Split -- a review

Hello, I'll be your psychotic bad guy today. 

M. Night Shyamalan’s fall from grace has been well documented over these past few years. The writer/director, who made such a splash with his first film, the smash hit The Sixth Sense, has fallen flat on his face with such stinkers like The Happening (watch out for them trees!), After Earth (zzzz), and The Last Air Bender (the quest for a plot). With every new film he released, I kept hoping that Night wouldn’t fall again, that he would once again knock it out of the park like he did with his far better films, like Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs (yes, I liked Signs, and even The Village, too. So put that in your pipe and smoke it).

In Split, a trio of teenage girls are abducted by a psychopath named Kevin (James McAvoy) and brought to an underground dungeon where they are kept locked up in a room. As if this scenario wasn’t scary enough, it turns out that Kevin has multiple personalities--23 in all--which he displays to the girls at various times. Each and every one of his personalities speaks of a vile, so far unseen twenty fourth personality, known simply as The Beast, and a solemn promise is made to the girls that they shall meet ’it’ soon enough.

The one nice thing about sleeping over here is that it's very, very quiet.

On the surface, Split is a fantastic thriller that features a true tour de force performance from McAvoy, who is probably best known for playing the younger Professor X character in the most recent X-Men films (a part originated by Patrick Steward). McAvoy’s performance as the shattered Kevin is well worth the price of admission alone, as he expertly switches between different characters, oftentimes within seconds, and with such conviction that you’d almost swear that you were watching completely different people inhabiting the same body.

And Anya Taylor-Joy is also superb as Casey, one of the kidnapped girls with a dark past, who manages to play a nerve-jangling cat and mouse game with McAvoy’s Kevin. The fact that she can match McAvoy’s stunning performance with her own quiet intensity is a pretty amazing feat. Betty Buckley is also superb as the Simon Oakland character here. Just as Simon Oakland explained the complexities of psychotic behavior for the lay person in Hitchcock's Psycho, Buckley’s character serves the same purpose here, yet she imbues her psychiatrist with much-needed warmth. It's great to see M. Night Shyamalan is back, with an engrossing thriller that has a shocker (and deeply satisfying) ending that will leave you wanting more.      --SF