You WISH You Were Sybil!: M. Night's 'Split'

I haven't seen an M. Night Shyamalan movie since 2008's miserable The Happening (Mark Wahlberg playing earnest nerd; Zooey Deschanel playing....anything; pollen being a population killer instead of a nasal enemy). I'm not sad about it either.

The Lady in the Water, The Last Airbender, After Earth? No thanks. But after mega-budgeted, mediocre sci-fi tangents, M. Night moved in to the low-budget, PG-13 level horror realm of The Visit and now Split. He's earning back some street cred and increased critical praise. But is it earned? I haven't seen The Visit beyond the trailers and teasers that were everywhere when it was released. But my opinion on Split? Well, it's split. C'mon, you knew that had to be coming, right?

The film is a psychological thriller about three teenage girls who get kidnapped from a mall parking lot and put into the underground lair of a split-personality killer named Kevin (James McAvoy, chewing the scenery, sometimes whole). Why is it that even the most working class of villains, like Kevin, somehow have the money to set up some kind of elaborate system of rooms, locks, endless unused spaces, etc.?

Betty Buckley stars as McAvoy's psychiatrist Dr. Fletcher (a nod to Angela Lansbury's Murder She Wrote persona, perhaps?) and does a relatively good job of selling M. Night's sometimes ridiculously overstuffed script. As the lead captive girl Casey, Anya Taylor Joy is the real heart of the story, as the cool, calm, and Clarice Starling-level resourceful heroine. She's the one to watch, amidst the hamminess of McAvoy.

Though not awful, I felt Split's best bits were cribbed from the superior 10 Cloverfield Lane, and of course the final act of Silence of the Lambs. Even the newish Netflix series The OA did a more novel take on young people trapped in a basement by a demented mind.

Is it a good Shyamalan movie? Yes. He seems to be climbing out of the big-budget bloat of his mid-00s schlock period. Is it derivative as well? Yes, of course.

It also wouldn't be an M. Night film without a much touted "twist ending." This film's twist? Not very interesting, and more subtly meta in regards to his other films. If you're waiting for that mind-bending twist, don't hold your breath.