By Brett Blake M. Night Shyamalan. The mere utterance of his name is enough to generate all kinds of complicated feelings. For a director who started his career with such promise, he had a rather pronounced fall from grace, kicking out a string of unequivocally bad movies for nearly a full 10 year stretch. With SPLIT, he’s back, and in more ways than one - good Shyamalan is back again, offering up a sharp and effective psychological thriller (with horror overtones) that is well directed, and which features a pair of knockout lead performances (and one quite excellent supporting turn, too). The premise is simple. Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy), Claire (Haley Lu Richardson), and Marcia (Jessica Sula) find themselves abducted and imprisoned by a mysterious man (James McAvoy) who harbors multiple personalities, any number of which are capable of “taking over” at any time. As the girls attempt to find ways to escape their confinement in an eerie underground maintenance facility, and through consultations with the man’s doctor (Betty Buckley), we watch as the various identities jostle for control and await the arrival of a malevolent and shadowy personality known only as “The Beast.” What ensues is a contained and suspenseful odyssey through one man’s troubled mind. The concept of multiple personalities is well-trod ground, especially in the horror and thriller genres. However, what Shyamalan does with it here feels fresh and unpredictable in ways that work really well. His choice to marry that concept with the skeleton of a “characters held captive” yarn feels totally organic, and allows him to stage a series of sequences which ramp up the tension in effective ways. His filmmaking here is confident, deliberate stuff which should absolutely remind viewers of his early work. Compelling camerawork (aided by some moody cinematography), intriguing staging, and effective intercutting combine to make SPLIT - even just from a technical perspective - Shyamalan’s best-directed film since SIGNS. His handling of the third act here is classic thriller stuff, complete with some wonderful moments and beats. But even more important than Shyamalan’s direction, his screenplay shows an acute attention to character that has (mostly) been missing from his more recent efforts; each of McAvoy’s identities feel fleshed out (as much as they need to, at any rate), and in Casey he has crafted one of his most interesting (and damaged) protagonists ever. Structurally, the story works really well; rather than building everything up to one of his vaunted and trademark “twists,” Shyamalan structures a series of reveals which gradually give us a better view of the overall picture. These reveals are not things I would have wanted to know walking into the movie, certainly, but they’re not “end all, be all” jaw-droppers like Shyamalan laid out early in his career. This is to SPLIT’s credit, however, as it avoids any and all accusations of being gimmicky. Sometimes big twists run the risk of overshadowing the movie as a whole, but that’s not something that applies in SPLIT’s case. There is a bit more that could be said on this front (and people who’ve seen the movie will know what I’m referring to), but I’m going to leave this subject alone. Where SPLIT truly excels is in the performances. As one might imagine, getting to play a character with multiple personalities seems like a dream job for an actor, and James McAvoy absolutely makes a meal out of his chance. It’s basically a tour de force for him, allowing him to show off tremendous range (from playful humor, to genuine, pitch-black menace); not only does he invest each of the identities with consistent mannerisms and body language, but the manner in which he shifts between them is unsettling in all the right ways. His character’s relationship with Buckley’s doctor is one of the most sneakily effective elements of the whole story, too, and McAvoy plays off Buckley in a really great way (and she gives it her all, as well, imbuing that character with profound decency and humanity). If anybody questions McAvoy’s abilities as an actor, SPLIT should immediately quiet those notions. It’s superb work. Opposite McAvoy is Anya Taylor-Joy’s Casey, and within her is where the real heart and emotion of the tale reside. At first she appears to be a tightly-wound coil of anxiety, but she eventually reveals an intellect and strength which make her a capable match for McAvoy’s antics. Taylor-Joy seems effortlessly real, intensely grounded. There’s an authentic quality to her moments on screen which make it incredibly easy to buy into her character. In the span of a single year, Anya Taylor-Joy has now brought us three flat-out excellent performances (in THE WITCH, MORGAN, and now SPLIT) and has made herself one of the most impressive actresses of her age group. Of course the movie as a whole isn’t perfect (there are a couple stabs at humor that fall flat, for example), but what is particularly satisfying about SPLIT is that it is basically proof that M. Night Shyamalan still has it within him to craft good movies. 2015’s surprise sleeper THE VISIT was a big step in the right direction, but SPLIT finds him back in total control of tone in a way that seemed to have eluded him for nearly a decade. From THE VILLAGE through THE LAST AIRBENDER, he appeared to be a director who had totally lost his way, who put absolute schlock up on the screen in ways that were ridiculously tone deaf. Gone were the delicate moments of THE SIXTH SENSE and UNBREAKABLE and SIGNS. Gone were the truly frightening moments. Early Shyamalan is back now, though, and if SPLIT had been the film he’d made right after SIGNS, I think he would unquestionably still be regarded as one of the strongest genre filmmakers working. SPLIT is a return to form, and it rewards longtime (and long-suffering!) Shyamalan fans for their patience with him. It’s a pleasure to have him back making good movies again.
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