Really?

That's kind of the way I look at him. If you're already forced feeding us everything and telling us how everything is in leaving nothing up to the audience's interpretation, why not just show us them having those visions? What is there to be lost? If you've already said, well, this is actually happening anyways, yeah, or having a vision, but maybe haven't it be explained by getting a call from his doctor and giving him the results of his MRI or something to that effect, where maybe one of them is suffering from a brain tumor. I didn't see it as cut and dry, like it's totally unambiguous.

This is happening from the get go. I just sort of took that upon myself, knowing as little as I did about the book, and figuring it's not going to be that they're delusional. It is going to be that it's actually happening. I know that my daughter and my wife were both up in the air as to what was going on until really the planes start coming down. I don't know if it's not ambiguous enough in the movie, because, like I said, I believe that they were unsure as to what was happening until that final point, maybe even further along, until the lightning is striking in the woods around them.

It may just be having gone into it, like you having read the book, even though the book might be more ambiguous, sort of realizing Shamalan's not going to do that. I would have been surprised if they had gone with the book ending. That would have surprised me. I wasn't surprised by the end of this, but I was still there to see what the reveals were going to be. Is this going to be convincing to this family, to Andrew and Eric?

What's going to be the final straw that convinces him this is really happening? And then what are they going to choose to do? Was it believable the decision that Eric comes to in the movie. Did you, as a viewer feel like they convinced you that he was convinced that the decision that he was making was the right Well, I don't know if I if it convinced me that it was the right one. Early on, when he has his vision, I'm like, Oh, he's gonna He's gonna end up sacrificing himself right.

It's like so unsubtle. It's like in the first scene that they meet them, he has this vision behind Dave Batista in the mirror, and it's like, okay, movie, you've given it up already. You've already shown us that he's susceptible, and Andrew isn't like okay, so there you go. Like you said, you already knew where it was going ten minutes in, which is weird because I saw scream captures of that image before I saw the movie, So this may have all so played a part in me sort of realizing it's not going to be ambiguous. And the image outline was much clearer in those screenshots than I ever saw in the movie because I kept rewinding it.

You see that flash of light and then it slowly dissipates, and maybe I was looking in the wrong spot, but I'm like looking at it and I'm pausing it. I'm I don't see the outline of a figure at all here. I kind of figured, if anybody's going to do it, it would have been a nice twist if it had gone the other way. I know that they're not going to kill when in the movie. That's just if this was maybe a low budget remake of a novel that no one had ever heard about or something, they might go that route.

But I think in a universal picture in twenty twenty three, we're not killing the kid, whether it's by accident or not. So it would have been a little bit more interesting to me if it was Andrew who made the sacrifice instead. But I'm curious if there was backlash about either of them making that choice because they are gay men, like that sacrificial. Even though the world has been horrible to me and treated me like shit this whole time, I'm going to be noble and do this. I don't know if that raised hackles, like in the gay community or something like it was.

I mean, I don't know if it's it's sort of like, you know, the black guys always get killed first in horror movies or something. I don't know if it's it's sure the same kind of thing. But like, there were two gay men in this, so if one dies, there's still another one left. But I don't know, I didn't see any of that. I didn't see any backlash.

I mean, look, as a gay man, it didn't it didn't upset me because I kind of understood where it was going, but Jonathan Groff's decision at the end of the movie, I don't know. I side with ben Aldridge's character way more, and I side with their characters way more in the book, because in the book they're not sympathetic to the plight of others. They shouldn't have to be in a lot of ways, like what do you owe a society that feels like it owes you not even the equal rights of others? And again I've seen people saying like this is a retelling of the Book of Judgment, and it's like, you know, yeah, sure, if you want to talk about what it's literally talking about in a lot of ways. I think the more interesting discussion to be had with this movie, and the thing that may cause the movie to have a little bit longer of a life than it wouldn't, is that scene between Eric and Andrew at the end where it's like, why do we owe them anything?

And I think that's a more interesting question because why would someone make that sacrifice knowing that the society that they're making the sacrifice for is populated with half one third terrible people? I don't know, use your own percentages, how you please. But yeah, I think to your point, like, I could see why people would be upset, and I wouldn't disagree, But it didn't upset me. That's because I also know that there's a version of this where it is fuck everybody else, and I can live in that version a lot easier than I can live in this version. I'm a little bit bothered by the diner scene at the end, but the flash forward of Andrew and Wynn later on in life didn't really bother me.

Obviously that's not in the book, or if there is a flash forward in the book, it's irrelevant because she dies. I don't Yeah, you know I said earlier, and I think you've agreed. It would be harder for us to be like, yeah, fuck everybody else. But then again I can think, yeah, well we probably wouldn't last long in what kind of life would that be for my daughter? So there is that other part that says, if I could imagine her in a world that's fully populated and having a happy life, then yes, that sacrifice would be worth it.

That's the thing, those sacrifices that parents make anyway for things, for making hopefully making their kids life better than theirs, so you say, and they say that in the movie it will hopefully have that right. I mean, families have been making this decision for hundreds of it. I think he asked, like, have families been making this decision for hundreds of years? And it's like you don't know, right, Like you don't know what you don't know? And the movie is kind of maybe leaving itself kind of an interesting side tangent of like is this the first time this has happened?

And what were those people like and what decisions did they make? And and you know, you could go down as many paths as you wanted there it's such a Hollywood cop out. Oh like their love is pure, They're a pure like like, oh my, it's just if you're going to change the narrative and you're going to turn it into this like I guess you just go full Schmoltz, you go full melancholy cheeseball, just like, are we have a pure love as a family and that's why we were chosen because our love is pure? Okay? In the book, it's just we're fucking saying no, if this isn't enough for whatever God is making the apocalypse happen.

Fucking like, how is that not a message in twenty twenty three that's more applicable to most people's lives than your love is pure and you're good Christians, so sacrifice yourself and save the world. It's a weird message to have in a mainstream movie where the book was completely at odds with that message, like almost at a cellular level. It's so strange, but I get why they changed it, because you know, it's a much more palatable ending, it's a much more it's a much more positive ending. And then you have the diner scene that just like Guilds there, Lily ten dimes over. I tend to like happy endings, But the more I think about it, the diner scene is a little much.

I think I would have preferred Andrew going up to the treehouse and when saying have him not reply and then find that truck and drive off and we don't know if it was worth it or not. And that's what I mean. It's like they can't leave well enough alone. Ultimately, he doesn't become about the journey the way the book is. It becomes about the destination with the movie, and the destination is to get them into that diner to show all of these post pro scenes where it's you know, taking place on a blue screen somewhere and someone is being told to read, you know, the tragedy is over now and things are returning to normal, and it's like that clip four times in a row.

Yeah, you're just like, okay, so there you go. So he did it, And the movie isn't concerned with what that means. It just wants you to know that they saved the world and then boogie shoes like it's just the end. It's so fucking bizarre because test audiences would have been rioting if it had just you know, they drive off and the woods are still kind of on fire, but they're maybe going out a little bit and that's it. And again in the book, it's not even there.

It's not even that, like they go, fuck no, when died not enough. We're gonna go out into the world and see what it is and whatever it is, damn the torpedoes. We got to deal with it either way. Like, yeah, like I get that that's a less heartwarming ending, but I think it's an earned ending that this movie could have earned should it have decided to not go the I don't want to say stereotypical, but the generic route. It's not doing anything different.

It's a Hollywood ending, like to the T to the letter, it's the Hollywood ending. It's a happy ending. Even though Jonathan Groff is dead, it's still a happy ending. I mean, unless you know, just saying some people probably don't think it's a happy ending because they would have been like Andrew the whole time and just said fuck it, okay, everybody else I don't care. But Andrew still makes that decision, he still shoots Eric.

Yeah. But they don't give that decision weight, the weight that it needs. It's like it just happens, and there you go. If we're building to that moment, and that's one of the more important moments in the movie, it's not given a lot of weight. And then we get a scene that just like I think the diner scene and everything that comes in that last fifteen twenty minutes of the movie really sours me on the movie because it just it feels like you are an audience member who could not follow along with what we're laying down, So let's lay it all out for you.

And I really don't like it when a movie does that because it doesn't. It doesn't need to, and it speaks to a bigger problem with the way Hollywood mainstream films are made, which is you as an audience member, can't comprehend one singular iota of complexity with your narratives or ambiguity. And it's like that in twenty twenty three that has been shown to not be the case. Even m Night Shamalan has shown that he understands that by crafting stories that I think have levels of ambiguity to them that work. I mean, that's not everything's not laid out in the sixth sense for you.

There's lots of questions that you can walk away from that movie with. This movie is not interested with you leaving unhappy. This movie wants you to be a happy audience member who walks out with a smile on your face, like that's what it feels like. And I mean, I'd know that that worked for a lot of people, because this movie was relatively successful critically and financially. I think that was the one complaint that I saw specifically was about the ending.

I would say most of what I read was fifty fifty positive versus negative, and it wasn't necessarily because of the ending, but specific complaints were sort of pointed to that overly happy ending. I'm usually relieved. I mean, I like downer movies. I like movies that kill everybody off at the end, or or are ambiguous. The mist the greatest ending change of all time.

You want it to be different every time you watch it, and you know it's never going to be, and so it bums you out. But a lot of the nihilistic seventies and eighties movies where no one survives and the hero doesn't make it to the end and things like that, and I'm fine with that, And I don't know if it's I'm more okay with it with those movies because that was sort of the times. And now I do want a happy ending, just because it seems like the world is kind of way shittier than it was then, So go ahead and give me the happy ending. But I still think that they well, I guess if they didn't have the diner scene at the end, it wouldn't really be a happy ending because he's dead and we don't know. It'd be a more ambiguous ending, but without the knowing sure that it really did stay contropodation.

Right then it's not it's maybe happy or this could have been all for not And with you as we continue on this journey of life and as things in the world are what they are and the things that are going on in the world continue to again, depending on your view, were better stay the same. I'm with you. I do like I feel like I resonate more with happy endings now because that's harder to find in reality. But at the same time, as someone who creates content just like you do, we're trying to take our audience on a journey, on a path with us that we're taking them on, and Shamalan's doing the same thing very intentional. He gets to where he's going, he ends the movie the way he wanted to end it, because again he changes the narrative from the book, so it's clearly the ending that Shamalan wanted.

But sometimes what you want out of something is not what the creator wanted you to get, and sometimes what you want you're not gonna get. And like you said, I mean, happy endings are what they are, but sad endings. If you don't resonate with him, you don't resonate with him. But that's the intention of the director is still to get you to that point when the director gives you the opportunity to figure out how to feel about it, less telling you that's a bigger success. And that's not what Schamalan's interested in doing here.

And I don't know why. Maybe this is a case of studio meddling, and after the fact we put that scene in with the diner, but I don't think so. I think that this is the story that Schamalan wanted to tell, and this is the ending that he wanted to get to. And it's a hopeful ending, maybe not a positive ending. But even if it had had them ending with them driving and no diner scene, I think it would be a hopeful ending, maybe not a happy ending.

The ending of the book is a hopeful ending. It's just of a different kind of a different kind of direction or angle on its same coin, different head of the coin. And that's anymore, you know. I go on these journeys with directors like you do when we sit down and watch their films, and by the end of the movie, I'm glad I've gone where I've gone and the director has shown me what they want to show me. But I can't guarantee you that it's going to resonate with me that directs the way the director wants, And that is something that's important to internalize in this day and age, because again, there are things that exist like this in two separate ways that you can consume either and feel a different way about either, but it's still the same story theoretically, you know.

I think that's what's interesting about adaptations of things. But at the same time, that's the tenuous ground you tread because you worry about human closes and the source material, but also doing your own thing, and Shamalan does his own thing here and varying degrees of success for everybody, it would seem, because yeah, I've seen mixed reviews, but critically more or less well received. Yeah, and I'm glad it's a different ending, not because of the wind thing, but I think in a book like this where you have such high stakes, such a big setup, the apocalypse, the end of the world, right, then everybody going into it that's read the book has this idea of what's going to happen. And you mentioned the mist and that's a really good example where change the ending make it way more depressing.

Because Stephen King does like happy endings, or after a certain point it looks like everything's happy things. That is a gut punch of an ending of a movie, and it changes the whole story at that point when you get there. So I'm happy that this is a different ending, maybe not so happy that it's just completely Yes, this was really happening, and at least these two are going to have a happy life in the future. And we've seen it. They showed it to us, right, which was like, call it a cop out, call it a cheat.

But honestly, for me, that might be the scene that goes too far, even the diner scenes, not that overt. It's like, I saw this, and if the movie is showing you something and telling you something, that means it's going to happen, because the movie has no other way of getting it across to you other than narration or a character saying it him going well, I saw this, and this is what happened. It's like, well, then that's what's happening, and that's what's going to happen if you do this, and it's like okay, And in the context of the movie, since visions are true in this version of my story. Then you take it as this vision is also true? Right, So what is there a question?

If you kill yourself for the good of mankind, you will prevent your daughter and husband from living terrible lives apparently. Yeah, so it makes sense in that yeah context? Yeah, How does this stack up against m Night Shamalan's other stuff? Is this more in the early camp, the middle camp or the more recent camp? Where do you come down?

Well, that's what I was trying to think of earlier, and you mentioned Signs, and I think it fits well with Signs for me. Where that movie, I'm starting to see some of that weird stuff that would pop up, weird dialogue, weird mannerisms. Yet I still enjoy that film a lot. It's not weird like Old is weird. I mean that talk about like people not acting like real people, right, that movie does it in spades.

I would put this firmly in the middle. I still think something like sixth Cents and probably even Unbreakable and split our top for me of Shamalan and then Signs old this movie the Visit and stuff like that or sort of mid range. I will definitely be watching this again. I'm sure that will get on Shamalan kicks my daughter and I and put this one on and the Village like we just watched. Probably, actually, that would be a good one to group it with sort of similar problems in a way.

The Village and Signs and this one probably fit together in a strange trilogy of not bad but maybe weird choices. How about you. I think it's one of his more approachable movies for a mainstream audience. It's not asking much of a Friday night crowd. It gives you all the pieces to play with and more or less shows you where to put the pieces to make all the pieces work together.

I mean, it's showing you its hand pretty early on the sixth sense. I think is still the top of Shamalan's game. And it's the first movie he ever made, and that's fine. It happens sometimes that way. Like you said, I mean, Signs, the Village and this I think are pretty good, pretty good for what they are, which is M Night Shamalan movies.

Because again that's kind of a weird qualifier, but it's a qualifier that I have to put because M Night Shamalan movies are just kind of weird on their own. There's nothing about them that aren't uniquely him because of his vision as a director. And we didn't even mention he's in this movie because of course, always always and always in like a role where he's speaking. Yeah, good for him, I mean, other than Signs where he's sort of a character that interacts with the main character, as he's usually just some odd Paul side character. I love that he's talking about fried chicken in a commercial.

It's pretty great. Yeah, all of his movies are uniquely his own, and that is something that is maybe a bad comparison and people might get angry, but a lot of ways, he's like Tarantino. He is who he is, and he's going to make the movies that he wants to make the way he wants to make them. And look, the Last Airbender and After Earth might be the only movies in his filmography that aren't the movies he wanted to make. But they're the movies that somebody was like, Nah, give this guy five hundred million dollars or whatever the hell Airbenders budget was and just see what happens.

And they did it twice in those movies. Those are the movies that stand out as his worst, even among his movies that you know, The Happening or Glass, which are more contemporary Lady the Waters that one, right, more contemporary duds. But Airbender and After Earth are big budget failures. This movie is like twenty million dollars, like it's a rounding error for Universal Pictures. Really, and they've produced and released or they've released his last four movies before this one, and now he's with Warner Brothers.

He has a first look deal with Warner Brothers, which, fuck man, this is someone who I think a lot of us thought his career was completely toast after Airbender, and thirteen years on he has a you know whatever, crazy ass deal at Warner Brothers. That he has the same deal with Warner Brothers that Jordan Peel does with Universal. And that's a pretty nice position to be in if you're a director, because they just go, oh, yeah, if we want to make this movie cool. If not, yeah, somebody else is totally gonna pay you to make it, which is the case because m Night Chamalan has been a proven success. I think he has a movie that has opened in the number one spot for the last three decades.

Now, I mean, that's not anything to sneeze at, even if he did make The Last Airbender and after Earth Well, and we've made the comparison to Jordan Peel before, where these are guys that are going to be able to make the movies that they want to make, and not a lot of directors are in that position these days, where a studio is going to let you make the movie that you want to make. That's the gig you want, that's the gig that I want, That's the gig that any self respecting movie person wants is to go. If you don't make the movie I want to make, then someone else will make it. But you are going to get an opportunity to pay me first before anybody else like who would want that deal? And he's not getting it as a young filmmaker.

He's getting it as a seasoned, veteran filmmaker with double digit films under his belt. And he's had a career fall and effectively now he's on the resurgence. I mean, I said the Sixth Sense is the peak of his career. That may not be the case ten years from now. He may make a movie that's better than The Sixth Sense with Warner Brothers or somebody else, because again Warner Brothers just has the first look with him.

That doesn't mean they have to release the movie obviously, but I mean he could be on another upswing here, another career resurgence, because you know Split was that. I mean I remember sitting and watching that movie with a better diner ending scene, mind you, and thinking like, wow, he's back, and then he had a dip with Glass. But now it's kind of like, well, here we go again, Like what's Shamalan going to be up to in this upswing of his career. Well, that's the thing that always I'm always asking myself, what is this one going to be? Like, I'm still very curious each time he releases a movie.

And that happened, I would say, even with the visit and I'm not a fan of found footage movies, but that one's pretty fun. It still has a lot of the failures have found footage. For me, that was what got him able to do Split. And and like you, when I saw that, I was like, oh, yeah, my boy's back. Glass whatever, yes, Glass, whatever is correct.

I'm still interested in what's going to happen next. Same with Old. You're either into that what he's doing or you're not. Can we mention something that kind of gets overlooked. Monoge Night Shamalan, Indian American director three point four billion dollars cumulative gross of his films.

He's an Indian American director. There are so few of them working today too, which is another thing that doesn't get heralded enough. That he is an Indian American director and his daughter is following in his footsteps. And he's directed some episodes of Servant and I've got to say what, I have seen her name in the credits. Those episodes have been very interesting.

Ay, I mean that show is great. Haven't seen it? My wife and I love it. It's talk about weird characters and weird dialogue and everybody's fucking weird in that especially the first two seasons. You're like, are these real human beings?

But it really makes sense in the world that they're living in and the things that are happening around them. It absolutely one percent makes sense. And it's a great show. And we are caught up. We're watching season four right now.

I'm loving it and it ends I think pretty soon, doesn't it. I'm pretty sure it's This is the final season of the show, so it's ran for four seasons. Yeah, it feels like it's leading up to that in this season. I wouldn't be surprised. I haven't heard that, or maybe I have, but yeah, it would make sense.

And it's Yeah, it's fun. It's a lot of fun. It's wild, half an hour episode goes down real quick and easy. It's on my list of things to watch because again, he's involved, and it definitely has touches of his throughout. Even if he's not directing or writing the episodes, it still feels like an Him Night Shamalan joint well.

And the thing that I always appreciate about m Night Shamalan, as you know, it's his thing, like you said, I mean, even though he's not like in every episode, it's still his thing. And you know, I have a weird relationship with him as a director because again didn't see The Sixth Sense until October of last year. Saw Signs when I was a kid. The parts that I remembered we talked about on that episode. But as someone who obviously appreciates movies and watches movies as much as I do, as much as you do, as much as so many of the people that we do this with do, it's always refreshing to find a director who has a unique voice that almost nobody else has.

And like you said, Tarantino, we've said Jordan Peel, we could say you mentioned you know, I mean, I'm sure we could mention Polanski and so many other directors who you know it's their movie from the moment you start watching it, and it's not that you're not surprised by the weird things that happened, but when you talk about it's like, well, this is an Mni Chamalan movie. That's why Avatar and After Earth don't really work, because they're not really m Night Shamalan movies. Last Airbender I had the displeasure of watching it on the flight back from India when I went in twenty eleven, and boy, I can tell you I had no idea what the fuck was going on in that movie. And I feel like so many people I know who'd love the source material felt the same way.

And it's like that kind of director should never be making, Like I can't see Tarantino making a big budget movie anymore than I could, at least not that kind of big work for hire, working within the system, yeah, work for hire, or do you know, like it's very workman light, which is something we always say that's not Shamalan, that's not Tarantino, And that's fine if you kind of do pay for play, like I'm gonna make this movie so that I can make this movie. I mean looking Scott Derekson man doctor Strange, Like, there you go. He made that so he could make Black Phone. I'm pretty sure like even the scores back in the day would do stuff like that, where you take on a studio movie after hours. Wasn't his idea, you know, that was brought to him.

He had to do. He had to work. And it's not necessarily worked so that he can make another film, but work so that he can get paid if no one's going to make his movies, and he'll make the studios movies and at least get paid. And David Lynch, you know, making Dunes so that he could basically make Blue Velvet. And lots of directors do these types of things, and it's fine that have those in your filmography.

Does it have their personal stamp on it? Maybe not so much, but Lynch's Disney movie still does, like that's the crazy thing, sodas Dune, and so does Elephant Man. Yep. There's still their sensibility in there. And I'm sure you could find bits of Chamalan and those two movies that we've mentioned that you know, I've not seen.

I'm sure there's some indication that this was his film or he was behind the camera. Yeah, yeah, maybe I'm up for whatever he's doing next, and I may not always enjoy it, but I'll probably appreciate it. And I enjoy and appreciate this film. I enjoyed and appreciate it old as weird as it was. I can't really other than The Lady in the Water, which I have sworn I will never rewatch, I can't really say that about anything else barring the two that I have not seen that I don't have any interest in.

So that's three films out of what two does well, not two dozen, but almost a dozen films. Yeah, you know, that's a good record for me as far as I'm concerned. Well, and again, say what you will about some of the quality of some of his movies, but he's still working. He has a first look with Warner Brothers, so they don't do that for everybody. They're not handing that out like Candy So and seems excited to be working.

Every interview I see with him, he looks and sounds very happy to be doing what he's doing and good for him. Can I ask you, though, because we haven't talked about this, is there an m Night Shamalan twist in this movie? Because that was the thing, right like, that was the thing longest time. There isn't There isn't a twist in Signs though, and that was his what third movie, right Like, That's why it reminds me of Signs. I mean, I'm Breakable has a sort of has a twist, It tries to have twists.

The village definitely has a twist, which a lot of people that's sort of what soured them on him. The Lady in the Water. I was looking for the twist in that movie and it never came and it was just fucking weird. I wanted the twist to help me make sense of that film that had never happened. Is there a twist in Split or is it just a sting at the end there where you realize that this is part of a universe that's that already exists.

That is a twist, but it's like not a recontextually, I mean, it is a kind of a recontextualization twist because it makes it makes sense why James McAvoy can do what he does in a world where seemingly none of this would make sense otherwise. Right, it's kind of like the twist in the sixth sense, but it doesn't recontextualize the entire movie. It just makes it makes sense how he can do what he's doing. But that's it, right, This movie doesn't have a twist. No, there's no twist in this and I think it's better for it.

I don't normally do this, but since it is a new film, and I guess if people have listened to the end and gone through all the spoilers, would you recommend this film? It is now out on vod I would say it's going to resonate with a certain Like I said, the Friday night crowd is going to eat this movie up. They definitely did. The movie made money. I think it's fine.

If I had never read the book, would I have the feelings I have about it now? Probably, but they would be less informed by the contrast and more just by the failings of the movie itself less. The failings of the movie, coupled with how I know the book handles the things that the movie doesn't try to do. So I would suggest it because, yeah, it's a more streamlined version of the similar ish narrative that the book is trying to tell. And unless somebody ever readapts it, which they won't because this was successful and you don't readapt successful things, or maybe you do, depending on your viewpoint on it, this will be the only film version of the book that you'll be able to see.

So yeah, it's worth checking out. Just know that if you're interested in the narrative and a derivation of a check out the book because the book get I don't know why everybody says the book is better. The book is given two to three hundred pages to do more than a two hour movie ever can. And so I think we should stop having the is the book better conversation and say how is the book and movie different? Or what are the successes that the movie has versus the book?

And what have you? Because comparing the two, I mean like, oh, is Westworld the show as good as the book? Like what the fuck do you even ask? How do you answer that question? And it's kind of the same way with this, It's like how do I answer a question about something that's takes like four hours to read versus an hour and a half to watch, So I would suggest it, but again, there are some caveats that go into it.

What about you, Hey, if you're like me and you enjoy the odd directions that he sometimes takes. Yeah, I didn't find myself annoyed with any of the unambiguousness of it, like maybe I would have if I had read the book. But you know, I'm a Night Shamalan fan, and I'm gonna say check it out. If you didn't like something like Old or you didn't like the village, that might be a better comparison than it might not work. This might not work for you, like that one didn't work for you.

But I'm always gonna say yes to a name Knight Shamalan film. And it seems like the industry is too, So that's a good banker for him. Yeah. Yeah, So, Chris, when you're not visiting my show, which doesn't happen all that often, what are you up to wrangling a bunch of podcasters into a network or at Weirdingwaymedia dot com, where you can find this show, my show, the Culture Cast, and so many other fantastic auditory experiences that you can find for free over weirdingwaymedia dot com, like Mike White's The Projection Booth, which is a weekly movie podcast that is as educational as it is entertaining, and Father Malone's Astounding Tales from the public Domain, which is audio experiences of public domain stories, mostly sci fi and horror.

And let's throw another random one out there for everybody, Twisted and Uncorked. Two women who are much funnier than I am, And that's not hard. What about you, Mark Begley, Where can people find you? Well, you can find me on Wickape Heavy, and you can find me Chris and Mike White on from the Files of Police Squad in Color, which by the time this episode comes out will have wrapped up it's ten week run. Well, let's say eleven weeks, because we skipped a week so that Mike could put out Top Secret.

Check that one out as well. The ten episode limited series on Police Squad plus the Naked Gun series plus Airplane as the opening bit that will all be available as of March fifteenth. And then you can also find me on my show Cambridge and Mashan, where I talk with my friend Ronald's Riggan about all kinds of stuff that we were into as kids, so check all those out over at weird Ingway media dot com. So thank you all for listening, Thanks to Chris for coming on the show and talking Shamalan always a pleasure. And don't forget anything can happen when you wake up heavy hop ah