Movies of the Week #14 (2017)

Not much to report.

Friday

• Split (2016): Hyped as the first good Shyamalan movie in, I don’t know, a million years, Split seemed to me like just another disappointment. That’s if you can still call anything Shyamalan does disappointing, because it presumes a bar set high by previous efforts and/or expectations. In spite of a cool performance by James McAvoy – and, actually, some more good performances, by Anya Taylor-Joy and the elusive Betty Buckley; I didn’t take at all to Haley Lu Richardson though, whom I previously disliked in The Edge of Seventeen (2016) as well – Split starts off interestingly enough, then strays and becomes rather dull. The story is about a guy suffering from dissociative identity disorder who kidnaps three girls as he awaits the rise/awakening of his 24th persona, an all powerful beast. And, erm, I don’t know, that’s about it. There’s some enjoyable interplay between the personas, but I’m not sure what Shyamalan is trying to do by peddling this idea that every different identity can also alter the biological character of a being (i.e. one might be short-sighted, the other might have diabetes, etc.). Maybe it’s just there for the quirk of it and facilitating this supreme creature. It’s a shame, because the premise of broken people being stronger than those who are whole and unharmed has traction, but more on a figurative level, than a literal one. 5/10