There are some well-hidden revelations in M. Night Shyamalan's new film SPLIT that warrant discussing within the film as a whole, but if you haven't yet seen the movie, please be warned this post contains major, big-ass "spoilers" that won't necessarily ruin the experience of the movie for most viewers, but going in blank is an important aspect of the movie-going experience for some people, and what's more, this twist is pretty fun. You have been warned.
The last scene of the SPLIT, not quite a post-credits "stinger", but which immediately follows an ending title card, reveals that the movie takes place in the same fictional universe as Shyamalan's 17-year-old fan-favorite UNBREAKABLE, and is in fact a sort of "quasi-sequel." As patrons in a bar watch the news report of the kidnapping of three high school girls by Kevin Crumb, a man with dissociative identity disorder that manifests as 24 distinct personalities including a superhuman, cannibalistic one called "The Beast", and taken together referred to in the news report as "The Horde", some of the patrons remark on the similarity of the case of one from 15 years ago involving a man in a wheelchair, but they can't remember his name. The theme from UNBREAKABLE plays on the soundtrack, and although I admit that I didn't spot it right away, I knew it was from an older Shyamalan movie, but once they mention the "man in a wheelchair," I caught on. Bruce Willis, at the end of the bar, leans forward, wearing a security guard uniform labeled "Dunn," (David Dunn) just in case there was any doubt, and answers that the man's name was "Mr. Glass."
People have been asking Shyamalan to make a sequel to UNBREAKABLE for years, noting that the original thriller that followed up Shyamalan's break-out hit THE SIXTH SENSE was a superhero movie before superhero movies had become popular. Superman and Batman had had their moments of box office success of course, but the Superman film series had been dead in the water for 13 years and an attempt to bring it back with Tim Burton in the '90s had ended in expensive failure, and the Batman series had ground to a halt shortly after the poisonous fan and critic response to 1997's BATMAN & ROBIN. Sam Raimi's SPIDER-MAN was still two years away, and Marvel Studios wouldn't begin independently producing their own movies for the "Marvel Cinematic Universe" until 8 years later. The superhero genre was dormant, and UNBREAKABLE was marketed as a psychological thriller to capitalize on the runaway success of THE SIXTH SENSE a year earlier. But UNBREAKABLE doesn't feel much like a superhero movie anyway. It has a somber tone similar to other Shyamalan movies, and it approaches superheroes in a meta, sort-of grounded way. David Dunn is, by all appearances, physically invincible to any means except for drowning, but there's some suggestion that there's a bit of magical thinking his improbable survival of deadly accidents, and when his son nearly shoots him with a gun to prove David is indestructible, the scene is tense and ends with David talking his son down from pulling the trigger, rather than going for the wonder and awe of a bullet bouncing of the hero, Superman-style. We never find out is David would survive a point blank gunshot. We know he can survive a horrific train wreck, though. David also never lifts a car over his head or gets thrown through a building, but he bench presses 350 lbs. and rips a car door off of its hinges, despite having the appearance of an ordinary man. He initially mistakes his extrasensory abilities to read people's ill intentions as mere hunches.
UNBREAKABLE is good, but more importantly, it's unique in a way that has made it stand out and develop a strong cult following. I first saw it on TV when I was 14 or 15, and I hadn't heard of it before then that I remember. I remember THE SIXTH SENSE opening in theaters and people talking about it in 1999. I remember everyone talking about SIGNS in 2002. UNBREAKABLE just passed by. It wasn't a box office failure, grossing a solid $248 million worldwide against a $75 million budget, but it wasn't on the level of THE SIXTH SENSE's $672 million gross or SIGNS's $408 million. Reviews were positive, but less enthusiastic than with THE SIXTH SENSE or SIGNS. But now, it's probably Shyamalan's most highly regarded movie, surpassing THE SIXTH SENSE in popularity (if not familiarity), and it frequently appears on lists of the best superhero movies. Frankly, it's overrated. It's good, but it's greatest strength is that it's conceptually interesting, and it has the same narrative and tonal clumsiness as Shyamalan's more successful movies.
What's really great about SPLIT turning out to be connected to UNBREAKABLE though is how the reveal ties together what are otherwise some very strange loose ends. Even (or often) when he doesn't realize it, Shyamalan is not above being ridiculous, so sometimes it seems like SPLIT's portrayal of DID is symptomatic of a typical Shyamalan leap of logic, that the mind is so powerful that it can physically transform the body. It would be one thing if The Beast personality took over and made Kevin behave like a cannibalistic wild man and that would be that, but blue veins also bulge all over his body, he grows taller, is able to bend iron bars and scale walls with his bare hands. We're not talking a full-blown Hulk-out, but it's something similar that could exist in the established UNBREAKABLE world of restrained superpowers. Without the final scene, SPLIT is a rough and rowdy little thriller that jumps the shark from improbable territory to unreasonably supernatural. In some ways, the last scene reveal may be pandering for an audience's amused recognition with which comes temporary good will like a lazy cameo, or it may be a tacked-on and unearned justification, but it works better than that. There is a pleasant sensation of recognition, but it's also really cool how that combines with something that elevates the themes and events of the plot that just played out.
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