Will You Make a Choice?

Knock at the Cabin

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Cast:  Dave Bautista, Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldridge, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Rupert Grint, Abby Quinn

Released: February 3, 2023

Picture it: you're vacationing with your family in a charming rustic cabin in the woods. There's a lake nearby for swimming and plenty of beautiful nature. You're only there for a few days before you hear a knock at the front door and it's four strangers. They tell you that you must sacrifice one member of your family in order to save everyone else on the planet. If you don't, the world will end. Sounds pretty crazy, doesn't it? Well, this is the premise to this movie 

We first meet Wen, a seven-year-old girl who is collecting grasshoppers to study in a large jar just outside the cabin in rural Pennsylvania. While she's doing this, she notices a large, tattooed man (Dave Bautista) walking towards her. She looks a little suspicious, but stays put. When he comes up to her, he tells her he's not around here and is looking for some new friends and asks if he can talk to her. She replies that she doesn't talk to strangers. He tells her she's smart and that she shouldn't, but he's here to be her friend, so hopefully they won't be strangers for long. (Which is exactly something a stranger would say!) They introduced themselves to each other and we learn the man's name is Leonard. 

Wen must have missed the Stranger Danger discussion in school because he offers to help her catch grasshoppers and soon she's opening up to him. She tells him that she wants to take care of animals when she grows up and that "Daddy Eric" taught her how to catch grasshoppers. When he questions why she refers to her dad by his first name, she tells him it's so they know which dad she's talking to: Daddy Eric or Daddy Andrew. She tells him that nobody in her class or anyone on the Disney Channel has two dads. I'm kind of surprised about the Disney Channel; I would have thought they would at least have one show with same-sex parents. Aren't they supposed to be pretty progressive? Also, does the Disney Channel even exist anymore with Disney +? 

Leonard has a flower and wants to play a game where they will take turns pulling off petals and each time they do, they can ask the other person a question and "by the time [they're] done, [they'll] know each other better." Wen asks him why he's here (love how she gets to the point) and he tells her he's there to make friends with her and maybe her dads and maybe catch some more grasshoppers. Hmm, Leonard, something tells me you're not telling her the whole truth! He asks her how she got the tiny scar on his lip, then quickly realizes he may have overstepped and that question might be too personal, but she tells him her lip was "broken" when she was born, but the scar was left when the doctors fixed it. He tells her that he doesn't have a physical scar like she does, but that his heart is broken. When she asks him why, he replies, "Because of what I have to do today." Of course this prompts her to ask, "What do you have to do?" It's at that moment Wen (and the audience) hears footsteps approaching and we see three people in the distance. Wen asks him if they're his friends and he tells her that she's his friend and "No matter what happen, I want you to remember that." He compares the people who are coming towards them "more like people I work with" and that the four of them "have a very important job to do; in fact, it might be the most important job in the history of the world." You would think he might be a bit hyperbolic, but, well, I'll guess we'll find out soon enough! 

The people are getting closer and they're carrying homemade weapons - wooden sticks with spikes and chains, that kind of thing. At this point, Wen is getting very concerned and stands up to leave. Leonard tells her it's not about her or her dads and she hasn't done anything wrong, but her and her dads "are gonna have to make some tough decisions. Terrible decisions. And I wish with all my broken heart that you didn't have to." Before she leaves, he tells her, "Your dads won't let us in. You have to tell them they must. Otherwise, we're gonna have to find our own way in." This poor seven (almost eight!) year old girl. That's a lot of information to take in. 

Wen runs back to her cabin (which wasn't at all that far away from where she was catching grasshoppers) and goes to the back porch where her dads are sitting. The vibe is very different. We just went from something super serious and ominous, and now we're just chilling with Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge) who are relaxing on the back porch while listening to music without a care in the world. They're more than a little bemused when Wen demands that they come inside right now and that "There's strangers and they want to come in, and they're scary!" They obviously don't believe her, but they humor her and come inside and ask her to explain what has her so frightened. She tells them how "the big one, Leonard" told her that she and the two of them have "the most important job in the history of the world." The guys thinks it must be Jehovah's Witnesses that she came across. 

After Wen tells them they have weapons, we get the titular knock at the cabin. Eric and Andrew decide the best way to handle this is to be polite and they ask Leonard if there's something he needs. He replies that he needs to speak to them and asks if they could open the door because it would make it a lot easier to have this conversation face to face. 

Eric tells him they weren't expecting visitors and he does't want to sound rude, but they would like to be left alone. Leonard says that he understands and that he never thought that the four of them would be here asking to talk to him. While Andrew looks through the blinds, Eric asks who else is out there and Leonard tells him he's with Sabrina, Adriane, and Redmond. He also adds that they're there "trying to save a whole bunch of people." Andrew beckons Eric to come over and they look through the blinds and see that they are carrying weapons. Andrew tries to call the police, but there's no dial tone. They try not to let that deter them and they tell their visitors that they're calling the police, but we hear Adriane tell them they had to cut the phone lines so they know the people in the cabin are NOT able to call the police...or anyone. They can't even use their own phones because cell service doesn't work where they are out in the boondocks. 

Again, Leonard asks them to open the door so they can have a conversation. Wen asks why do they have the "scary weapons" and Leonard tells her they're tools. Hmm, I would say they're 50% tools, 50% weapons! Andrew tells them he has a gun, but whispers to Eric that it's in the safe in the back of their SUV. 

Leonard gives them one last chance to open the door, then the door knob starts rattling and you know that a creaky wooden door is not going to stop four people who really want to get in (and when one of them is Dave Bautista; I forgot to mention a humorous moment when either Andrew or Eric sees him out the window and comments, "One of them is really huge!"). 

Eric and Andrew quick barricade the front and back doors with furniture while Wen goes around and shuts all the windows. There were a couple windows that were wide open, so while Leonard was talking to them, one of the other intruders could have easily gotten in that way! A couple of them go down through the cellar doors (guess those weren't locked) and through the basement while Redmond breaks the glass of the back door with an axe and tries tries to unlock the door from the inside. Eric grabs a couple of fire pokes and they try to fight him off. This is when they realize that some of them are in the basement and they decide to make a run for it to the car. As soon as they open the door, Sabrina appears from the basement and tells them, "It doesn't have to be like this." There's an altercation between her and Eric with their weapons and he ends up getting hit in the head with her tool/weapon of choice. This makes Andrew very upset, but Sabrina is a nurse and wants to help Eric. By this time, Redmond has pushed the couch away from the back door and enters, followed by Leonard so now all the intruders are inside the cabin. Andrew had been fighting off Redmond, but quickly stops when he sees that Leonard is holding Wen and tells him, "That's enough." 

In the next scene we see that Andrew and Eric have been tied up. Eric was unconscious when he was tied up, so that would make it easy for them to restrain him, but I'm surprised Andrew didn't put up much of a fight. I guess he felt he didn't really have a choice with their weapons/tools and the fact that a huge guy is among the four that are holding them hostage. Andrew thinks they're being targeted and that that is a hate crime because he and Eric are a gay couple. Leonard and Sabrina are quick to tell them that is not the case; that they are not homophobic and Leonard tells them they didn't know they were a same-sex couple until they got there. I believe him because he did look surprised when Wen told him she had two dads.

Leonard gathers everyone together because it's "time to talk". He wants his colleagues to introduce themselves to the cabin dwellers. Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird; she was also in Shyamalan's previous movie, Old) is from SoCal and has been a post-op nurse for five years. She used most of her savings to come out to Pennsylvania just to talk to them. 

Leonard tells them he's from Chicago where he's a second-grade teacher (I feel like he would be better suited as a high school teacher; I bet none of the students would talk back to him!) and he runs the after-school program. And when he's not a second-grade teacher during the day, he's a bartender at night which I find humorous. 

Redmond (Rupert Grint aka Ron Weasley!) sarcastically says he likes long walks on the beach and beer. (Well, I think he was being genuine about liking beer!) Leonard tells him to take this more seriously, that this family deserves to know who they are. With agitation, Redmond tells him they wasted time waiting for Eric to wake up and states that "this get-to-know-you stuff doesn't matter at all; doesn't change what we have to do or what they have to do." Leonard tells him when he says stuff like that, he'll just scare them and he makes it "less likely that they'll believe us or cooperate." I love that they're having this conversation in front of Andrew and Eric and Wen (who's not tied up, but usually standing near one of her dads). Remember, they have no idea why these four random strangers have come to their house and technically, neither does the audience, but if you've watched the trailer, then you probably do. But if I were one of the hostages, I would definitely be more than a little concerned after hearing that! So Redmond continues and tells them he lives in Medford, Massachusetts and works for the gas company. He's "done some time" because he did a lot of "questionable stuff" when he was "young and stupid." I've heard a few people on movie review podcast say they didn't think Grint do a good job with the accent, but I thought it was fine. Never once did I hear his English accent. 

Before Adriane (Abby Quinn) can do her introduction, Eric speaks up with his own thoughts. He thinks they are a cult who are trying to fix things and wants to recruit them or try to change them or make them different and if that's so, this is not the way to do it. The only thing we learn about Abby in this moment is that she's a line cook at a Mexican restaurant in D.C. Later, she will reveal she has a young son, but Andrew won't believe her. 

It's finally time to see what the hell is going on. Leonard simply tells them, "The four of us are here to prevent the apocalypse." Okay, cool. He tells them that everyone in this cabin (all seven of them) can stop it from happening, but only with their help: "Ultimately, whether the world ends or not is completely up to you three." That's a lot of weight to put on three people, especially when one is a child! Obviously, Andrew and Eric aren't buying any of this. Eric tells him that he's having "a psychological break of some kind." Leonard pretty much ignores him and continues with his instructions which is that they must choose to "willingly sacrifice" one of the three of them to "prevent the apocalypse." Let's just think about this for one second. There's only three of them which doesn't make great odds and one of them is just a seven-year-old girl, you know that they wouldn't consider her for one second, so now it's just a fifty-fifty chance between Andrew and Eric. Leonard realizes that this is an impossible decision (ya think, Leonard?), but if they fail to choose or follow through with the sacrifice, the world will end. The three of them will live, "but the rest of humanity will perish." They will also get the added bonus "to witness the horror of the end of everything and they will be left to wander the devastated planet alone." Well, when you put it like that! 

Eric tells Leonard they haven't done anything wrong and Leonard agrees with him and he doesn't think they deserve this burden. He tells them they're "the family chosen to decide for us in this time." He makes it clear that they need to make the decision and one of them can't kill themselves. Andrew tells them they're not choosing anyone to sacrifice. Sabrina asks him, "Even if it means the death of everyone else in the world?" He tells her yes, but says he doesn't believe it's true. 

This scenario reminds me of a question I would find in a book I have called The Book of Questions that asks such philosophical questions. I think one of them was similar to their dilemma: you have the option to save a couple of your loved ones or you can save thousands of strangers. (There was nothing about the world ending!) It also reminded me of the Trolley Problem, which is something I learned about in an episode of The Good Place. Wikipedia defines it as:

The trolley problem is a series of thought experiments in ethics and psychology, involving stylized ethical dilemmas of whether to sacrifice one person to save a larger number.

This is exactly what we have here. One person has to be sacrificed in order to save the rest of the world. Now you're probably asking yourself why does it have to be one of only three people out of the entire world's population of eight billion people? It's because of the visions Leonard and the other three had. Visions that were "so strong, so specific, and so real." They have been shown what will happen if they don't make a sacrifice and it does not look good. For anybody. The visions led them to each other and that led them to "this exact cabin." He has no idea why this family in particular was chosen. It's interesting that this cabin was chosen because Eric and Andrew found it online and obviously they are only there on vacation. Leonard describes what will happen: the ocean will swell and drown cities and drag everything out to sea, people will get sick from "a terrible plague", and an "everlasting darkness will descend over humanity." Andrew tells them that they need help and if they let them go, they can get them help. Leonard is adamant that what he just told them is going to happen and only their sacrifice can stop it. 

So if this had been an original Shyamalan screenplay, I would be wondering if the twist would be that the world is actually ending or if these four people are just playing a cruel and terrible joke on them. This is based on a novel called Cabin at the End of the World, which I had never heard of until I saw this movie. 

Before I continue on, I'm going to put on my spoiler warning because I'm going to spoil something about the book (I haven't read it, but heard a huge spoiler on a movie review podcast) and I'm also going to start talking about major plot points of the movie that could be considered major spoilers and since this movie is only a year old, I want to make sure you get a chance to see it before continuing reading on!

If you have not seen this movie and would like to see it spoiler-free, I would advise you to stop reading at this point! Major spoilers ahead for both the movie and the book! You have been warned! Spoilers ahoy! 

So I read through the Wikipedia summary of the book and while there are a few changes from the film, there is one major one (this is the one I heard about on a podcast; I guess on movie podcasts they're not too worried about giving away book spoilers! Oh, well, I was never planning on reading the book anyway). So in the novel, Andrew has gotten his gun and there is a struggle between him and Leonard and the gun accidentally goes off and kills the young girl! To make matters worse, her death won't count as saving all humanity because she was accidentally killed and wasn't sacrificed. So basically she was killed for nothing and her death didn't mean anything. It's clear to see why they didn't go that route in the movie! The little girl is adorable and I don't think it would go over well with the audience if they had killed her off, accident or not. This movie is already dark enough and I think this would take it into a whole new level of darkness. So Wen survives the movie! Who else survives? Well, read on and find out. Now let's get back to the movie!

Andrew and Eric still refuse to make a decision on who to sacrifice. They get very scared when Redmond steps up before them with his scary-looking weapon/tool. They tell him he doesn't need to do this and that they told them they wouldn't hurt them. The strangers are true to their word because Redmond gets on his knees and puts a cloth over his head. Before he completely covers his head, he tells Andrew and Eric, "I'm scared" and wants them to keep looking at him. (Luckily the seven year old isn't required to do this!) Now I knew this movie was rated R and was a little nervous about how much gore they were going to show, but luckily (at least for me, I know some people were disappointed that more gore wasn't shown!) you don't really see when an axe is put into his skull. You just see him fall over with blood dripping from his head. I guess the R rating was more for the language. You'd probably drop more than a few f-bombs if you were in this situation! 

While Leonard and Adriane take Redmond's body outside (after wrapping it up), Sabrina cleans the floor. Leonard turns on the TV because there's something he wants Andrew and Eric to see. The channel the TV is turned to is a home shopping channel and we see Shyamalan in his cameo as a guest host of the show, shilling air fryers. The show is interrupted by a special report and a news reporter announces that an earthquake that erupted in the Aleutian Islands four hours ago has caused a huge tsunami that is making its way toward Hawaii. Honestly, I'm surprised Shyamalan didn't cast himself as a news reporter! His role in this movie is significantly smaller than other cameos in his movies. Leonard wants them to keep watching until they see what was shown to him and the others in their visions which is a massive tidal wave that hits Cannon Beach in Oregon due to a second earthquake that registered as an 8.6 on the Richter scale. 

So I guess at a certain time if they haven't decided on who to sacrifice, the intruders sacrifice one of their own (and they seem to have an order of who will be sacrificed when) and it will also unleash something horrible.

Leonard tells them, "Tomorrow morning, you can make the difficult, selfless choice of sacrifice and save the world...or you can choose to let the clock move another minute closer to permanent midnight. For the rest of today and tonight, we'll tend to your needs within reason." He lets them "be to reflect and talk it over."  

Sabrina takes Eric into the bathroom to bandage his head and tells him he probably thinks she's a "religious fanatic", but admits she hadn't been to church since she was a little girl. She says when her visions started, she "didn't believe it at first, either" and that he will believe and that they are all on the same side. He just replies that he's on his family's side. 

After she brings him back to sit in the chair next to Andrew (and is tied up) and she and the others are out of ear range, Andrew starts whispering to him and tells him how the earthquake happened four hours ago and that "Leonard's checked his watch a thousand times." He surmises that they've been timing all of this. 

Wen hasn't had too much to do at this point so we see her sneak down to the basement and escape through the cellar doors. She hides behind a tree and Leonard immediately comes outside, calling her name. It doesn't take long before he finds her and brings her back. No, they do not tie her up, but he firmly tells her she cannot escape. 

So throughout the movie we've seen little flashbacks of Eric and Andrew in everyday life situations that help build their characters. When Andrew is still accusing them of being targeted because they're a gay couple, we have a flashback where he was in a bar with Eric a few years ago and off screen we hear a guy telling them to be quiet (when they're not being loud at all) and Andrew gets a little smart with him and the guy walks away, but walks back and assaults him by smashing a bottle on his head. He suddenly realizes that Redmond was the guy who did this and he did go to jail, but remembers his name being O'Bannon. This incident will also be the catalyst for Andrew purchasing a gun, the one that is in their car, which will come in play a little later. 

Andrew thinks this is some "sick scam" to get them to hurt each other, but Leonard denies this and Sabrina tells them, "We don't know why each of us is here. Andrew asks, "It's a coincidence the man who attacked me and had me in years of therapy is one of your group?" He wants to get his wallet so he can prove his name isn't Redmond. Leonard tells him it doesn't matter what his name is and Adriane brings up the fact that Redmond was the one to tell them about the cabin on the message board first, then they had the visions, but Leonard says the visions of the cabin came first.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. I have so many questions. These four strangers met on a message board? I mean, I guess that makes sense since they didn't know each other before and had to meet somewhere. I wonder what this message board was called? Was it for people who believed in the apocalypse? How did they know the others weren't just trolling them? I would have so many red flags if I heard this information if I were Andrew and Eric (and they will). It does seem a little sus that Redmond, who may or may not be the person who attacked Andrew (oh, wait, we're already in spoiler territory so I can confirm that it WAS him) just so happened to mention the cabin where they would be. Although, how would he even know that? Also, Leonard mentions they had visions of this particular cabin? This is a nondescript wooden cabin in the middle of the woods. That cabin could be anywhere! How did they know it was this particular cabin in rural Pennsylvania? Maybe they saw a house number, I don't know! I'm sure things are more explained in the book, which is usually the case.

It's now the next morning and Andrew whispers to Eric that he feels he can almost get out of the ropes that have his hands tied to the chair. To the intruders, he brings up them meeting on a message board and tells them they're having a "shared delusion" and that they took it as evidence that they got online and found "random people with random visions." While he and Leonard are talking, Wen, who had been in the kitchen, is now behind Eric and we see her hand him a small knife and stands behind him so nobody can see that he's trying to cut the rope. He whispers to her that when he nods at her, he wants to her to start having a tantrum like she did last Thanksgiving. 

This is when Adriane tells them she has a son. If they don't make a choice soon, she will be the next to go. (I wonder how they decide the order? Did they draw straws?) She tells them she has had to see her son die over and over in her visions and pleads for them to make a decision, but they still refuse. She is killed in the same way as Redmond and Leonard tells them they've "unleashed a second plague." 

Sabrina turns on the TV and there's a news report about a new virus, the  X-Nine virus which is "proving particularly fatal to children" and "is highly transmittable." Too soon, Shyamalan! Eric whispers to Andrew that he thinks he saw a person or a figure. Leonard and Sabrina hear this and Leonard questions where he saw this. Eric tells him he saw it in the light and reflection in the mirror behind him when he was standing behind Redmond after he was killed. Andrew takes this as him being extremely stressed, having a concussion, and being sensitive to the light. He also thinks the show was programmed and they knew when it was going to be on because they kept checking their watches.  

It's now time for Wen to put on her performance when Eric nods at her. She starts screaming about wanting to watch a cartoon and while Leonard and Sabrina are trying to calm her down, Eric unties himself and tips over the chair. Now Leonard and Sabrina are distracted with him and Andrew has freed himself and sneaks outside to the car. He doesn't make it very far until Sabrina starts following him. Before he can get in the car, she clubs him in the knee with a metal bar, telling him with regret she only did it so he wouldn't run away. He throws dirt on her and gets in the car, locking the doors, and unlocks the safe the gun is in. Just as she's smashed a back door window open with the metal bar and unlocked the door, he shoots near her (barely missing her) and tells her to drop the weapon. She does and backs up until she's far enough away so she can run away. This is when Andrew notices that the tires of the car are flat so their visitors thought of everything.

Back in the cabin, Leonard is telling Eric that he thinks this family was chosen because their "love for each other is so pure." As he's saying this, Eric sees Andrew come in through the door with the gun pointed at Leonard. He tells Leonard to move away from Eric or he'll shoot him. Leonard tells him it's time for the next sacrifice and asks if he's willing to make a choice. At that moment, Sabrina comes running in through the back door, screaming, and, startled, Andrew turns and fatally shoots her. I wasn't exactly sure why she was screaming like that. Maybe she had a vision and it terrified her or maybe she knew she was the next to be sacrificed and better to have a bullet to the chest then an axe to the head.  

While Leonard is taking care of Sabrina's body, Andrew retrieves Redmond's driver's license and shows Leonard that it was the same man who assaulted him in the bar. The name is shown as Rory O'Bannon. (He probably chose Redmond as his alias because he has red hair.) Andrew thinks this is proof that none of this is real and that they are being targeted. He gives his hypothesis: "I always look for motive. How about a crazy bigot meets a bartender somewhere, and they find a woman from a small town who has extreme religious beliefs, then they come across a young woman who can be persuaded of anything." The only thing that doesn't make sense with this is that Sabrina had told Eric that she hadn't gone to church since she was a kid, so I'm not sure where he's getting she "has extreme religious beliefs"; in fact you could argue they all have this because of why they're there. He tells Leonard that since he's not a murderer, he's going to lock him in the bathroom. 

His plan is for him, Eric, and Wen to find the vehicle that the intruders came in and get away in that. Once they have Leonard locked in the bathroom, they start to head outside, but they hear glass shattering. They have a quick discussion and want to make sure he's still in the bathroom because they're worried he could be waiting outside for them. Andrew opens the bathroom door (first warning Leonard that if he sees him, he's going to shoot him) to find the room empty and the circular window's glass has been broken. (And it would be a tight fit for Leonard to get through.) The shower curtain is closed around the tub and Andrew shoots once at it. Nothing happens and a few seconds later, he starts to reach for the curtain to open it, but before he can, Leonard jumps outs and attacks him. There's a fight for the gun and Leonard manages to grab it and points it at Andrew who tells Leonard that he thought he wouldn't kill them. Leonard says he won't, be he will shoot him in the leg to keep him from leaving the cabin. He tells him to turn on the TV and now we see that 700 airplanes from around the world have plummeted to the ground without any warning or without issuing distress calls. (Literally my worst nightmare!) 

While the news anchor is talking, Leonard starts reciting everything she's saying at the same time. Andrew still thinks this must be coordinated. He demands Leonard to give him the keys to the car he came in and he wants to leave with his family. Eric asks Andrew if he thinks everything they've seen today is "all just a coincidence?" and Andrew replies "yes". He says he has to believe it's either a horrible coincidence or a trick.  

Now it's time for Leonard to sacrifice himself and he wants to do it outside so he asks them to come out to the back porch with him. He sits in a chair, holding a huge knife and tells the others, "When I'm gone, you'll only have minutes to stop everything. After that it'll be too late." Eric tells Wen to take her headphones and listen to her music in the tree house and to wait there until one of them comes to get her.  

Before he kills himself by slitting his throat with the huge knife, Leonard begs Eric and Andrew "to make a choice and save the world." You would think he would want to use the gun instead of the knife to kill himself. I'm glad that they sent Wen away so she wouldn't have to see that! After he's gone, the sky gets very dark and stormy and we see a plane fall out of the sky in the distance. 

The two of them go back inside the cabin and Eric tells Andrew they still have a few minutes. It's clear that he believes that Leonard and the others were telling the truth and probably has believed them for awhile now. Andrew wants the three of them to leave, but Eric has other ideas. He tells him, "Maybe this is the way it's always been. Maybe families have been deciding this all through time." Andrew basically tells him that he doesn't care if all of humanity ends and the three of them can walk the Earth." Eric asks, "What kind of life is that for Wen?" Eric believes that this was not a home invasion and that they weren't targeted. The four of them came to spend time with him, Andrew, and Wen and get to know them. He says they are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and "they remind us of all aspects of humanity: Redmond, malice; Adriane, nurturing; Sabrina, healing; Leonard, guidance." Andrew questions why them, that they're "nothing special" and Eric replies, "Because I know what I felt when we first saw Wen in that orphanage and we were together for the first time." He tells Andrew it would be "a sacrifice for them to give up something so beautiful to us for everyone else." Andrew still doesn't believe them, but Eric does. He gives the gun to Andrew and tells him he's at peace with his decisions and tells him "to do it now before [they] run out of time." Andrew begs him to kill him instead. Eric tells him that he's thinking about their daughter in the future and that "she's living her life exactly as she wanted to." She has her own practice (so she did become a vet like she wanted; how adorable!). As Eric is telling us this, we see a flash forward of a grown up Wen with Andrew as they're coming out of her office. It's just a normal day as they get in the car to go to dinner. Eric tells him "she found someone who loves her and who she loves just as much." Now is Eric really seeing the future because he's granted this gift because he's about to sacrifice himself for the greater good of humanity or is this just what he wants to see? Also, this guy deserves to have the planet named after him since he's saving it! Yes, Leonard and the others were right all along: the world was ending and the sacrifice of one of these three people will stop it. 

We hear a gunshot and Andrew is crying uncontrollably. He comes up the tree house to get Wen who asks, "Did Daddy Eric save everyone?" He hugs her and they both cry. 

They walk down a gravel road until they come across a car that their visitors had drove up in. The door is unlocked and Andrew finds the keys sitting on the center console. (I guess since the world was ending they weren't too worried about their car being stolen...plus where they were, there aren't too many people around.) 

They begin driving. It's raining and there are fires sporadically along the way, but the sky doesn't seem as dark as it was before. They stop at a diner where the TV is on with survivors recounting their stories. Things are starting to seem better. Water has stopped rising, planes are now landing safely, there hasn't been a death in the ICU for the past hour and they're coming up on their second hour of having no deaths. (I guess it's already been almost two hours since Eric was sacrificed.) Andrew hears a conversation of a woman on a phone telling someone that "Everything's gonna be okay." 

They get back in the car and when Andrew starts the car, "Boogie Shoes" starts playing on the radio. It's obviously a sign! He turns off the radio, but Wen turns it back on after a few seconds. She turns it off after the chorus is played once and this time Andrew is the one to turn it on and they drive off.

In the car, we see items that prove their visitors had been telling the truth. There's a photo of Leonard with the kids from his after school program, there's Sabrina's ID from her work, and there's a photo of Adriane's son

Time Is Not On Their Side

Old

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Cast: Gael Garcia Bernal, Rufus Sewell, Vicky Krieps, Ken Leung, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Alex Wolff, Thomasin McKenzie

Released: July 23, 2021

Before I dive into my review, a quick summary of my history with M. Night Shyamalan-directed films: Now I know he directed two movies before The Sixth Sense, but I've never seen them and I don't think many people have heard of them and I highly doubt either of them have his signature twist ending, and nobody knew who he was pre-The Sixth Sense, so that's why I'm gonna start with that one. So I, as many people, loved The Sixth Sense and I saw Unbreakable, Signs, and The Village. I really liked the first two (though not as much T6S), but I was pretty meh on The Village. That's the only movie of the ones I've listed so far that I've only seen once. I've seen the others at least three times. Then we have a bunch of his movies that came out that I didn't see, mostly because I heard they were pretty bad! This includes Lady in the Water and The Happening. Then after THAT, he did what I often hear are the two worst movies he's ever directed: The Last Airbender and After Earth. Even if those movies had gotten rave reviews, I wouldn't have seen them because I'm not interested in the subject matter. I know the former is based on some animated show that I know nothing about and the latter is a sci-fi apocalyptic movie with Will Smith and his son. The next movie to come out in his filmography is The Visit, which I haven't seen, but has gotten positive reactions for the most part. He can really go up from here and I have seen all his movies that's been released since then: Split, Glass, Old (obviously!), and his latest, Knock at the Cabin. 

I would say that what would normally be considered the twist in Old is not only revealed in the trailer, but it's also revealed in the title! (Not to mention the movie poster where you see a woman sitting on a beach and half of her is young, while the other half is old. Not exactly how it worked in this movie, but I understand what they were going for.) I suppose since you find out what's going on in the movie thirty minutes in, they didn't want to keep a secret from the audience, but they sure do give a lot away in the trailer! I don't think there's necessary a twist at the end of the movie, but more of a reveal. Of course, when I get to anything which I believe to be truly spoiler-y, I will give a warning! 

There are many characters in this movie, but our main focus is on the Cappa family who we first meet when they're taking a shuttle bus from the airport to the Anamika Resort where they're headed for a nice (so they think!) beach vacation. Guy (Gael Garcia Bernal) and Prisca (Vicky Krieps) are the parents and their children are eleven-year-old daughter Maddox and six-year-old son Trent. 

In just a few short minutes, we get many references to time: 

-Maddox is singing and her mom mentions she has a beautiful voice and she can't wait to hear it when Maddox is older.

-Trent asks if the resort offers scuba diving and how old one has to be to participate in it and his dad tells him he might be too young.

-Trent whines that their dad said they would be there in five minutes and it's been more than five minutes and asks when they're going to get there and his mom replies, "Stop wishing away this moment." 

They soon arrive at the resort where a bunch of people are waiting for them, waiting to serve their every need and the adults are offered a cocktail to welcome them. Prisca mentions to her husband, "This is much better than Cancun." Ha! Just give it a day, Prisca, and you'll be redacting that statement! We also find out that Prisca found this place online. We never find out where this place is located, but I know it was filmed in the Dominican Republic. I don't think we (as in the audience) are supposed to know where this place is geographically located. 

The resort has a candy station where Trent and Maddox meet Idlib, who is the six-year-old nephew of the resort manager. I guess he lives at the resort? I wasn't really sure about that. Since he and Trent are the same age they become fast friends and we see them playing together at the beach and going around to adults and asking them their names and what they do for a living. This is something only a couple of adorable six-year-olds can get away with. I figured this was going to come back in the movie and it does. Idlib tells Trent that he doesn't have any friends, but Trent tells him that he's his friend and they can FaceTime each other after he leaves and even suggests that they can go to the same college, then "become neighbors with mortgages." It's a cute, funny scene, but also a little sad in hindsight, especially if you know what's about to happen. (Which you might if you know the premise of the movie!) Idlib has also created fun little secret messages for Trent to decode. He has different symbols that represent a letter of the alphabet. We see one of the messages that Trent decodes says "Ice cream eating contest tomorrow." 

In their bedroom, Guy and Prisca are talking about how they would give the kids "one last vacation before telling them." There are only two things that they could be talking about: 1) they're getting divorced, or 2) one of the parents has a medical condition. Well, it turns out it's both! Geeze, with this kind of disparaging news, they should have taken the kids to Disney World! But it turns out that they were planning on separating even before they found out Prisca was sick (we won't find out what she was diagnosed with until later in the movie) and she doesn't want to tell the kids about her "irrelevant medical condition." 

The next morning, we meet more characters who will be going on this crazy journey. Charles (Rufus Sewell) is a doctor married to a woman, Chrystal (Abbey Lee), who is much younger than him. They have a daughter, Kara, who recently turned six and they are with Charle's mother, Agnes, and she has her small dog. Chrystal is gorgeous and in great shape and she knows it. Of course you need a character obsessed with her youth and beauty in a movie like this! 

Another couple who is important to this story is Jarin (Ken Leung) and Patricia (Nikki Amuka-Bird). We meet them when they're having breakfast outside and Patrica starts having a seizure. Charles, the doctor, who's also having breakfast with his family, goes over to help and Jarin tells him he is a nurse and his wife has epilepsy. It is not uncommon for Patricia to have seizures and after a few moments, she is fine. Now, I admit I don't know much about seizures, but when I googled them, the first thing that came up is that if someone has two or more seizures in more than 24 hours, it's called epilepsy, so apparently this a daily occurrence for this woman which is terrifying. 

Also having breakfast is the Cappa family. Before the epilepsy incident, the resort manager comes up to their table to recommend that they visit a private beach that is on the nature preserve side of the island. He calls it "a once-in-a lifetime experience." Well, he certainly isn't lying about that! He also tells them he only recommends it to certain guests. Ha! I bet he does! He tells them he can arrange a van to take them there for the day and they agree. Oh, if only they knew how this decision would affect the rest of their lives. Literally. While this is going on, Trent spots Idlib peeking around and his uncle quickly goes over to him and tells him he's not supposed to be in this area. Idlib goes to make another puzzle for Trent to solve because before they get in the van to visit this secluded beach, we see the piece of paper in his backpack. Also in the van is Charles, Chrystal, Kara, and Agnes with her small dog. 

Now we all know M. Night Shyamalan always (usually?) gives himself a cameo in his movies. And they're not blink-and-you'll-miss-him type cameos, oh no, he is pretty much on screen for a few minutes, so you know when he makes an appearance. Sometimes he has more screen time in his movies than others and I would say this is one of those movies. He is the van driver, taking these two families to the secluded beach. Once they get there, he does a checklist to make sure they have everything they need (like sunscreen) and asks them if they made sure they left their passports in their safes back at the resort because he doesn't want anybody to lose anything. Now the first time you're watching this, you're thinking, oh, that's nice of him, but when you watch it a second time, you realize why he's asking them that. Or maybe you realized it the first time! He tells them they can call him when they're ready to leave and he'll pick them up or he'll be back at five, whichever comes first. (I assume at this time, it's nine or ten a.m.) He has also brought a TON of food for them which Guy thinks is a waste, but the driver tells him there are three kids and kids each a lot of food. Sure, teenagers (especially boys) eat a lot of food, but do kids eat a lot? I feel like kids are really picky when it comes to food, they're not usually scarfing it down. There are two six-year-olds and an eleven-year-old with them; honestly, they're probably going to eat less than the adults. Since there's so much stuff, Charles asks the van driver if he can help, but he tells them he needs to get back. Yeah, once we realize what's going on, it will be pretty obvious why he refused to help them! On the way to the beach, they walk through a canyon/cave. 

When they get there, they are not the only ones on the beach. There is a man already there, sitting by himself against the rocks. Maddox gets excited because she recognizes him as the rapper, Mid-Sized Sedan (who came up with that name?) and is aghast when her dad doesn't know his hit song, "More Dough for the Cookie" (again, who came up with that name?). We had actually seen him earlier; I think it was supposed to be earlier that morning where he and a young blonde woman were on the beach and the woman takes off her clothes and starts walking into the ocean, looking seductively over her shoulder at him. That's all we got before we see him here. Maddox wants to talk to him, but her parents tell her to leave him alone since he's on vacation. His real name is Brendon.

There's a bit of tension between Guy and Prisca when Prisca, who's reading, covers the title of her book and asks Guy what she's reading and he replies that he doesn't know. I guess this is to show that they're drifting apart, but honestly, I don't think not knowing the book your significant other is reading is the biggest deal. Maybe they don't have the same tastes in their reading material. I bet you my mom doesn't always know what my dad is reading and vice versa. 

The three kids are having fun, all playing together on the beach. We see them notice stuff in the sand, near a giant rock wall, and most of it seems to be rusted silverware from the hotel. They play hide-and-go-seek and when Trent is hiding in the water behind a rock wall, he notices that there are no fish around him. Also, from behind him we can see a naked body floating facedown, about to bump into him. Ahhhh! Even though we don't see the face, I know it was the young blonde woman who we last saw wading into the ocean. The body bumps into Trent and the poor kid is terrified and screams for his mom. Everybody comes running and Prisca takes the kids away while Guy and Charles lift the body from the water. We see Brendon come up and both his nostrils are bleeding and he can't seem to get it to stop. You know, I don't think I've ever had a bloody nose in my life and I'm kinda glad cuz there's just something especially gross about it. Charles tries to call the police, but he can't get any reception.

Guy asks Brendon about the woman and he tells him that she swam out by herself and he was waiting for her. He then gets defensive and says he had nothing to do with it when Charles asks him why his nose is bleeding, but he refuses to say anything more. 

We next get some small moments of things to come which includes Agnes laying under an umbrella and telling her daughter-in-law that her chests feels funny and Chrystal replying that they should have gone on a yacht like she suggested and Trent telling his mother that his swimsuit is starting to hurt. 

At that moment, Patricia and Jarin show up. Guy wants to try to catch the bus driver before he leaves and tells the couple that he thinks they all need to leave. Jarin tells him he's already left. He and his wife see the body, now covered with a towel. They ask what happened and while Guy tells them they don't know, Charles indicates Brendon had something to do with it and thinks his nose is bleeding because he and the now deceased woman got into a fight. Brendon tells him his nose has been bleeding for hours and he doesn't know why it's been doing that. Chrystal comes running up to tell Charles that something is wrong with his mother. While Charles goes to check on her, Jarin tells the others he's going to go to the clearing by the jungle to see if he can get a signal there. He says there must be a place to get reception because how else could people call to get back? He makes a very valid point because that is what the van driver told them. As he walks through the canyon/cave, he starts gasping, then the screen goes black and we next see him laying on the beach with his wife helping him sit up. She tells him he stumbled out and he was holding his head and looked like he was in pain. He says he felt a pressure in his head. 

While Charles is talking to his mother, telling her he's going to get a van to come back for them, Prisca comes up to him and asks if he can take a look at her son because he's having "some kind of reaction." Charles dismisses her because he sees Trent playing with Kara off in the distance and they look fine to him. He can't really worry about the kids right now because he will have to give CPR to his mother who soon stops breathing, but it is too late and she dies. He thinks she died because she saw a murdered woman and was so shocked that her heart couldn't take it anymore. It won't be long before her dog will die as well. Nobody seems to really care about that; they're just like, "Oh, the dog has died." Of course, they do have bigger things to worry about at that point. 

There's a moment where the Cappa siblings are talking to each other and the way the shot is set up, you only see parts of them, like Maddox's legs (she's standing up) and Trent's left arm and part of his back (he's sitting, facing her). You know by this time they are different actors (er, ages!) because their voices sound different. They're telling each other that they look different and Trent tells his sister he sees something shiny way up on top of the rock wall that is surrounding the beach. 

In a scene soon after that one, we see the backs of Maddox and Trent as they are talking with Jarin and Patricia. Trent asks them their names and occupations and we learn that Patricia is a psychologist. They ask the kids their names and ages and before they can give their ages, Jarin wants to guess how old they are because he claims to be good at guessing ages. Hehe, he might not be so good in this case! You know who is terrible at guessing ages? Me! He guesses that Trent is ten or eleven and doesn't believe Trent when he informs him he's six, but Maddox confirms that he is six and that she is eleven. Patricia, in a low voice (although I'm sure the Cappa siblings can hear her judging by their proximity to them), says to her husband, "They're feeling unsafe. There is a lot going on here." Jarin thinks they're messing with them, but decides to let it slide. Not long after, Prisca comes up to the couple and asks them if they've seen her children. Now I realize she doesn't recognize Maddox and Trent who are standing right across from Patricia and Jarin, but wouldn't she be wondering who these two young people are? She doesn't even seem to acknowledge them. Naturally, Jarin and Patricia are confused because they know her kids are literally right in front of them and Jarin asks if everyone is playing a joke on them. Trent speaks up and says, "I'm right here, Mom." We see Prisca's shocked face as she takes in her six-year-old son who looks eleven and her eleven-year-old daughter who looks sixteen. Trent is wearing a towel around his waist and Maddox's swimsuit is too small for her and she will soon changed into an extra swimsuit that her mom brought (that was fortunate!) 

While this is going on, Brendon decides to book it and runs through the canyon/cave, attempting to escape. Charles follows him and they both black out and end up on the beach. Charles mentions that it felt like he was deep underwater. They realize they can't get out through the canyon/cave, which, besides swimming or climbing the giant rock wall, is the only exit. 

Prisca, who thinks the kids are having a reaction to something they ate or caught something since they're on a "remote, undeveloped island" (that's some reaction they're having!) tells her husband she wants the doctor to look at them. But before she can do that, Charles has gone up to Brendon and slashed him across the face with a pocket knife he had in his pocket. Everyone rushes over and Charles apologizes, telling the others that he thought Brendon was going to hurt him. His hand is covering the slash on his face and he tells the other he must be in shock because he doesn't feel any pain. When Jarin asks to sees the gash, he removes his hand and it is revealed that the gash has completely healed and it's just a scar. Something crazy is going on in this island! Brendon opens up and admits to the others that he did try to escape, but only because he was freaked out. We find out that he had just met the girl at the resort and they started talking about how they're both sick and she had just been diagnosed with MS. He had told he he had a "weird clotting with his blood." Patricia and Jarin catch on that he mentioned they were both sick and Patricia thinks "maybe this is some kind of group psychosis." She tells the others she's studied this and thinks that because they're all emotionally shaky, they don't believe they can leave this beach. 

Kara has also aged and she's now about 12 or 13. Charles thinks it might be a virus or a reaction to the mosquitoes on the island or something that is happening to trigger their hormones. 

While the ocean waves are crashing ferociously against the rocks, Jarin asks who thinks they can "swim a hundred lengths of a pool against the current and then turn and swim an unknown amount along the coast til they find another shore?" That's his guess of how far it would be to swim out and get around the cove. Uh, nobody, that's who. And nobody is keen to give it a go. Not that I can blame them. 

Patricia has gathered everyone around for a discussion. She thinks they need to know each other so they can trust each other. She goes around, asking everyone why they came to the resort. Chrystal admits that she and Charles have been having a tough time and Charles is stressed because he's a doctor, so he needed time away. Charles isn't too happy she's saying all this, but she tells him she won't say anything else. When the subject comes around to Guy and Prisca, Prisca changes the subject, telling them they need to make a decision and that the kids are probably reacting to a virus. She also declares she doesn't feel good and Guy announces that she has a tumor, but the doctors said it was benign. Of course, this is the first time the kids are hearing about this. Jarin asks her where the tumor is and Prisca points to her abdomen. He feels her tumor and tells her it's the size of a golf ball. She says that can't be right, that it's only supposed to be three centimeters. And then she faints. Now Charles feels her tumor and tells them it's the size of a soft ball. Jarin wants to cut it out, but Guy says no, then says he doesn't know what to do. Finally he asks if there's any alcohol and Chrystal runs to get some. Patricia provides the needle and thread Charles has asked for (though they'll soon discover they won't need it!) Right before he cuts into Prisca, he randomly asks if anyone knows the name of the movie Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando starred in together. This will come up again when he asks about it and we never find out what it was. I was thinking they were never in a movie together and that's why he couldn't come up with the name, but then I Googled it and they did indeed star in a western together that came out in 1976 called The Missouri Breaks. I have never heard of it and I feel like most people have never heard of it. Don't expect a review of it on here anytime soon! So then he cuts int Prisca's side. :::shudder::: Good thing she was passed out! He's using the same knife that he slashed Brendon's face with, so I'm hoping he was able to sterilize it really good! But, as soon as he slices her open, it closes. Jarin tells him to cut her again and they'll keep their hands in there to keep the incision open. Eww, they've been in the sand and saltwater and there's no place with soap and water to clean yourself; surely she would end up with an infection! So they do it again like Jarin instructed and now the camera is looking up at the faces of Jarin, Charles, and Guy. Guy says it's closing around his finger and Jarin tells him to keep pulling it apart with his fingers and we see him starting to lift the tumor out, but it's attached to muscle tissue. Charles exclaims it's the size of a cantaloupe! Ewww! And for extra grossness, the camera pans back down as they're taking this disgusting bloody mass of a thing out of her. OMG, so gross! I wonder what they did with it? We never do see where they put it. Did they just toss it in the ocean? I would want that nasty thing far, far, far away from me! Prisca's incision closes and she wakes up (that was good timing!). She tells them she feels better and Guy tells her they removed her tumor. Hmm, so sounds like that tumor was NOT benign after all. 

For some reason, sometimes possesses Brendon to go over and lift up the towel that was covering the dead girl. I get that they need this for the plot, but it makes no sense why he would want to look under there. I sure as hell wouldn't want to look at a corpse rotting in the sun! But, like I said, it's done for plot purposes because he is startled by what he sees and calls the others over. This is when it is revealed that her body has completely decomposed and it's just bones. Prisca, who works in a museum, says it would take seven years for a body to decompose like that, but yet this happened in three hours. 

Jarin thinks something wonky is going on with time on the beach and Prisca is able to do some quick math and by going by her children's ages and the time they spent on the beach, she figures that "half an hour is equivalent to something like one year of [their] lives." She has noticed that Guy has wrinkles and says the aging process must be true for everyone but they don't see it on everyone. At least now we know why they have so much food; it really was for the children who would be going through growth spurts, and, as Jarin points out, they are eating so much because "they need to grow an enormous amount of mass quickly." The adults are staying roughly the same mass, but their cells are aging. Prisca points out that their hair and nails should be "growing at an abnormal rate", but Jarin rationalizes that cells in hair and nails are dead. I get what he's saying and he's correct, but it doesn't make sense for a dead body to decompose that fast because dead body equals dead cells. Oh, well, I'm just going to go with it. 

Being that an hour equals two years of your life, it doesn't take long for them to figure out that they'll age almost fifty years in one day. (Boy, I'm sure glad they made the math easy for them and for us! Can you imagine if they aged 3 years every 47 minutes or something like that and you would have to figure that out?) They think their rapid aging might have something to do with the rocks around the beach. Sure, I'll go with it. This is a movie where you just have to go with what they're telling you or else it will make you insane trying to come up with a rational reason for what is going on.

Jarin compares them trying to leave is "like swimming to the surface too fast after being too deep in the ocean." He states their bodies can't reacclimate and that's why they become unconscious when they try to leave. He suggests that they could walk slowly through the canyon/cave by taking a step, then standing still and do it over eight to ten hours to let their bodies acclimate. Of course, according to Prisca's timeline, that would mean someone would have to give up twenty years of their life trying. No one volunteers. Although, wouldn't they all be aging twenty years in that time? In fact, the people on the beach would probably age even more because the person who escaped after reacclimatizing would need time to find their way back to the resort or wherever to find help, then get the help to come back...and how would they even help them? I suppose they could help them by sending a boat or a helicopter. But they don't know if that will work. As far as they know, at this moment, there is absolutely no way way to escape. Wouldn't it make more sense for EVERYBODY to do this tedious process of slowly taking one step, then stopping over the course of ten hours to get through the wonky barriers of this supernatural beach?

Since the time Prisca fainted, Trent and Kara were ushered away and they've been spending time in a fort that Kara created earlier that day (when she was six) and getting to know each other. They're teenagers now and discuss their feelings. Kara tells Trent that she doesn't feel the same and that her mind is changing too and she's getting many thoughts at the same time. In an earlier scene, a more mature Maddox had confessed to Brendon, "I don't feel the same way I felt yesterday or this morning, and I don't think my parents would understand. My thought have more colors in them now."

So we know that both their bodies and minds are maturing. However, they really never touch on the subject of their knowledge. Do Trent and Kara know their multiplication tables or much about world history, being that they started the morning as six-year-olds? (When do kids learn their multiplication tables?) Even Maddox, beginning the day as an eleven-year-old, would have have limited knowledge. 

I think this might be a good time to put up a spoiler warning. Even though some of the things I'm going to start talking about are shown in the trailer, I don't want to take that chance and ruin anything for anybody who hasn't seen this movie yet and doesn't know the outcome. Also, there are still quite a bit of people left on this beach and I don't want to spoil who, if anybody, makes it out or if they all die on this beach. 

SPOILERS AHEAD! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK! 

So it is noticed that Trent and Kara aren't with them and they start calling for them, then they see them walking towards them down the beach and the parents are relieved because they look to be fine. However, when Trent and Kara are getting closer to them, they notice that Kara is very pregnant and everyone is shocked, which I don't blame them. I guess Trent and Kara's teenage hormones were raging, but it is a little weird because they just met that day. Maybe they realized they didn't have much time and would be too old or dead soon and wanted to try it out. We never actually see them getting it on, we just see them laying next to each other in the tent talking about their feelings. I feel like they only have this in the movie because of the extra drama it adds, which it certainly does. They try to rationalize it by Trent telling his parents he has feelings for her and he wants to marry her, but they just met. I don't buy they have those kinds of feelings for each other. Although, they are going through this crazy trauma together. At first, I thought they were going to have this rapidly aging new life on the beach and was curious to see how they were going to do that. But what actually happens makes a lot more sense. 

Needless to say, we get the fastest pregnacy in human history. Think about it: if half an hour equals a year, then nine months is what? About twenty minutes? The baby starts to come and Charles, Jarin, and Patricia are helping her. Kara calls out for her mother, but the camera pans as Krystal, who can't take what's going on and is freaked out, runs off in the opposite direction. She goes into the cave, but ends up on the beach passed out and Maddox runs to help her. By this time, a baby is heard crying. We don't see the baby, but just see the awed reactions of Chrystal and the Cappa family. The camera starts to pan over to Kara, her dad, and Jarin and Patricia and suddenly the crying stops abruptly. Once the camera is on them, Patricia is holding the baby, wrapped in a towel and tells them they just put him down for a few seconds to clean him off, and "he closed his eyes." Chrystal comments that he died from a lack of attention and they all know that "things are moving too fast for a baby to survive." Needless to say, they didn't need to cast a baby for this! Like I mentioned before, thank goodness they made the math easy in this because I made my own equations of what their new time line would look like, and, indeed, time is way to fast for a baby to survive.

We already know that 30 minutes = 1 year. So with that information: 

15 minutes = 6 months

7.5 minutes = 3 months

3 and a quarter minutes = 1.5 months

1.5 minutes =  3 weeks

45 seconds = 1 and a half weeks (9-10 days?)

22.5 seconds = 5 days

11 seconds = 2.5 days

6 seconds = barely a day 

So by my counts, that baby would be aging a day every five, six seconds! That is insane! They wouldn't have time to keep up with its eating or sleeping habits, let alone making time to change it or hold it. And I thought babies aged super fast in Sims 3! (Of course that could be because I have it that way because I can't stand babies and/or toddlers in Sims 3! If you play that game, you know exactly what I'm talking about!) 

So now everything is going to sh*t and it's going to get worse. Now, you're probably thinking some of these adults are about to die of old age in the next few hours and that those who started as kids on this beach are going to die tomorrow. And, yes, you would be right, we still have a lot of characters that need something to happen to them. People are going to die and not all of them will be lucky to just die of old age.

Jarin will attempt to swim to find a way out to get help, but his body will washed up on the shore; much like what happened with the girl Brendon was with. Not long after the death of her husband, Patricia will suffer a fatal seizure that lasts much longer than the one she had at the resort the day before. 

Charles will stab Brendon to death and after the attack, Guy will take the knife from the shell-shocked doctor. 

Trent and Kara will have a discussion about how they won't get a prom or graduation or do any of the things they were supposed to do as teens or young adults. Kara proclaims it isn't fair and she's 100% right - it isn't fair or right for anyone on this beach that their age progression has been sped up to the max. It's very sad and depressing. Hell, I think time goes by way too fast as it is now! I can't imagine aging forty-eight years in a day! Hell, I would be pissed if I  were only there for half an hour and aged one year! Kara (probably in her twenties at this point...it's kind of hard to keep track of how long they've been there so far) is desperate to find a way out, so she climbs the rock wall. She's actually a pretty good climber and gets scarily far up. At first, Trent and the other Cappas tell her to come down. Trent wants to go with her and starts climbing, but Guy pulls him off and tells him it's too dangerous. Trent calls up to Kara to tell her to come down; that they should stay together, but she replies with what if they spend this whole time trying to get out and they still don't make it? We get a scare when Kara's foot slips, but she manages to hang onto  a protruding rock. Guy starts to think she might have a chance if she can make it to a ledge she's coming up on and rest. Well, she does make it to the ledge. And she does rest...unfortunately for a little too long. She must have gotten to the point where one blacks out because she falls to her death. I hope to God she was unconscious through the whole thing, cuz, yikes!  

So all the deaths I just mentioned take place during the day. We still have some more deaths to go, but they won't happen until it's dark, so let's take a break from all the death and despair! By this time it is clear that Charles has a mental disorder and Guy points out to Prisca that at least one person from each group was sick or had a medical condition. He asks her how she first heard about this place and she tells him it was "a random sweepstakes" and it "came with a receipt at the pharmacy" and she "followed it up online and started getting emails." Guy claims that they know their medical conditions and that they were chosen. They also realize that they have their passports and a car was sent to pick them up at the airport and they could "make it look like [the Cappa family] never left [their] house."

It is revealed that Prisca was going to leave Guy for another man. Maddox confronts her mom about it and she says it's true, but when Maddox asks, she tells her daughter that her husband did not know about her affair. However, we will find out later that Guy did know because he saw texts he wasn't supposed to see. Ruh-roh. Apparently he knew the guy and the guy must be a bit of a wanker because he asks his wife, "Why that guy?" Prisca tells her daughter that she got scared when she found out about her tumor and she asks Maddox if she hates her. Maddox tells her she just needs time to which Prisca sadly replies, "We don't have that." Lots of time metaphors in this movie, interesting! Guy and Prisca do seem to reconcile as Prisca apologizes to him and tells him there's no place she wants to be, but with him. 

As the sun start to set, Guy has started to lose his vision and Prisca has started to lose her hearing. Charles, however, has still lost his mind, as he has retrieved his pocket knife from Prisca's bag and starts stabbing Guy. He tells Guy that "the man with the tattoos" (he's talking about Brendon aka Mid-Sized Sedan) was "gonna steal things from my home." He doesn't want Guy to tell anybody what he did, so now he's attacking him. Prisca also gets stabbed when she tries to shield her husband, but then runs off to tell the kids to hide after Guy tells her to do so. None of their stab wounds are fatal as they heal because he's mostly stabbing them in the back (literally and figuratively!) and their arms because they're shielding themselves, but that still has to hurt like a you-know-what! 

The rusted silverware that the kids (you know, when they were literal kids) found earlier that day comes back in play when Prisca grabs a rusty knife and stabs Charles and she tells him the rust acts like a poison when it gets into your bloodstream and he dies.

Before their mother had told them to hide from the crazed man with a knife, Trent and Maddox had found a notebook in the sand. They quickly realize that whoever wrote in it was trying to figure out what was going on on this godforsaken beach. They wrote, "Magnetism of this exact spot on the Earth with the rocks on this beach submerged beneath the ocean for millions of years deposited with special minerals are causing our cells to age at a rapid rate." I'm still curious to know where they are, geographically! I bet it's where the Lost island was located! Trent suggests that perhaps they "can make a metal tube that [they] can get in that stops the effect on [their] cells" and they can just walk through the canyon/cave and out of this place forever. Maddox points out where would they find a metal tube? I guess this scene kind of proves that their minds are gaining knowledge as they grow older because I don't think a six-year-old would think of what he just suggested. At this point, I would guess they are both in their thirties. The author of the notebook had also written down a list of all the names and addresses of the people who were on the beach with him. Trent notices a light in the distance on top of the cliff and he's pretty sure somebody is recording him. This is about the third mention of somebody seeing something off in the distance. 

When their mother tells them to hide, they go into a cave. Chrystal is also there and she's not doing too well herself. The woman who used to be young, fit, and blonde and capturing herself on Instagram now wants no one to look at her. When we first met her, we learned she had a calcium deficiency and because she's not getting her calcium (and I'm sure the fact that she's aging rapidly also doesn't help), her bones are becoming deformed and she just kills herself by dropping a large rock on herself.

So now, it's late at night and the four family members of the Cappa family are the only ones left alive. Guy and Prisca are senior citizens now, I would guess in their 80s, though their aging is very subtle. We come full circle from the very first scene when adult Maddox sings to her mother, the same song she sang in the car the day before when she was eleven. You remember? Her mother told her how she couldn't wait to hear her voice as an adult and now she gets to.

In a very sad scene, Guy asks Prisca if they were fighting about something. When she tells him they were, he replies, "Whatever it was, I'm not mad anymore." He also mentions he can't remember why they were trying to leave this beach. It's clear he is losing his memory and that he has no idea that just that morning he was a man in his early to mid-forties. Not long after, he suddenly collapses and you know he has died. Prisca soon dies not long after him. It's really sad, but at least they didn't die a horrible death like everyone else on the island. 

Teen and young adult Trent and Maddox have been played by Alex Wolff and Thomasin McKenzie, but when they wake up the next morning, they are now probably in their early/mid fifties (I'm guessing they literally slept through their forties and maybe even their late thirties) and are now played by Emun Elliot and Embeth Davidtz. I have to say the casting for this movie was done pretty well. I believed all the actors playing the Cappa siblings could be the same person. I'm guessing Alex and Thomasin were cast first since they are in the majority of the film, then they cast their younger and older versions. 

It is now the next morning and they guess they have about thirteen hours left. They are still determined to find a way out, but before they do that, Trent suggests they make a sandcastle first. As they do, Maddox says, "I wonder if everybody continues to feel like a kid when they're our age, or is it because we were kids yesterday?" Ha! I imagine it's a little bit of both. Those two really didn't have much time to adjust from being a child to being an adult! 

Them building a sandcastle is just a plot device for Trent to find the secret message from Idlib that he never decoded. Maddox tells him to decode it, so he does. It says, "My uncle doesn't like the coral." He thinks the coral might protect them from the effects of the rocks. Can you image if he had decoded this as a six-year-old in the van on their way to this place? He would have been so confused! Although, I'm guessing as they aged, he would probably figure out that was a huge clue. 

So they decide to give it a try and they both swim underwater through a coral tunnel. It's not an easy swim and they will have to hold their breath for a few minutes. It gets even scarier when Maddox gets her shirt caught on the coral. Trent swims back to help her and now they're both struggling to get her free which has to exert more energy which can't be good. Now you're probably asking, a) why is Maddox wearing a shirt in the first place and the answer to that is probably for the purpose of the plot and b) why didn't Maddox or Trent just try to take the shirt off of her (it was a button up shirt that she was wearing like a jacket) and they do show then trying to do that, but for some reason it won't work. I'm not really sure. But again, it's done for plot purposes to show that they're struggling to free her. 

They are still struggling underwater when it is finally revealed who has been on top of the cliff with a telescope, camera and other electron equipment. It is the van driver aka M. Night Shymalan and it looks like he just isn't the van driver for the resort! He is looking through the telescope in the direction of the coral and he calls someone to confirm that both the remaining people have died. He has watched for at least a minute and a half and hasn't seen any movement. He tells the man he thought they were going to get through the coral and doesn't know how they even thought of going through there. Apparently, only one other person had tried to escape through the coral, but he drowned.

We follow him to a secure place at the resort that looks like a lab with computers and many people in lab coats conducting experiments and monitoring sicknesses and diseases like diabetes and tuberculosis (those were two I caught on a screen). We hear someone say that all the "home computer devices have been wiped", clearly talking about those who recently perished on the beach. The resort manager (the one who is the uncle of Idlib) leads them in a moment of silence for the members of Trial 73.

You have probably figured out by now that all the people who were on that beach just the day before and have all died were the members of Trial 73. Throughout the movie it's been hinted at that the medical conditions of these people have something to do with why they're at this beach so it comes to no surprise when we learn that these are researchers from a pharmaceutical company called Warren & Warren that uses this beach to conduct their research. As the manager tells them, "Because of this beach, we have been able to save hundreds of thousands of lives with new medicines." We learn that they found this beach that they were meant to find on a research expedition and that they "were meant to test medicines in one day instead of a lifetime." The specialty-made cocktails that each person receives when they arrive at the resort are laced with a drug that they have created for each individual's medical condition. We find out that the medicine they gave Patricia worked very well as she didn't have a seizure for eight hours and sixteen minutes which is the equivalent of sixteen and a half years. He tells them they'll "fast-track trials, make that medicine, and share it with the whole world." Everyone claps, congratulating themselves, never mind the fact that they just pretty much murdered a bunch of innocent people, not to mention they robbed three children the experience of growing up. 

My God, this has to be the most unethical thing ever! Sure, I'll admit, it's an amazing thing they can do and it's a wonder to science and medicine and I know they think what they're doing is for the greater good: they're killing off a few people to save millions more (huh, I just realized this reminds me of Knock at the Cabin), but the fact that they're tricking people into it and their families (which sometimes include small children!) become collateral damage as well. I don't know, but I really feel that there would be people with medical conditions and diseases and sicknesses that might, oh, I don't know, consent to being studied on this island and aging rapidly. Maybe they are in a bad place and want to do something good before they die. Maybe they know they're going to die soon and want to help people in the future with their disease. I really don't think they need to trick, then pretty much murder innocent people. Also, I would love to know the backstory of how they found this island. 

Not surprisingly, we learn that Charles had schizophrenia when one doctor tells the resort manager that he thinks they need to "separate the purely medical subjects from the mental illness subjects" because their "violent schizophrenic patient cost us data on our blood clot patient." 

In a turn of events that surprises no one (except maybe M. Night's character), Trent and Maddox are still alive! They have made it out of the coral! We go back to them struggling underwater and with determination, they manage to free Maddox and they swim to their safety. They now know they are not surrounded by the forces of the island anymore because there are fish swimming around them. 

Remember when six-year-old Trent and his pal Idlib were going around the beach two days ago (which I'm sure seems like a lifetime to Trent, probably because it literally was!) asking people their names and occupations? Well, one of those people he asked this question to was a cop named Greg Mitchell. We see the cop sitting in a lounge chair and we hear Trent's voice say, "You're a police officer" and he hands the cop the notebook with all the name and addresses of the missing people. 

Just as a van of new and unsuspecting people has arrived and they are about to be given their laced cocktails, Trent bumps into the woman (who is played by Clint Eastwood's daughter) carrying the tray, shattering the glasses. He tells the guests, "I wouldn't take anything they give you." 

By this time, all the resort workers know they are f***ed. They know now that Trent and Maddox made it out alive. Trent sees Idlib and shows him the decoded message. I do have to wonder how Idlib knew that his uncle didn't like the coral. Did he overhear his uncle cursing the coral one day? Also, while I don't think Idlib knew what was happening on that island, he had to know that nobody that went there ever came back, so why didn't he just warn Trent and Maddox not to go there in the first place? Why didn't he just say "If my uncle invites your family to a private beach, don't go. No matter how great he makes it sound, trust me, you don't want to go." Yeah, yeah, I know, then there wouldn't be a movie, but he had plenty of time to tell them. 

Greg Mitchell confirms the first three names in the notebook are missing persons and he sends the rest of the names to be investigated. He tells Trent and Maddox that everyone has been arrested and subpoenas are being served at Warren and Warren's headquarters this week. (They don't mess around!) The cop and the Cappa siblings are flying in a helicopter, on their way to the airport where Trent and Maddox's aunt will be waiting for them. When Greg asks them how she's handling things, Trent replies, "How would you feel if a fifty-year-old man called and told you he was your six-year-old nephew?" I just realized that he and his sister are probably older than their aunt, or at least pretty close in age. 

For two people who have lost four decades of their life in the course of a day, Trent and Maddox are pretty chill about the whole thing. They were literally six and eleven years old twenty-four hours ago. They lost their parents in a very unfair way. They never really got to know their parents if you really think about it. They lost the experience of finishing their childhoods, being teens and going to high school, being young adults, and all that stuff you go through before you reach fifty. I would be a little more inconsolable if I were them! 

Unbreakable//Split//Glass

Disclaimer: I will be spoiling the following three movies. These are M. Night Shyamalan films, so obviously they have twists, cuz, you know, that's his thing! Perhaps it's a spoiler that I'm reviewing these movies together if you didn't already know they were connected, but it has been over a year since the last movie came out so I figured everybody already knew about that. 

Unbreakable

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Cast: Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Robin Wright, Spencer Treat Clark, Charlayne Woodard

Released: November 22, 2000

Viewed in theaters: November 23, 2000

Split
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Cast: James McAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy, Betty Buckley,  Brad William Henke
Released: January 20, 2017

Glass
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Cast: James McAvoy, Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Sarah Paulson, Anya Taylor-Joy, Spencer Treat Clark, Charlayne Woodard

Released: January 18, 2019

So who knew M. Night Shyamalan directed a trilogy? I didn't until Glass came out and I heard it was Bruce Willis and Sam Jackson reuniting as their characters from Unbreakable (nineteen years later!) I also knew that James McAvoy's character(s!) from Split was in it, but I didn't realize there was an Unbreakable connection in Split; rather I just assumed Shyamalan thought that character would work well with the Glass storyline; but as we find out, there is a connection between all three movies.

In Unbreakable, we are introduced to a seemingly average man named David Dunn (Bruce Willis) who lives with his wife, Audrey (Robin Wright) and tween son, Joseph (Spencer Treat Clark) in Philadelphia where he works as a security guard at a stadium. However, we soon learn that David is not that average as he is the only survivor of a train derailment. Not only did he survive it, but he didn't even break his bones or get a scratch on him. The way the scene is shot where the doctor (played by Michael Kelly) is telling David all of this is very Shyamlanian. It reminded me of the famous "I see dead people" scene in The Sixth Sense (just no iconic lines!)

Not surprisingly, his story makes the news and one man in particular is intrigued by David. He is Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson) who has a genetic disorder called osteogenesis imperfecta which means his bones are very low in density and are easily broken. He mentions he's broken fifty-four bones in his life, but during a scene in Glass, he will mention he's had ninety-four breaks in his life, so that means he's broken bones forty more times in the nineteen years (or seventeen years....I'm a little confused by the timeline, but I'll explain why later) since the year 2000. Despite all the breaks, he has Type 1, which is the "tamest" version. There are four types and Type 4 is the most severe and, therefore, most deadly.

Elijah owns a comic book art gallery called Limited Edition and writes a note to David on his business card asking him, "How many days of your life have you been sick?" David finds the note under his windshield wiper and he and Joseph visit Elijah at his store. David can't remember the last time he was sick, but figures there must have been a point sometime in his life he's been ill. Maybe the guy gets flu shots. I get flu shots every year and I've been really lucky that I never get really sick where I just want to stay in bed and sleep all day because I'm so miserable. Sure, I have days I may feel sluggish, but nothing severe or anything. The last time I was really sick, like had to call in to work because I was legitimately contagious and go to a doctor was in 2014.


Elijah, being a comic book nerd, proposes the theory that if there's somebody like him in the world who can easily have his bones broken, then maybe there's an opposite of him in the world, somebody who never gets sick and whose bones never break. David tells him that as a child he did almost drown so he did have a near death experience, but Elijah believes that means that water is his kryptonite (just like with the aliens in Signs...oops, hope I didn't spoil that for anyone!) I have to say this movie is ahead of its time as you see Sam Jackson in a comic book store where there are a lot of Marvel comics and posters and cutouts of Avengers characters (I remember seeing one of Spider-Man).

We see Elijah's love for comic books started when he was a child when his mother (Charlayne Woodard) gives him a comic book titled The Battle with Jugaro and tells him, "They say this one has a surprise ending" (haha, Shyamalan, I see what you did there). It is a little messed up how she makes him get the comic book, though. She has it wrapped in a box that's sitting on a bench in the park that's across the street from their apartment where they can see it from their window. She wants to make him work for it to prove he can do anything despite having brittle bone disease. There are a lot of kids playing on the playground and one kid literally runs right in front of the bench with the present that has a big shiny bow on it. I am really surprised no one took it. If this happened in the real world, no way that gift is staying there longer than five minutes! Perhaps he also took a penchant to comic books because kids called him "Mr. Glass" because he breaks like glass and if that doesn't sound like a :::coughcough::: villain from a comic book, I don't know what does.

Joseph tries to test a few theories that his dad may be a superhero. When David is lifting weights in their basement, he asks Joseph to remove a few of them and after he lifts them again, he asks his son how much weight he removed and Joseph tells him he added more. They both want to see how much more he can lift and after using 350 pounds of weights, they add two (full) paint cans to each side. Now that he has proven his dad has super strength, he also wants to prove that he's invincible so in a very tense scene, Joseph, who has found his dad's gun, has it pointed at David and plans to shoot him to prove to him that nothing will happen to him. Both of his parents are rightfully freaking out and telling him to put down the gun. I had to laugh a little when he said "I'll only shoot once." David threatens to leave if Joseph shoots him. So either Joseph shoots and kills him and loses him forever or Joseph shoots and injures him and David leaves. Joseph is hurt by this and says he thought they were friends to which David replies, "Friends don't shoot each other." True dat! To Joseph's parents' relief, he puts the gun down.

Elijah pays David a visit at the university stadium where he works. As they're both standing next to a line of people waiting to get into the stadium, David points out a man to Elijah who thinks may have a weapon because he's wearing a large coat. He says it's just an intuition, but in a scene earlier we saw David brush up against the man and this is how he knows the man is dangerous. Well, he doesn't know he has this ability yet. Of course, the dude just looks straight up shady so I don't think you need to have any premonitions that he has a weapon. As David correctly predicts, the man turns and leaves the line once he sees David start patting down random people. Elijah follows the man down the subway stairs to see if David was right about him. The guy is walking too fast for him and as Elijah is trying to keep up with him, he slips and takes a nasty fall down the stairs and I'm just like, OUCH. For some reason, his cane is made of glass (terrible idea) and just shatters everywhere. Yeah, it looks cool in the movie, but don't use a cane made out of glass. Just not a good idea.

When David realizes he has a gift of being able to see the past crimes of people who he comes in physical contact with, he decides to hang out at the train station where he comes in contact with a whole bunch of folks who have done some terrible, terrible things. It seems every time he comes in contact with someone, the crimes they've committed just get worse and worse. We see a woman who has stolen expensive jewelry, then we see a man who has raped a passed out woman, then we see a janitor who broke into a home and killed the father. Writes note to self: never go to the Philly train station. In this scenario, the wife and two daughters are bound and gagged in their own home and David goes to rescue them. I didn't really understand why this janitor/home intruder/evil man was doing what he was doing: did he have a history with this family? Was he there to steal something and wanted the people out of his way? Obviously for the movie they needed David to be a hero because after he rescues the two girls (the wife does not make it) a sketch of him in his now trademark green poncho is in the paper and when he shows it to Joseph, he immediately knows it's his father and now knows what he knew all along: that his father is a superhero.

So as with any M. Night Shyamalan movie, you know there is a twist coming up. It had been nearly two decades since I last saw the movie and while I remembered the comic book aspect of the movie, I couldn't remember what exactly the twist was. When I re-watched it again, I was like, Wait, that's the twist? That's not a twist. That's so obvious! Maybe back in 2000 it would have been considered a big reveal. David shakes Elijah's hand and we see that Elijah has been involved in some terroristic events including starting a fire at an apartment building, a plane crash, and the very train crash that David survived. We see a security video of him leaving the unattended and unlocked front car of the train. Um, no way this would be plausible post 9/11! Good thing this movie came out a year before when security was a lot more lax! Elijah tells David, "We are connected, you and I" and that he had to make "so many sacrifices" just to find him. He did all these horrific acts because he needed to find the one person out there who was his antithesis and to do this he had to kill a lot of people along the way to find the one person who he wasn't able to kill. Yikes! 

You know when you're watching a movie based on a true event and there's usually text on the screen giving you an update on where these people are now? Well, that happens in this movie which makes it super cheesy, especially since this is not based on true events (duh). Why don't we see a scene of Elijah at an institution for the criminally insane instead of being told it with text on the screen? Just feels super unnecessary to me.

So now we jump sixteen years ahead to the next movie. The way Split begins is a little contrived. We need three girls -two of who are very close friends and one an outsider - to be in the same place at the same time. Claire is having a birthday party at a restaurant and invites everyone from her class, including Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy), the weird loner girl who has no friends. At the end of the party, Casey's ride is late and she tells Claire's father she can take the bus home, but he insists on driving her home along with Marcia, Claire's best friend.


The movie starts immediately once Claire's father is incapacitated offscreen by a man (James McAvoy) who gets in the car. Claire and Marcia are in the back, talking and don't realize the man in the driver's seat is not Claire's dad until a full minute in. Casey, is too scared to say anything and is wondering if she should bolt. When Claire confronts the man, telling him he's in the wrong car, he sprays them with something to make them unconscious and the three of them wake up in some cellar-type room. They can peep through a keyhole where they see another room with a locked door, so they know escaping isn't going to be easy. When they hear a woman's voice talking to the man and see someone wearing a skirt and high heels through the keyhole, they start yelling to be rescued. They are all shocked when it is revealed it is their captor talking in that voice and wearing the skirt and high heels. They just stare at him (her) in disbelief when he (she) tells them: "Don't worry, I'll talk to him. He listens to me. He's not well."

It doesn't take long before they realize they are being held captive by someone with DID - dissociative identity disorder, probably more well known as having multiple personalities. I imagine this has to be a dream come true for an actor to play. James McAvoy plays a character with 23 - soon to be 24 - identities. I believe he only plays eight of them in this movie, but we will see even more of these personalities in the next movie. Aside from the big one we will see at the end, there are really only four personalties that get to come "out into the light". These include a nine-year-old boy named Hedwig who loves rap music and dancing and saying "etcetera" at the end of his sentences; a religious woman named Patricia who has a slight Scottish accent (might as well since McAvoy is Scottish); Dennis, who is the one who kidnapped the girls and always wants to make sure everything is clean and makes the girls take off their clothes if they get dirty (plus he's kind of a perv...); and Barry who is into fashion and is usually the one who contacts and talks to their therapist, Dr. Fletcher (Betty Buckley) who is an expert in DID.  Not only do they each have their own wardrobe, McAvoy gives them each their own distinct personality in the way he talks, his mannerisms, and the way he carries himself. It is very impressive acting.

I don't know much about DID - in fact, I didn't even know it was referred to as DID; I just always called it multiple personalities - but there is something fascinating and creepy about it. It's just unfathomable that someone can have a completely different personality from their own, or several, as is the case here. I assume doctors have ways of diagnosing it and being able to tell a person really has DID instead of just pretending to. We see a scene of Dr. Fletcher giving a seminar where she says there are moments when two identities can take "the light", or the conscience at the same time and talks about a time when it happened with somebody she was working with who was taking notes at the same time with both hands and each hand was writing something different with a different handwriting. The different identities in Split are able to communicate with each other, as when the girls heard Dennis and Patricia talking to each other. There's also a scene towards the end of the film when McAvoy is looking into a mirror and all the personalties are communicating with each other and the camera pans from McAvoy to his reflection. It's very reminiscent of the Gollum/Smeagol scene in The Two Towers.

I'm sure Hollywood movies and shows about DID over exaggerates it greatly and I'm sure Split is no different. I read that people with DID were most likely abused as children or suffered some great trauma as a child which is what we see happen to Kevin Crumb, who is the person played by McAvoy with all the personalties. While we don't get too much of his backstory, we see flashbacks of his mother getting furious with him for not cleaning his room and coming after him with a hot iron in her hand. He most likely created all these personalities as a coping mechanism. Dennis, the personality who is a neat freak, was one of the first to appear and he protected Kevin by making sure everything was clean because if anything was dirty, it would set his mom off. We'll explore more about his parents in the next movie, but I still have a lot of questions.

The two non-entity girls (don't get too attached to them) think if all three of them take him on at once, they can fight him and escape, but Casey doesn't agree to the idea because she knows it won't work. The girls really want to escape because they were told by Dennis that they are "sacred food" and one of the girls think he has a dog he wants to feed them to. She's not totally off-base. When they get a clue from Hedwig that there may be a way out, Claire finds a way through the ceiling and ends up running through a long hallway and in a locker room. I was very confused where they were until it's revealed at the end (I guess what was a bit of a twist too). Dennis fixes the ceiling and keeps all the girls separated, especially after Marcia also tries to escape when Patricia is making a sandwich for her and Casey and she hits Patricia with a chair, but since the door is locked, she doesn't get too far.

Casey has formed somewhat of a bond with Hedwig, the personality who is stuck at the age of nine. After Hedwig mentions he likes to dance to music in his room and has a CD player next to his window, she gets him to trust her by telling him that she gets in trouble at school on purpose so she can get away from everyone and be alone. We see flashbacks of her as a young girl who would often go on hunting trips with her dad and uncle (Brad William Henke). Through each of these flashbacks we learn something about her backstory each time, like the fact that her uncle started sexually abusing her at a very young age and that he is currently her guardian because her father had a heart attack when she was still quite young. Casey doesn't share all of that with Hedwig, but with what she does tell him, he sneaks her into his room and starts dancing to Kanye West. Watching a man in his late 30s dancing to rap music while pretending to be a nine-year-old is both super weird and oddly endearing at the same time. However, Casey can't appreciate his dancing because all she sees is the CD player by a drawing of a window on the wall. There are no actual windows to be found. When she asks Hedwig about this, he gets mad and accuses her of trying to escape. He shows her a Walkie-Talkie that one of the other personalties stole from someone and she takes it and when she finds out she can get in communication with someone on another line she tells them who she is and that she's been abducted. The person thinks she is joking and pretending to be someone else. Hedwig becomes Dennis and is strong enough to overpower her and take the Walkie-Talkie. I thought there was going to be a payoff with this scene later on, but there never was.

Dr. Fletcher knows that Kevin has twenty-three personalties and knows all of them quite well. She usually talks to Barry, who used to be the dominant personality until Dennis and Patricia started taking over and limiting Barry's time in the light. (Not really quite sure how it all works). Barry told Dr. Fletcher about the other personalties and when Dennis is talking to her, pretending to be Barry, she knows it is not him and correctly guesses that she's really talking to Dennis. She also knows the only way to talk to Kevin is to say his full name, but she doesn't want to do that because it would be chaos for the other identities and she doesn't want to hurt them. She is dismissive that Dennis insists that there is a twenty-fourth personality getting ready to emerge. When she receives many urgent e-mails from Barry she visits his place and this is when she discovers the three girls. He turns into the Beast, which is this animalistic being who becomes very large in stature and has thick skin (literally) and can crawl up walls and all these unnatural traits that no human should have. Before he crushes the doctor to death, she has written a note with his name on it, with the instructions, "Say his name." The two non-entity girls are trying to escape by trying to hook a wire hanger and catching a slide bolt and the movie almost makes you think they're going to escape, but no. They are chow for the beast. Dennis had kidnapped the girls as an offering to the Beast who apparently will only eat the "impure young". But, hey, if anyone was wondering, at least Claire's dad turned out to be okay.

Now Casey is the only one left alive and running for her life from the Beast. She finds the paper from Dr. Fletcher and screams, "Kevin Wendell Crumb" and the man that is the host body for all these personalties appears and is very confused. He asks Casey if it is September 18, 2014, as that is the last day he remembers. When he realizes he's done terrible things, he tells her where his gun and bullets are and instructs her to kill him. That would be utterly terrifying to realize you haven't been yourself in over two years; it would be like be in a walking coma. The other personalties start to come out and once again the Beast emerges. By that time, Casey has found the gun and bullets and has barricaded herself into a cage, but the Beast easily bends the bars after Casey has shot him, but the bullets just ricochet off him. When the Beast sees cut marks on Casey's body, he realizes that she has been hurt just like he has in the past and runs off, sparing her life.

She is rescued by someone who finds her and helps her. This is when it is revealed that she was at an old building at the zoo the whole time where Kevin worked. I thought maybe this was the big twist and while it was a surprise, it wasn't THE twist. We see her in a cop car and when the (female) cop tells her that her uncle is there to pick her up, Casey just looks at her and you know she's going to tell her about her uncle. She does because in the next movie she's living with a foster family and mentions her uncle is in jail.

Okay, now for the big twist. Hot take: Split has the best Shyamalan twist. If only because you didn't see it coming at all (as long as you weren't spoiled!) I've already put my spoiler disclaimer at the top. So obviously I knew about the Unbreakable connection so the big reveal at the end wasn't a big shock to me, but it was something I wasn't expecting to see, because, as I mentioned earlier, I assumed Shyamalan made Unbreakable, then sixteen years later makes Split as a totally different entity, then makes Glass as a sequel to Unbreakable and decided he could incorporate the Split characters into that one. It would have been super fun to watch the movie in the theater and see that reveal without being spoiled. I have to wonder if I would have even gotten it. I think I would have, but not right away. First we hear the music the was prominent in Unbreakable, which I definitely wouldn't have remembered. As I literally saw Unbreakable a few days before I watched Split, I instantly recognized it. Then we see Bruce Willis sitting at the end of the diner wearing a uniform with his character's name on it. I know I wouldn't have recognized his character's name, but being that he's only been in two (at the time) Shyamalan films, it pretty much narrows it down to Unbreakable, well, because, you know. And the woman next to him acknowledges him so she can see/hear him, ha! On the news, they are talking about Kevin and mention he is being referred to as "The Horde" because of his multiple personalties. When the woman mentions how he reminds her of "that crazy guy in the wheel chair that they put away 15 years ago" and is trying to remember his name, Bruce Willis is revealed as he says "Mr. Glass." I bet audiences (the ones old enough to remember Unbreakable!) were freaking out when they realized this movie had a connection to Unbreakable and there would undoubtedly be a sequel. Pretty cool.

This takes us to Glass. I'm a little confused by the timeline because it is mentioned that Casey's classmates were killed only three weeks ago, but it is also mentioned that the events of Unbreakable happened nineteen years ago, which would be "real" time. (Although, technically, it really should have been eighteen years since Unbreakable came out in very late 2000 and Glass opened the first month of 2019...but who's paying attention to minute details like that?) So does that mean that Split took place in 2019 as well? Then why does the woman at the end of the movie mention Mr. Glass being put away 15 years ago? Ahh, who really cares that much, right? I guess Shyamalan just didn't catch that. He did catch something else that made me laugh just because it really wasn't that important. So you know how he always has a cameo in all his films, like he was the doctor in The Sixth Sense? In Unbreakable he plays one of the people who David comes into contact with at the stadium and it is revealed he is a drug dealer and/or user. In Split he plays a security guard who works at the building where Dr. Fletcher lived and she uses his help to track Kevin. In Glass, David owns a home security store (his cover when he's not fighting crime) and Shyamalan as the security guard is seen purchasing some extra cameras for the building. He is obviously the same character he was in Split, but then he asks David if he used to work at the football stadium and when David confirmed he did, Shyamalan's character is like, "Oh, I thought I recognized you. I used to hang out there with a bunch of shady people when I was younger, then I turned my life around." Okay, first of all, you KNOW someone tweeted @MNightShyamalan right after they saw Split and asked him if that was supposed to be the same character from Unbreakable and Shyamalan figured he better make that clear in Glass, so he threw that throwaway line in. Second of all, how the hell would he remember a security guard at a crowded stadium from nineteen (or fifteen depending on what timeline you're going on) years ago?? I call B.S.! Nonetheless, it was a super amusing scene.

Since Elijah goes by Mr. Glass and Kevin now goes by The Horde, David also has his own superhero name and he is referred to as The Overseer. His son, now grown, is the only one who still knows his father's true identity and helps him track the Horde where he now has four cheerleaders held hostage in an abandoned factory.

I heard an interview Spencer Treat Clark gave on a movie review podcast and he said after some of his friends saw Split, they were telling him he had to see it and he just assumed it was because he worked with Shyamalan in his youth; he had no idea about the Unbreakable connection until he saw it. Luckily for Shyamalan he was still acting as a young adult, but I wonder if he still would have taken the role if he retired as a child actor? Obviously Bruce Willis and Sam Jackson are back, too (well, duh, the movie IS called Glass) and so is Charlayne Woodward in old age make-up as Elijah's mother. The only person from the original movie who isn't back is Robin Wright as Audrey David's wife. She is mentioned as having died from leukemia five years ago. It's possible that they tried to get her, but she had other projects that didn't allow her, but honestly, they didn't really need her.

David is able to find The Horde and rescue the four girls before the Beast is about to maim them. While doing this, he was tracked by Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson) who apprehends both of them (with the help of some armed men) and takes them to Raven Hill Memorial Mental Institution for psychiatric treatment. She tells the two men, who are kept in separate rooms that she specializes in a "particular type of delusions of grandeur: those who believe they are superheroes." David is kept in a room where the walls are equipped with 46 high pressured nozzles which are all connected to a 15,000 gallon water tank right outside which will only be triggered if he tries to escape and Kevin is kept in a room that has strobe lights that go off and change his personalties if he gets too close to the door and ends up confusing him. If Dr. Staple is telling them they're not really who they think they are, then why do they need all these safety precautions to make sure they don't escape?

 The same main alter egos that we saw in Split - Dennis, Patricia, Hedwig, the Beast - are mainly used in this one, but we do see even more of Kevin's other personalties in this movie, especially with the use of the strobe lights. These include a Spanish-speaking woman and probably my favorite, a man who specializes in Japanese cinema from the 1950s-80s. Can you get any more specific than that?

The big scene in the movie is when David, Elijah, and Kevin are all together in the same room, but it was a bit of a disappointment because the characters don't interact with each other, rather they are speaking with Dr. Staple. Well, not Elijah as he doesn't speak until an hour into the movie. David had an MRI taken and Dr. Staple tells him that his front lobe has a "questionable cloud" and that it could mean it's damage from the train accident. She seems to have an explanation for everything that could prove these men are akin to comic book characters. She tells Kevin (well, he wasn't technically Kevin, but I forget which personality he was in this scene...) that he probably learned how to rock climb through videos. When he challenges her and asks how the Beast was able to pull apart the iron bars on the cage she tells him due to the cage's old age, she was able to pull them apart by putting a wrench between them and leaning back and said it was, "difficult, but possible" (yeah, but the Beast didn't use a wrench!) and when he challenges her even further and asks how the Beast survived being hit by bullets, she tells him the gun and bullets were old and the cartridges were compromised from the moisture in the room.

So, yada, yada, yada, we learn that Elijah has been pretending to be catatonic this whole time and his first line of dialogue comes about an hour into the movie when he sneaks out of his room and into Kevin's room where he talks to a few of his personalties and wants to meet the Beast as he has big plans. Earlier in the film we had seen him looking at a local magazine with a picture of a gaudy building called the Osaka Tower, claiming to be the tallest building in Philadelphia. The headline read "The Osaka Tower - A True Marvel" which is obviously a nod to the comic book franchise, though there is obviously a nod to Die Hard and the Nakatomi Plaza, and you know, Bruce Willis.

He tells David that they are going to Osaka Tower where the Horde will be revealed. There are three floors that house a chemical company and Glass is planning to blow up the building with those chemicals. Well, he certainly is telling the right person about this because if there's anyone who can stop a terrorist at a skyscraper, it's John McClane! The movie takes a bit of a detour when the characters never actually go to Osaka Tower, which turned out to be a red herring, and instead have their big showdown in the parking lot of the hospital.

During this time, the Beast has been somewhat of a sidekick for Glass, killing anyone who might get in their way and treating him like a God. However, when Joseph lets it drop that Kevin's father was on Eastrail #177, the exact same train that was derailed because of Mr. Glass and everyone died except for David Dunn, the Beast quickly turns on him. Yes, that's right. It all ties together. So apparently there's a scene in Split where one of Kevin's personalties (again, I can't remember who) is at the train station where he buys flowers and places them on the track in remembrance of his dad. While I remember this scene, I just never made the connection. Now it's like, duh.

So we get a few more details about Kevin's upbringing, but I'm still confused. When we see Kevin's dad on the train, he is reading a book about DID therapy and treatment and it is mentioned he was on his way to see a doctor. A couple questions: first of all, why is he leaving his son with his wife (I assume they were still married, but I don't know for sure because why would he want to be married to such a horrible, horrible woman)?  He knew she was abusing him, right? I mean, I don't know how you miss a mark from a hot iron and God knows what other signs of abuse he had. Why in the hell is he leaving his son alone with this woman?? Also, why didn't he just take Kevin with him? If he's seeing a doctor about his son, then why isn't Kevin going with him so he can be diagnosed? Yes, I realize that if Kevin went with him, he would have died in the train crash and therefore there would have been no movie so it defeats the whole purpose, but, c'mon. Glass tells a seething Beast that if the crash hadn't happened, Kevin would never have been left alone with his mother and if she never continued to abuse him, then the Beast would never have been born. Before the Beast dropkicks Glass, he tells him that his main priority is to protect Kevin and he cannot trust him to keep him safe.

So more yada, yada, yada, to my surprise, all three of the main characters end up being killed by Dr. Staple and her group of armed men. It turns out all along she was part of a secret society who do believe that super heroes and villains exist, but don't want them being known to the public because "there just can't be gods amongst us". But, unfortunately for her, she is unable to keep it secret because she finds out that Glass had streamed the live security feed (it was alluded to several times that the entire hospital inside and out was covered in cameras so their whereabouts would be known at all times) to a private site and the videos showing the three of them doing extraordinary things like lifting a car over or bending steel or crawling across a wall are sent to his mother, David's son, and Casey. The three of them upload the videos that this society didn't want anybody to see and soon everyone in the world is able to see that super heroes and villains do and can exist.

So while I loved that all these movies tied together and he made a sequel to Unbreakable so many years after its release, I felt Glass was a bit of a disappointment. I guess it just didn't live up to my expectations. I was expecting David and Elijah to have more screen time together since they have so much history from the first movie. This is more like a psychological thriller than an actual comic book movie which fine with me because I wasn't expecting a Marvel movie or anything. I think my favorite part of the movie is when the credits rolled and there is a list of 24 names next to James McAvoy's name. I laughed when I saw that.