He could split any second

Rating: 8/10 (20 January 2017)

This review of Split is spoiler free
**** (4/5)
Around the turn of the 21st century and even just before it, writer/director M. Night Shyamalan created a whole new genre with films such as the Oscar winning The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs: films with such intricate character studies with a deep paranormal vibe in even the littlest of characters, he even created a reverse spoof effect whereby (ghosts, superheroes and alien invaders) naturally through playing some tongue-in-cheek are sometimes presented in high seriousness, through intense sometimes scary, anguished central performances from even the most established male movie stars, and keeping the recurring theme of end of the reel twists which he associates through most of his films. He succeeded so well that there are even many signs of his success through some other director's films such as Joel Schumacher's Number 23, or Alex Proyas' Knowing both with Shyamalan-esque twists.
Perhaps as a deep response to his success at becoming an imitable brand and perhaps down to the muted (and sometimes peculiarly hostile) response to The Village, Lady In The Water and The Happening (two of them are interesting films), Shyamalan moved from the tight vice-like grab of his personal cinema to take a shot at fantasy (The Last Airbender), sci-fi (After Earth) and found footage shocker (The Visit) let's just forget about those. With Split, he returns to 'Night Classic' mode. We're back in Philadelphia where soft-spoken, well-heeled simple go quietly mad and a psycho thriller that evolves into something weirder on the boiling-a-frog principle of slowly adding bizarre, perhaps sometimes freakish elements to an extreme truth-telling case study of one person or in this case 23 people. This time, perhaps frustrated by the attention paid to the easily parodied habit, Shyamalan eagerly holds off on a twist in favour of a measured well-constructed development of a far-out premise, though there is an intensely fan-satisfying development that pops up near the end.
All the actors involved, James McAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy etc. want to play Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and McAvoy seizes some of his antics with obvious relish on the role of man named Kevin, with 23 different personalities then to be eventually usurped by a 24th which is more animal than man. His head is finely stubbled as his Professor X cut grows out, he only uses a few props been supplied to him such as a pair of glasses and a woolly hat, but he mostly conveys Kevin's alters - from a gay fashion designer, to an OCD caretaker, a sinister British matriarch and a tittering small child - with a change of expression and voice. Granted it's a show-off tour de force performance, but McAvoy plays it well, though we only get to see nine of the 23 personalities which he can change into very easily with just an eye twitch reflex, he plays every one of them with perfect clarity - he's funny, creepy, threatening, pathetic and monstrous by turns. Note especially through set-pieces like his perfectly uncoordinated, crazy demonstration of what a nine-year-old might think are radical dance moves, and the unsettling moment where one of Kevin's more controlled, yet sinister persona impersonates a more open, appealing to reassure his analyst (Betty Buckley) through some unorganized appointments that things aren't going south in his skull.
Though as often with Shyamalan, the actual as intricate as it may be is less important than the character studies. Even Kevin loses keen interest on two of his young captives, who get shoved into separate storerooms as misfit Casey (Taylor-Joy) emerges as the brave heroine, realizing she's most likely to survive by engaging with her captor rather than escaping by crawling ventilation ducts or relying on teen-princess karate lessons. It's fair to say that her life experience has prepared her for an ordeal such as this which is established in tactful, yet unsettling micro-flashbacks showing her traumatic life with some standout work from young actress Izzie Coffey, who's giant wide-eyes match Taylor-Joy's. It seems fair to say that after her performances in films such as The Witch and Morgan, Taylor-Joy is shaping up as the weird chick of her generation - but she has to work as hard as her brave character to find her proper screen-space here when her co-star is busily upstaging himself, as well as she is.
VERDICT: This is an engaging thriller that's sometimes terrifying, it's provocative and it's thoroughly entertaining with an awards-caliber performance from McAvoy. It's fair to say Shyamalan is back to his best and is presumably here to stay.