Split

Three teenage girls (Anya Taylor-Joy, Haley Lu Richardson, Jessica Sula) are held captive by a maniac with multiple personalities (James McAvoy) and an ability to make physical and chemical changes in his body—in other words, a shape-shifter. Writer-director M. Night Shyamalan is at it again, roaring off on one of his harebrained deliriums. He provides McAvoy with a juicy opportunity for wild-eyed hamming, all but demanding an Oscar nomination, but it’s empty bombast, couched in seething dialogue that sounds like the Unabomber’s manifesto shredded and pasted back together at random. With nothing remotely human menacing the girls, the horrors visited upon them become just so much nasty sadism. And it’s Shyamalan himself, not McAvoy’s supposed character(s), who inflicts it. A deeply unpleasant movie. J.L.