Not a return to form for M Night Shyamalan, but a step in the right direction, at least

Rating: 5/10 (13 November 2017)

A man kidnaps three teenage girls and holds them prisoner in a basement. He has multiple personality disorder, and is the prize patient of Dr Karen Fletcher, who is using him as case study in the condition. Several of his 23 personalities make their appearance to the girls. While none of them seem particularly harmful, there are indications that there lurks inside of him an ultra-strong and violent personality, The Beast.
Written and directed by M Night Shyamalan, I was hoping this would be a return to something like the form of his earlier films. Yes, it would be difficult to match the brilliance of The Sixth Sense but something approaching great would be a good start. Unfortunately his trajectory over the last 11 years or so has been decidedly downwards with some monumentally bad movies - The Happening, Lady in the Water and The Last Airbender (plus, probably, After Earth - I haven't seen it but apparently it is incredibly bad).
So I was quite disappointed when I actually watched this, especially in the first half of the movie. Script, by Shyamalan, is weak, and padded. There was heaps of potential in the concept and themes but this is not used effectively.
The biggest problem is that the initial plot is contrived and implausible. It hinges on you believing that the three girls would allow themselves to be held captive. They have plenty of opportunities to overwhelm the captor, but don't, and even when they actually figure on doing that we have a very weak and contrived reason for them not doing it.
Plus there is a lot of padding to the movie. While the captor's visits to Dr Fletcher do add some depth to his character(s) and to her side of the story, much of it is unnecessary.
So for the first half (even more) I was mostly sitting there thinking "This is so unrealistic, just escape already!" and getting bored at some of the discussions.
It gets more intriguing and exciting in the second half, and starts to make more effective use of the multiple personality device, but that doesn't make up for the poor start.
Can't fault the performances though. James McAvoy is great as the captor, having to essentially play about nine roles, and have to switch between them in a heartbeat. Anya Taylor-Joy is solid as Casey, with good support from Betty Buckley, as Dr Fletcher, and Haley Lu Richardson and Jessica Sula as the other two kidnapped girls.
On the whole, not great, and certainly not in the same league as The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable or even The Village, but better than most of the stuff M Night Shyamalan has dished up over the last 11 years. A step in the right direction, at least.