McAvoy shines in flawed but thrilling Split

James McAvoy in Split. Image courtesy Universal Pictures.

With Split, M. Night Shyamalan has created a terrific thriller rooted in elements of B-movie grit and grime that add a little verve otherwise missing from the man's repertoire. Shyamalan’s also created a film with a number of narrative flaws and a major problem with his female characters, neither of which is overly surprising given his previous efforts. It results in a mixed bag carried largely by the center performance by James McAvoy, who takes full advantage of the showcase role and captivates throughout. This movie at the very least proves how vital casting can be, and how a great performance can save a troubling film.

In a weird way, Shyamalan either nearly saves himself from himself or he nearly drowns himself. It depends on how you look at the man who directed and wrote this film and see if his talents as a director saved his poor writing skills or if his subpar writing skills undermined his directorial talents. Because the man is a pretty darn fine thriller director who takes Split's goofy premise – a man (McAvoy) with 23 distinct personalities kidnaps three students (Anya Taylor-Joy, Haley Lu Richardson and Jessica Sula) as part of a sacrifice to a seemingly legendary 24th entity – and somehow creates an intense, discomfiting atmosphere in which even the daylight intimidates. The film is loaded with tight spaces, small corridors, confines falling apart and darkness barely interspersed with light that offer up an impeccable ambiance for oddity. He plays around with a few camera angles to offer a little insight into his characters' point of view at a given moment. His best little trick though is changing how he frames the various figures played by McAvoy when interacting with the abducted students and with his doctor (played by Betty Buckley). It adds a bit of nuance to the relationship McAvoy's personas have with the other people in his life.

That latter point is a sign of a good filmmaker, but it also compensates for his inability to accomplish the same goal as a writer. The writing in Split is remarkably sub-standard, beginning with the aforementioned premise that is too improbable to believe and never quite sticks despite the best efforts of Shyamalan's better half and the cast to sell it. There's also the dialog that lessens the further characters get into conversations, their chats riddled with those little bits of faux mysticism he likes to vomit into just about everything he does. A movie can't just be about a man with multiple personalities; it has to be about a mythic beast, or a character searching for some sort of potion through documentary filmmaking like in The Visit. Shyamalan tries too hard as a writer to force his films to sound important without conveying the natural oddity of the magical realism he's searching for. It doesn't help that he's a lazy writer to boot. One of the major character arcs of the film – the conversion by McAvoy's characters to the aforementioned 24th personality called The Beast – is rather similar to the one used by The Tooth Fairy in Manhunter and Red Dragon. His female characters are inconsistent, with one note portrayals – neither Richardson nor Sula get much to do beyond scream and moan – and astounding incompetence shown Buckley's doctor. Taylor-Joy's character, the prototypical final girl, gets the worst of it, with Shyamalan using past molestation and the resulting self harm as key driving points of her character and her chances at survival. This point can be viewed as the laziest bit of writing in this film and as an incredibly sexist characterization in a movie littered with such points.

Split’s saving grace is the bonkers and incredible performance put on by McAvoy. McAvoy loses himself to the characters within the characters he plays, from the scheming and evil Dennis to the goofy child Hedwig to the very in control Patricia. He makes them distinct beings – complete with inflection changes and individual tics – even as they begin to blur into one another toward the end, bouncing from one persona to the next in an internal battle for control. It's riveting to watch play out and immensely impressive to see the wild swings McAvoy undergoes in about a minute before his bad parts gain control and the momentary reprieve from the danger ends.

Review: Three out of Five Stars

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Rating: PG-13

Run time: 117 minutes

Genre: Thriller

Ask Away

Target audience: Thriller fans who wanted something decent from M. Night Shyamalan.

Take the whole family?: I'm really impressed this thing somehow only garnered a PG-13 rating. Don't stray too far from that recommendation.

Theater or Netflix?: You can wait for it at home.

What happened to M. Night Shyamalan?: Aside from this film, which is the best thing he's done in years, what he's fallen into is the need to pull out tricks and stunts with many dashes of pretentiousness along with it. With Split he mostly grounds himself with tight corridors and grubbiness and gets a little dirty in the process. He's sort of like a less talented Terry Gilliam; both need constraints to hold back their worst impulses.

Watch this as well?: Psycho is the best bet for films featuring characters with dissociative identity disorder. Considering how much this film lifts from Manhunter, watch that and the still solid remake, Red Dragon. Unbreakable remains the best thing Shyamalan has directed, and is also one of the best superhero films of the past 20 years.