Split

M. Night Shyamalan has spent a fair bit of time in the artistic and commercial wilderness - almost a decade. With his more recent films, he's brought back down the budgets and started back with the more exploitationy horror films he made his name with. In this case, the story of a man with multiple personalities who kidnaps three girls for a sinister purpose, the basic premise does feel perilously close to torture porn (albiet with a show-offy central role for James McAvoy - while the character is described as having 23 separate personalities, we only get exposed to about five for any length of time, but that's enough to show McAvoy has some seriously good acting skills to his bow).

The "insanity = evil" element has been criticised a bit online, but in the context of the film it's used fairly unrealistically -  pretty early on there's a lot of speculation about supernatural powers being invoked, and indeed the finale does take this to its ridiculous extension. I do find there's a bit of stuff about childhood trauma here that isn't quite as easy to take as part of a far-fetched fun-ride  - I often find Shymalalan a little difficult to take as he tends to try to combine fantastic premises with realistic portrayals, and while McAvoy's performance doesn't exactly fall within realism, the general tone isn't one I'm entirely comfortable with.

I appreciate this more as a vehcile for a performance rather than anything else - I find the later turns in the plot to wander between distasteful and ridiculous, which means I don't quite have the fun I'd like to have with this kinda film. There is a last minute moment that invokes another recent cinematic trend that I almost undoubtedly can't talk about without spoilers, and supporting performances from Betty Buckley and Anya Taylor-Joy give a certain grunt to the film, but generally this never quite held me as a great horror film should. It's certainly reasonably competent, but it's not quite my thing.