A fairly decent Shyamalan film, but that's faint praise

Rating: 7/10 (2 February 2017)

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
A trio of girls find themselves abducted from a shopping mall by Dennis (James McAvoy), a man with Disassociative Personality Disorder, who is struggling with twenty three different personalities and who the girls must try and escape from before the 'monsterous' twenty fourth personality emerges.
After really disliking 2006's Lady in the Water, I became quite averse to M Night Shyamalan (wasn't a great fan to begin with, really) and after avoiding 2008's critically savaged The Happening never bothered with any of his work again. This has come to an end with Split, an intriguing psychological thriller that taps into the world of multiple personality disorders and unlocks the potential that this condition has for a thriller. While signs (or Signs!) of his Sixth Sense promise do shine through, it's still all a pretty hit and miss affair with some major flaws.
In what's at the very least a challenging performance, James McAvoy has to portray twenty three different characters inhabiting one body and mind, and yes, as others have noted, he does do a pretty brilliant job, especially with such a heavy workload on him. Although the character's motives for the multiple kidnappings or his ability to carry them out with such an affliction does make you wonder, before it builds up to a nonsensical ending where he's turned into some werewolf type thing, that messy, self indulgent and overly labourious.
Although it's just slightly above rather than below average, to be honest 2003's Identity took this concept of a psychotic multiple personality and worked it to much better effect, and in half the time of Shyamalan's skin of the teeth comeback. ***