The writer-director M. Night Shyamalan shook up the movie world in the late 1990s and early 2000s with beautifully constructed, breathtakingly original films such as \u201cThe Sixth Sense,\u201d \u201cUnbreakable\u201d and \u201cSigns.\u201d
For about a decade, and M. Night film was an Event Film. You wanted to see it on opening night, to experience the supernatural journey unfettered before anyone could spoil the twists and turns.
And then, not so much.
Even as the numbers of moviegoers and critics increased with nearly every new Shyamalan release, I stayed with him through \u201cThe Village\u201d and \u201cLady in the Water\u201d and even \u201cThe Happening\u201d \u2014 but by the time we got to the likes of \u201cThe Last Airbender\u201d and \u201cAfter Earth,\u201d I was off the bandwagon along with just about everyone else.
Here\u2019s the news. With the chilling, creepy, bold and sometimes bat-bleep absurd \u201cSplit,\u201d the 46-year-old Shyamalan serves notice he\u2019s still got some nifty plot tricks up his sleeve and he hasn\u2019t lost his masterful touch as a director.
This is a gripping thriller of the mind that\u2019ll make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. It\u2019s also funny as hell just when it needs to be.
Like \u201cUnbreakable,\u201d the Philadelphia-set \u201cSplit\u201d takes a comic book\/graphic novel approach, with one foot based in reality and the other crossing the boundary into supernatural conjecture. James McAvoy (the young Professor X in the \u201cX-Men\u201d prequels) is handed a plum of a role and does wonders with it, playing a man named Kevin who has some 23 different and distinct personalities living inside him and taking turns \u201cin the light,\u201d i.e., taking over Kevin\u2019s body. We\u2019ve got the fashion designer Barry, a flamboyant, gentle sort; the intense and smart and physically intimidating Dennis; the 9-year-old mischief-maker Hedwig, and \u201cMiss Patricia,\u201d a gentlewoman of some manners, among others.
Yes, Kevin has Dissociative Identity Disorder, and yes, some mental health advocates are protesting \u201cSplit\u201d and calling for a boycott \u2014 but it\u2019s difficult to imagine any adult seeing this film and believing for a second it\u2019s an attempt to be a scientific, seriously analytical take on DID, any more than \u201cPsycho\u201d or \u201cDressed to Kill\u201d or \u201cIdentity\u201d or \u201cFight Club.\u201d
In the middle of the afternoon, Kevin abducts three teenage girls: the popular Claire (Haley Lu Richardson) and Marcia (Jessica Sula), who are close friends, and the outcast Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy), who happened to be in their company at the wrong place and the wrong time.
The three girls wake up in a claustrophobia-inducing underground bunker. (The ingenious set design and the brilliant cinematography by Mike Gioulakis are major contributors to the consistently tense vibe.)
We see Kevin\u2019s various personalities emerge through the eyes of the girls, who alternate between crying and cowering and giving themselves pep talks before trying to escape.
Meanwhile, the personality known as Barry makes frequent visits to Dr. Fletcher (Betty Buckley), who has made a career of treating patients with DID and is a firm believer they are special, gifted human beings with different persons \u2014 not different personalities, different persons \u2014 occupying their physical shell. (There\u2019s talk of a woman who was blind but regained her sight because other persons within her could see, and a man who could lift three times his weight when a certain strongman within him emerged.)
Casey is so detached and so resigned to the situation, we wonder if she actually knows Kevin and is somehow in on the abduction \u2014 but then we learn about Casey\u2019s past through a series of increasingly disturbing flashbacks, and we begin to understand where she\u2019s coming from.
The script calls for McAvoy to hit some big broad notes as an actor, especially when Hedwig becomes Dennis becomes yet another person (I don\u2019t want to say any more) on camera, in close-up. He\u2019s helped by some makeup and a touch of CGI wizardry, but the transitions are mostly in the performances \u2014 and it\u2019s a damn good one. When Hedwig or Patricia come to life, we can see how the girls come to believe they\u2019re talking to a 9-year-old boy or a prim and proper woman.
At times potential victims perform classic horror-movie rookie mistakes, whether it\u2019s not taking advantage of an opportunity to escape, or walking deeper into a trap when it\u2019s pretty obvious it\u2019s time to call 911. And when we reach the final 15 minutes or so of \u201cSplit\u201d and all is revealed, Shyamalan is taking the kind of chances that no doubt will result in some viewers rolling their eyes.
Not this guy. I went with it. I got back on that M. Night bandwagon, and the finish line in particular was just spectacularly fantastic.<\/p>\n

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