directed by m. night shyamalan
blinding edge pictures/blumhouse productions
After watching this feature, I think I can better understand the opprobrium I’ve often seen hurled at its director in discussions of his oeuvre. Not that this is a bad movie, mind you; it does what it does fairly well, but it has a … credibility issue. I mean, I found myself not buying the central premise. At all. Don’t get me wrong; I am not denying the possibility of traumatic onset of multiple personalities, or dissociative identity disorder. The theory involved in this picture, however, takes pseudoscience directly into the realm of the comic book, in my professional opinion. (Disclaimer: I am not a doctor.) Furthermore, I usually am not seeking stories concerning supernatural physical characteristics or characterizations, such as found in superhero or -villain flicks. In addition, I found the scant inserts providing backstory to be both clumsy and stereotyped. THEN it turns out it’s somehow part of a trilogy-of-sorts – or a tripartite narrative, maybe. And it’s also a little too long, if only because it gave me time to realize all this.
why did i watch this movie?
I appreciated Shyamalan’s previous effort, The Visit, and noticed this one receiving positive attention on a few year-end lists.
should you watch this movie?
It’s interesting, but ultimately unbelievable. Upon further reflection, I think it’s supposed to attain that effect … but I think it would best serve an action/thriller audience, and it doesn’t have a whole lot of what generally is termed “action.”
highlight and low point
I would suppose the main attraction of this piece to be the leading performance by James McAvoy, which is presented as though one is to regard it as a tour de force and not a display of ham. The final movement is preposterous.
Ya know, I could swear I saw a capsule review of this one that claimed it was at LEAST as good as Halloween, a true forgotten classic of the genre and … yeah, no. Not really. Kinda dating itself in that not a whole lot of action takes place – killings or anything else – Unhinged is mostly an atmospheric study of some creepy people in an old house in the middle of nowhere, where three young women wind up secluded after a suspicious auto accident. (At least, I gather it was to be perceived as suspicious, in the fine cinematic tradition, but I couldn’t actually tell what caused it.) The SHOCKING TWIST ending in this one is not all that shocking, and neither is it all that plausible, even for a movie of this sort. This information probably should not come as any sort of surprise to you. 
SPACE RATS From Outer Space 