Bananas

Rating: 6/10 (5 July 2017)

It's tempting to read the title of director M. Night Shyamalan's latest thriller as a cruelly reflexive play on the schism of his infamous filmmaking career: part I (the Early Days, where he was heralded as one of the industry's most visionary living directors), and part II (a slew of exponential misfires so inexplicably ill-advised no one, most likely including Shyamalan himself, quite knew what was Happening). Sadly, although Split does recall Shyamalan's early glory days (literally - to an almost inexcusably tacky fashion), there are mere hints of promise and potential here, skulking like phantoms amongst a film too mired in silliness and indecisive murk to leave too much of a mark. This isn't to say Split is a total write-off - there are trashy thrills to be had, and pitted against the bulk of Shyamalan's last decade of work, it's practically Citizen Kane. Still, it bears the melancholy mark of a fallen maverick who hasn't so much reclaimed his mojo as located the postal code it relocated to.
If anything, Shyamalan is wise to play it safe, steering clear of sci-fi, fantasy, and airbenders with a taut tale of abduction and frayed psychology that almost amorously borrows from Hitchcock's Psycho. Still, in spite of this textbook familiarity, Shyamalan still(!) somehow manages a work as loopy and hard to navigate as any of his more labyrinthine psychodramas. On the surface, he's conjured a setting rife for a satisfyingly campy b-thriller a-la Sam Raimi, replete with jittery, claustrophobic camera-work, an appropriately creaky, ominous soundtrack by West Dylan Thordson, and contrived enough reasons to strip his captive coeds to make Sharknado roll its eyes. And, for the sequences when Split commits to pure, primal 'what's around that corner' breathlessness, like a slightly sillier but equally chilling bunker buddy of last year's 10 Cloverfield Lane, it is effective as hell, and pure popcorn fun.
But, rather than committing to the amiable wink and nod, Shyamalan clouds his film with an uneasily out-of-place streak of (yawn) seriousness. To say the least, it sits uneasily with a wagon-load of aped genre tropes - a grainy aesthetic that hearkens back to the Doom era of action horror, hazy mental health fretting, Madonna/whore obsessions, clumsy flashbacks to our tortured protagonist's tortured childhood torturedly; even a healthy helping of cringe-worthy self- harm hero-worshipping? - that would've felt stale in a straight-to-DVD late night special from the early 2000s. The film's lugubrious editing doesn't help, making McAvoy's mysterious madman feel as sluggish as he is indecipherable. And if that wasn't enough, Shyamalan sifts in a shroud of self-important faux-mythology (wide-eyed characters whisper mental health bunk as if reciting sacred texts, conflating mental health disorders with superpowers in a way that is, amazingly, both cloyingly infantilizing and alienating as hell) that would be borderline offensive if it wasn't such silly claptrap.
Then, for those masochistic viewers still desperately trying to wrangle the film into being worth it, try our arch-foe(s)' motivation on for size: McAvoy's multiple personalities (or at least some of them ) kidnap high school girls something- something confused sexuality something-something abused as a child blah blah worshipping superpowered Satanic death cult to punish them for not having suffered enough? Hel-LO-O! They're in high school! Methinks it's you who doesn't know the meaning of the word suffer, Mr. 'Beast.' Go back to pining over a rose. Maybe sing about it.
And the invariable Shyamalan 'twist?' Only that nothing, not even standalone passion projects made by former art-house darlings, is safe from the encroaching, wearing mega-blockbuster trend towards interconnected cinematic 'universes.' Yes - our entire movie outing here exists for the sake of shoehorning in an almost staggeringly self-indulgent finale linking the film to Shyamalan's Unbreakable - a modest hit from 17 years ago(!) that a minimal percentage of viewers might remember offhand sans google - just so he can chase the superhero bandwagon like Tobey Maguire pitifully wheezing after his departing bus in Spider-Man? Nah. No thank you indeed. Good day to you, sir.
The film's main selling, of course, is showcasing James McAvoy's range, with the kind of role actors fight tooth and nail to show off with. Thankfully, he's fairly excellent, and transitions so seamlessly between flamboyant personalities (including some pretending to be others... oooh!) with subtle shifts of face and posture. It's almost a shame that he has to contort to the dopey 'superpower' conceits of Shyamalan's script, as he's easily fascinating and scary enough on his own without crawling on the ceiling like a bargain basement Underworld counterfeit. Apart from the central novelty of McAvoy, Anya Taylor- Joy gives an impressively enigmatic, haunted performance as our leading teen, plagued by plenty of inner demons pre-abduction (though, again, she's better off emoting on her own right, rather than having her performance hand- held by irksome, unnecessary PTSD flashbacks). Haley Lu Richardson and Jessica Sula are both solidly credible, in spite of the 'panting cheerleader' stereotypes they're saddled with, while Betty Buckley works her darnedest to ground her breathy exposition-dolling plot devise of a therapist with wry sharpness and astute charisma.
The thing is, you want to like Split. You can practically smell the sweat on Shyamalan trying to rekindle his rep, and scorning poor McAvoy, practically bleeding energy onto the screen, feels like kicking a (psychopathic) puppy. And hey - if you're in the market for a silly, braindead little thriller full of nerves and amiable nonsense, Split will pass the time with a couple of jumps, shivers, and chuckles, both intentional and not. But as a purported comeback from the mind behind The Sixth Sense, and with another Unbreakable sequel that next to nobody will be waiting eagerly for still in the pipeline? Let's just say that none of us, least of all Night, are now strangers to the Beast's suffering litmus test of worthiness.
-6.5/10