We plumbed the vast BQ research archives for any other filmmaker who had as calamitous a career trajectory as Shyamalan........going from Boy Wonder/Next Big Thing to National Laughingstock........
The closest we came was director Peter Bogdonovich, a film critic whose directing career soared in the early l970's with his trio of movies that cleverly duplicated the look and feel of the best of 1940's films, "The Last Picture ", "What's Up Doc" and "Paper Moon"......
Shyamalan enjoyed a similar meteoric rise, establishing himself as a young Speilberg/Hitchcock knockoff with his made-in-Philadelphia thrillers that mixed the fantastic and supernatural with jaw-dropping, 'Twilight Zone' twists.....("The Sixth Sense", "Unbreakable", "Signs")
Afflicted with rapidly ballooning egos and a tendency toward preening, obnoxious self-promotion, both of their careers flew off the rails with disastrous films, some of which were unmercifully mocked by critics and audiences alike.....
Bogdonovich continued with his pastiches of old movies he adored (he recycled Old Hollywood much in the same way Tarantino absorbed and strip-mined all the grindhouse junk he watched as a video store clerk).......but he burdened the films with his girlfriend, the blank-faced, dead-eyed Cybil Shepherd and together they met Armageddon with their abysmal Cole Porter musical "At Long Last Love"......
Shyamalan went into equally steep freefall with ever dopier thrillers with ludicrous, unintentionally funny twists.........when he scraped rock bottom with "After Earth", another ghastly attempt by Will Smith to make a star our of his son Jaden, M. Night had nowhere to go but up.....
And happily for all of us, up he went.......unlike Bogdonovich, who stayed in low gear and never returned to the heights he previously hit.
Working with lower budgets and lesser known actors has revitalized Shyamalan, who kicked off this new phase of his career with "The Visit", his enjoyably nasty little 'grandparents from hell' thriller.....
In "Split", he dares to make use of that well worn plot constantly overworked by other horror directors and suspense novelists.......the collection of innocent teen girls abducted and enslaved in a makeshift dungeon by a psychopathic monster.
Our monster here is Kevin (the frighteningly astounding James McAvoy), whose fractured mind has split into so many different, separate personalities........if he married Sally Field's Sybil, they'd need to hold the wedding in a football stadium just to accommodate all their various selves....
This means especially bad news for the three young girls that Kevin has captured and imprisoned, including the sad-eyed Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy), who's reliving, in flashbacks, her own horrific, tortuous childhood.
For the versatile McAvoy, it's every actor's dream come true.......and he attacks the role (or roles, we should say) as a true Spencer Tracy Actor's Actor......switching from personality to personality with little or no reliance on costuming or makeup. accomplishing his now-you-see-me-now-you-don't transformations with sheer physicality, and subtle facial and voice contortions. He's a sight to see......straight from your nightmares.
Taylor-Joy, we should not forget to add, is every bit as riveting as his haunted prey......she more than holds her own (and your undivided attention) with her mostly silent reactions to McAvoy's constant theatrical fireworks.....
Now pardon us while we zip our lips before we're tempted to discuss the expected twists that await an audience at at the end of "Split".......other than to say it will put a smile of anticipation on your face. Watching the entire film put a smile on ours.......cause it's always nice to see a cinematic talent rise from the ashes and.....(insert your own cliche here.....find his groove, get into the zone....etc, etc....) 3 & 1/2 stars(*** 1/2) for M. Night, McAvoy and their huge cast of characters, all inside McAvoy...
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