Two stars. Rated PG-13, and rather generously, for dramatic intensity, violence and gruesome behavior
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.20.17
Color me surprised.
Writer/director M. Night
Shyamalan’s newest little shocker truly is a cut (or chomp) above his other
recent efforts.
 |
| While Marcia (Jessica Sula, left) and Claire (Haley Lu Richardson) watch nervously in the background, Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy) attempts to persuade their captor's (James McAvoy) youngest personality to help them escape from his other, more vicious selves. |
But since we’re talking about the
guy responsible for Lady in the Water
(unrelentingly silly), After Earth
(jaw-droppingly awful), The Visit
(utterly repulsive) and The Last Airbender (quite possibly the worst mainstream fantasy ever made) ...
that’s damning with very faint
praise.
It must be difficult to hit a
stadium-clearing home run the first time at bat — as with, say, Orson Welles (Citizen Kane) and John Carpenter (Halloween) — and then spend the rest of
a steadily declining career trying to top, or even match, that first triumph.
Pursuing that rainbow destroyed Welles, and has turned Carpenter into a
pathetic remnant of his former self. (Anybody remember Memoirs of an Invisible Man, Prince
of Darkness or Ghosts of Mars?)
Thus, pity poor Shyamalan, forever
toiling in the shadow of The Sixth Sense.
Since then, he has demonstrated
an unerring knack for concocting an intriguing premise, failing to exploit it
credibly, and then flushing away any marginal good will during a
bonkers-ludicrous third act.
Split follows that pattern; its modestly saving
graces are a better-than-usual starting point, and a bravura performance from
his leading man. (Or should I say performances?)
Shyamalan wastes no time, opening
with a frighteningly credible kidnap scenario that leaves high school teenagers
Claire (Haley Lu Richardson), Marcia (Jessica Sula) and Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy)
at the mercy of an eerily calm guy (James McAvoy) with a shaved head and
military bearing. The girls wake up in a basement cell, albeit one appointed
with an unexpectedly clean and polished bathroom.
Claire and Marcia, best buds, are
among the most popular girls at school; Casey is the quiet outcast everybody
whispers about. Thus, the savage separation of status prevents the trio from
bonding into a proper team (a shrewd psychological handicap).
Their captor’s various tics
include an obsessive/compulsive fixation on neatness; he’s also a sexual
deviant, as evidenced by a brief but distasteful encounter with Marcia
(mercifully left off-camera).
