Thanks, I Hate It: Split

If you'd told me in 2000 that Unbreakable would have two sequels constituting its own little bizarro-world MCU, I'd have told you to get your head examined. Yet for better or for worse, here we are, Shyamalan's Bruce Willis-starring superhero yarn about an invincible, super-strong security guard and his brittle-boned nemesis now three films deep into a gonzo story of suffering-as-superpower. For all their idiosyncratic weirdness, though, in some ways Shyamalan's movies are as square as any mainstream blockbuster. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Split, his 2016 superhero horror flick starring James McAvoy as Kevin Wendell Crumb, a man with a case of dissociative identity disorder that makes him behave like half a dozen different Loony Toons. 

Anna Taylor-Joy plays Casey, one of three young women kidnapped by an ephebophilic personality of Crumb's and held hostage as a sacrifice to a sort of ultimate splinter personality, the Beast, which several of Crumb's selves hope to bring forth. It's not a bad performance, nor is the character uninteresting in her own right, but her traumatic story is set on the back burner in favor of McAvoy's scenery chewing. His answer to the problem of making each personality distinct is to render them utterly flat, each defined by one or two traits and a set of grossly exaggerated facial tics and mannerisms. The effect is alienating and, worse, boring.

Casey playing cat and mouse with Kevin's personalities is perfectly adequate thriller material, but the film's two-hour running time feels padded out with back-and-forth between Kevin's selves and pat therapy sessions. Casey's recollections of her molestation at the hands of her uncle are cruelly affecting and Taylor-Joy does good work with her character's mounting desperation as the film progresses and its supernatural elements begin to emerge in earnest, but without anyone to bounce off of effectively there's a limit as to how much of the film her understated work can carry.

Split is a movie which rehashes Psycho's legendary twist and then congratulates itself for coming up with such a unique conceit. That Shyamalan, perhaps more than any other director, can sell the experience of a deranged story coming true simply isn't enough to cover up the film's basic flaws. McAvoy's acting, the movie's indifferent pace, and Shyamalan's slipshod dialogue sink the whole production long before it gets to the (comparatively) good stuff in its final leg.