"In the sun, we will find our passion."

Rating: 8/10 (17 January 2019)

I'm probably like a lot of the viewers for M. Night Shyamalan's films, in that I felt his best efforts, "The Sixth Sense" and "Unbreakable", came early in his career and he's struggled to match the intensity and credibility of those pictures. "Split", I think, gets him back on the right track with a psychological thriller that contains elements of horror, not so much for what you see on screen, but what your imagination suggests might be terrifying. I thought James McAvoy did a commendable job in a role calling for a split personality with multiple characters. I also thought the picture cleverly included a back story for the character of Casey Cooke (Anya Taylor-Joy), who was able to relate to the 'Hedwig' portion of Kevin Wendell's (McAvoy) psyche by virtue of being an abuse victim herself. The only thing I get frustrated about in stories like this is when the main protagonist is outnumbered, and the 'victims' can't or won't come to an understanding that they could take him out if they joined forces. Now maybe the 'Barry' facet of Wendell's alter-ego might have been too strong to overcome, but the 'Dennis' or 'Patricia' personalities might have succumbed to a three on one attack. Easy enough for me to say because I've never been in that position, and each of the kidnapped girls individually were too traumatized to take direct action initially. Then once they were separated, the 'gang up' option went away. The final scene of Bruce Willis reprising his character David Dunn from "Unbreakable" was a neat way to whet the appetite of Shyamalan fans who would never have expected a follow up to that earlier film, and I for one will be on hand to see if "Glass" restores some of the magic of that masterful film. My only other comment is reserved for Betty Buckley portraying the sympathetic psychologist Dr. Karen Fletcher, who's painstaking patience in attempting to reconcile Wendell's twenty three personalities ultimately ended in tragedy. Wisely, the story didn't try to account for all of them, and in Dr. Fletcher's case, it appeared that eight was enough.