Summary
A man with 23 different personalities kidnaps three girls and locks them in a basement, where he plans to hold them until his 24th personality arrives.
My Thoughts
Well, M. Night seems to have finally done it; he’s broken the Shyamalan curse. For the first time since “Signs”, I felt as if I had come out of a Shyamalan film feeling as if I watched a real movie that actually made me feel things other than boredom. While this film is far from perfect, it’s far better than his last six films. The success of this movie lies primarily in the hands of the two leads, James McAvoy (“Atonement”) and Anya Taylor-Joy (“Thoroughbreds”), both of whom were incredible in this.
(SPOILERS IN THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH)
Casey (Taylor-Joy) is an outcast at her school; she’s always getting into trouble with teachers and she doesn’t much care for her fellow students either. But when Casey attends a birthday party for a student named Claire (Haley Lu Richardson, “The Edge of Seventeen”) and her Uncle (Brad William Henke, “Bright”) is late to pick her up, she’s offered a ride by Claire’s father. When getting into the car, Claire’s father is assaulted, and a man named Kevin (McAvoy) drugs and kidnaps Casey, Claire, and another girl named Marcia (Jessica Sula, “The Lovers”). The three girls are brought to a basement where Kevin begins to reveal his true nature as a man with multiple personalities. Some of the personalities are fighting for good and try to contact Kevin’s psychologist (Betty Buckley, “The Happening”), while other personalities seem intent on bringing forth a more powerful personality.
(SPOILERS END)
A Spotlight on the Actors
This film would be nothing without our two leads. James McAvoy’s performance as Kevin has more range than many actors would give in ten movies; he is, at different times, funny, terrifying, sympathetic, annoying, and baffling, but the entire time he’s on screen he’s captivating. One of his best abilities is to show transformation from one character to another with a simple shift in facial tone. McAvoy does this dozens of times throughout the movie, and it works almost seamlessly every time. Some of the personalities are little more flushed out than others, of course, but much of that probably has to do with the writing more than anything else. Some of the personalities he plays include a flamboyant artist, a pretentious historian, an elderly matron-like figure, a precocious child, and a dangerous criminal. These shifts come every few minutes throughout the film, but even from the way McAvoy holds himself, you can tell which character he’s playing. I remember watching an interview with McAvoy when this movie came out, and he said that one of the scenes was the most daunting he’d ever undertaken as an actor (I believe the scene came towards the end, when he switches personalities at a frenetic pace), but never once did his performance falter. This movie was a stage for McAvoy to display his wide range of talents, and he ate up that spotlight with wondrous pizzazz. Anya Taylor-Joy is incredible in this film as well. While she doesn’t switch personalities umpteen times, she does manage to show an incredible amount of range with the material she’s given. We learn about Casey’s damaging past through a number of flashbacks, and Taylor-Joy has a way of giving off an injured persona without really ever addressing the issue with words. Her doe-eyed, sometimes lachrymose character has a ton of depth, and Taylor-Joy is able to play up her fear much more subtly than her counterpart kidnapees. Haley Lu Richardson and Jessica Sula are both fine, but they’re far overshadowed by McAvoy and Taylor-Joy. The only actor I had something of an issue with was Betty Buckley. Buckley and Shyamalan worked together previously on “The Happening”, and in that movie I found her performance to be almost humorous. In this film, at least she’s pulled back her delivery a little bit, but more than anything it seems like she’s just reciting lines at the camera.
Dreary Dialogue, Slick Story
If you’ve been following our series on the rise and fall of M. Night Shyamalan, then you’ll know that I am not a big fan of his dialogue. For some reason, Shyamalan’s writing almost always feels overwritten and clunky for me, and this film is no different. There are lots of lines that are incredibly on the nose, or just feel completely out of place. There are other scenes that feel completely unnecessary (Betty Buckley visiting her TV game show obsessed friend), and more scenes that feel poorly executed. Overall, though, the premise for this film helps elevate it above some of M. Nights bigger bumbles. The story for this movie is simple and straightforward, but honestly, that’s what seems to work best for Shyamalan. This story features some incredibly dark themes, and I’m somewhat surprised Shyamalan got away with a PG-13 rating.
A Concerning Pattern
Now, this is something that has just started to come to my attention now, after having to sit down and watch a number of Shyamalan’s films within the past few weeks. There’s a concerning pattern of misunderstanding and misrepresenting people with disabilities and mental issues in Shyamalan’s films. Even from the very beginning of Sixth Sense we’re shown that Shyamalan finds people with issues frightening- in the opening scene of that movie, a depressed man tries to kill Bruce Willis. In “The Village”, Adrien Brody plays Noah Percy, a man with severe mental retardation, and he becomes somewhat of a bad guy throughout the movie. “The Visit” also takes stabs at people with mental disorders, and “Split” is a total misrepresentation of people with multiple personalities. But it’s not just mental handicaps; in “Unbreakable”, M. Night makes Mr. Glass, a man with brittle bone disease, into a kind of villain too. I’m sure that Shyamalan is not doing this with malicious intent, trying to turn viewers on those with disabilities, but it is disconcerting to see that so many of Shyamalan’s films portray those people in a poor light.
Verdict
Despite my concerns above that M. Night’s films are showing his own preconceived (perhaps subconscious) prejudices towards people with disabilities, I do think, as a story, this is one of his better movies. Honestly, it’s probably the best movie he’s made since “Signs”. The themes work better than most of his other movies, and his ending here actually has a good kick to it. Shyamalan’s signature twist is not so heavily featured, and that is a breath of fresh air. This movie ends on somewhat of a cliffhanger, and it’s follow up, “Glass” is coming early next year. It’s the first time in fifteen years I can honestly say I’m excited for a Shyamalan film.
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