MOVIE REVIEW: McAvoy is a creepy joy to watch as villain with 24 personalities in Shyamalan’s 'Split'

James McAvoy plays a man with 24 distinct personalities — some of which collaborate in kidnapping three young women — in M. Night Shyamalan’s thriller Split.
James McAvoy plays a man with 24 distinct personalities — some of which collaborate in kidnapping three young women — in M. Night Shyamalan’s thriller Split.

Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy, The Witch), Claire (Haley Lu Richardson) and Marcia (Jessica Sula), the teenage heroines of Split, face a unique danger because they've been kidnapped by a force of 24 people who all just happen to inhabit the same body.

It's the sort of outlandish setup one might expect from The Sixth Sense mastermind M. Night Shyamalan, and thanks to inspired turns from Taylor-Joy and Scottish actor James McAvoy, Split is often as engrossing as it is implausible.

Split

85 Cast: James McAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy, Haley Lu Richardson, Jessica Sula, Betty Buckley, Izzie Coffey, Brad William Henke

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Rating: PG-13, for disturbing thematic content and behavior, violence and some language

Running time: 1 hour, 57 minutes

Since teaming up with producer Jason Blum, who has become the king of "found footage" horror films for The Visit, Shyamalan has relearned storytelling and has started taking himself and his creepy world a little less seriously. The fact that Shyamalan plays a goofball instead of a visionary writer (as he unfortunately played in Lady in the Water) shows he has managed to keep his ego in check long enough to serve the story.

In previous movies like The Happening, Shyamalan's relentlessly dour mood ended up leading to unintentional laughter and in replacing the suspense of his earlier movies with numbing malaise.

In Split, a villain can be a 9-year-old boy; a stern woman; a flamboyant fashion aficionado; a stern, violent clean freak; or an obsessive history buff in the blink of an eye. Oh, I should mention that some of these identities even get into arguments with each other at the same time. No wonder his therapist (nicely played by Betty Buckley) has trouble telling whom she's addressing at any given second.

Seeing one person enact both sides of a heated argument or change posture to go with a sudden character change can be giggle inducing, but it can also soften up viewers for when Shyamalan really wants to jolt them.

Kevin Crumb (McAvoy) has dissociative identity disorder (DID), so his own tortured soul is locked behind a group of other identities called The Horde. McAvoy clearly relishes the chance to transform in front of the terrified girls' eyes and gives each member of The Horde plenty of distinctive traits with a minimum of makeup or costume changes. It's a delight to watch him transform instantaneously.

McAvoy goes through an astonishing range of accents and has the unique opportunity to play a bad guy who's menacing and sympathetic. Some of Crumb's personas are as much victims as his captives, for a horrific childhood led him to become a monster as an adult.

For Crumb's captives, this creates a challenge beyond simply escaping from his creepy underground lair. It's difficult to tell when he's innocuous or when he's homicidal. The anti-social Casey seems to be the one who best understands how to manipulate whoever's running Kevin's body in order to stay alive.

Taylor-Joy's face can make up for the fact that Casey doesn't say much. She has the rare ability to vibrantly play someone in a catatonic state. Casey can't show her genuine emotions for fear of triggering one of Kevin's more malevolent identities, but Taylor-Joy subtly lets viewers know what's on Casey's mind.

Blum has often boasted about how few locales some of his films have, and for Shyamalan, that's actually an asset. In cramped quarters, the writer-director has an easier time creating tense situations. It's easier to buy into the potentially iffy scenario if there's barely enough room to breathe.

As the film acknowledges, DID is rare and psychiatrists have some internal debates about what it actually entails. Nonetheless, it has helped Shyamalan create chills with the living that he used to accomplish with only those who could see the dead.

MovieStyle on 01/20/2017

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