‘Split’ Review: M Night Shyamalan’s Mojo Is Back — What a Twist

[...] since it comes from writer-director M. Night Shyamalan, popcorn cinema’s most sophisticated and confident peekaboo addict, it really means it’s enjoyably-stacked entertainment, equally crunchy and silky in its desire to be as appetizing a two hours as you could spend in suspended disbelief.

Shyamalan jumps into the peril immediately, with the daylight abduction of three teenage girls after a birthday party: sullen, flannel-wearing misfit Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy), and popular besties Claire (Haley Lu Richardson, “The Edge of Seventeen”) and Marcia (Jessica Sula, “Recovery Road”).

Thrown into a rock-and-wood-walled basement room — no windows, but there’s a gleaming white bathroom — the frightened trio are torn between fight-back mode, which Claire and Marcia subscribe to, and pessimistic Casey’s wait-and-see attitude.

The kindly doctor subscribes to an empathy-driven theory of DID that patients like Kevin are not just trauma cases to manage closely, but instead keys to the untapped potential of the human brain to physically alter the body at will.

[...] who needs a menace-in-waiting when you’ve got a committed actor like McAvoy tearing it up already with a revolving door of characters? “Split” may get much of its narrative momentum from the keenly wrought suspense and dread-inducing visuals Shyamalan is so good at, from the uncomfortably crisp, off-kilter close-ups to the pipe-and-wire-strewn passageways and cramped rooms in Kevin’s underground lair that suggest our troubled criminal’s clogged, compartmentalized brain.

The conclusion, perhaps overly drawn out but still suitably nightmarish, is when certain story clues and percolating themes about emotional scars — tied in part to flashbacks from Casey’s childhood — allow Shyamalan the confidence to see if “Split” can punch above its weight as a rock-em-sock-em B-movie.