Worth it just for McAvoy

Rating: 7/10 (17 January 2017)

The first two (three?) scenes are absolutely horrible. Like, I was ready to leave the theater bad. The movie still continued to prove itself as contender for the Worst Director Ever award until James McAvoy's second appearance on screen. Honestly, the slim cast could have been even slimmer with just him, Anya Taylor-Joy and Betty Buckley and I would have been just fine. Whether the others suffered from bad acting or just bad directing I'm not sure, but their performances were intolerable at points, as was the attempts at first person POV in the cinematography. Many of the camera choices I was hoping would be revealed at the end, but they just seemed random.
Shyamalan brought back his use of a main character as the narrator, but this time it was so heavy handed it didn't even feel natural. I felt like entire plot was extremely obvious, although perhaps not because there were a lot of confused people once the movie was over.
All that said, James McAvoy did such an amazing job in that film that I forgave many of its other offenses. His character's story was interesting, if not poorly written and I wasn't even mad that none of his personalities were Scottish. Okay, I was a little mad. But, really, it's worth watching just for him. Whether or not it's worth paying for is another subject. Unless you're worried about spoilers, this is one that can easily wait for DVD/Netflix.