Dal 26 Gennaio - Dopo il successo di The Visit, il regista, sceneggiatore e produttore M. Night Shyamalan (Il Sesto Senso, Signs, Unbreakable â Il Predestinato) e il produttore Jason Blum (Le serie di Paranormal Activity, La Notte del Giudizio e Insidious) tornano con una nuova terrificante collaborazione: Split - Preview in English by Peter Debruge (www.variety.com)
(Split; USA 2016; Thriller horror; 117'; Produz.: Blinding Edge Pictures/Blumhouse Productions; Distribuz.: Universal Pictures International Italy)
Anche se Kevin (James McAvoy) ha mostrato ben 23 personalitĂ alla sua psichiatra di fiducia, la dottoressa Fletcher (Betty Buckley), ne rimane ancora una nascosta, in attesa di materializzarsi e dominare tutte le altre. Dopo aver rapito tre ragazze adolescenti guidate da Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy, The Witch), ragazza molto attenta ed ostinata, nasce una guerra per la sopravvivenza, sia nella mente di Kevin â tra tutte le personalitĂ che convivono in lui â che intorno a lui, mentre le barriere delle le sue varie personalitĂ cominciano ad andare in frantumi.
Short Synopsis:
Kevin, a man with at least 23 different personalities, is compelled to abduct three teenage girls. As they are held captive, a final personality - "The Beast" - begins to materialize
Commento critico (a cura di PETER DEBRUGE, www.variety.com)
A welcome return to form from 'The Sixth Sense' director M. Night Shyamalan, whose unhinged new mind-bender is a worthy extension of his early work.
Multiple Personality Disorder, like amnesia, is one of those aberrant mental states thatâs been a curse to those who suffer, but a gift to screenwriters over the years. From Alfred Hitchcockâs âPsychoâ to Brian De Palmaâs âDressed to Kill,â filmmakers have long exploited how little we truly understand the condition â though none has pushed it quite as far as M. Night Shyamalan does in âSplit,â treating Dissociative Identity Disorder not as the twist, but as the premise on which this wickedly compelling abduction thriller is founded, as James McAvoy plays a lunatic kidnapper with at least 23 personalities to his name.
Rest assured, there are plenty of proper twists to follow, none more unexpected that the fact that Shyamalan has managed to get his
groove back after a slew of increasingly atrocious misfires. To be fair, itâs hard to imagine any writer-director sustaining a career based almost entirely on surprising audiences, and though the wizard behind âThe Sixth Senseâ lost us for a while there (water-intolerant aliens, anyone?), by trading on ingenuity rather than big-budget special effects, and treating Multiple Personality Disorder as the jumping-off point for an ultra-creepy new villain, heâs created a tense and frequently outrageous companion piece to one of his earliest and best movies.
But Shyamalan, whoâs poised poised to reap one of his most profitable pictures yet, isnât the only one getting a makeover here. Presumably tired of playing handsome, uncomplicated leading men, McAvoy â a talented Scottish actor best known as the young Professor X in the âX-Menâ prequels â has recently expanded his repertoire to include unsavory creeps in films such as âTranceâ and âFilth.â Those roles may
as well have been practice laps for the Olympic main event that is âSplit,â in which his performance is splintered between a gay fashion designer, a renegade nine-year-old, an obsessive-compulsive control freak, and a crazy church lady, among others.
Shyamalan introduces these wildly different personae one at a time, revealing them through the eyes of âSplitâsâ three main characters, a trio of teenage girls taken prisoner from a high school birthday party, who wake up â like the victims in a nightmarish new subgenre that ranges in sadism from âSawâ to â10 Cloverfield Laneâ â in a bunker-like cell with only the dimmest clue of the fate that awaits them. Popular above ground, Claire (Haley Lu Richardson) and Marcia (Jessica Sula) are the first to panic, reacting as most audiences probably would in their shoes, while brooding outsider Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy) seems unusually calm ⌠at first, at least.
Trapped underground in
an undetermined location (the actual spot is the filmâs next-to-last twist), the girls spend several days trying to devise ways to escape. Each attempt will have moviegoers digging their fingernails deeper into their armrests, as McAvoyâs totally unpredictable character manages to gain the upper hand, while the girls try to make sense of the information before them. Meanwhile, to make things a bit easier on the audience, their captor slips out on regular intervals to visit his shrink, Dr. Fletcher (Betty Buckley, the classic âCarrieâ actress who also appeared in Shyamalanâs âThe Happeningâ), a sympathetic ear who dispenses exposition by the wheelbarrow.
The more we learn, the scarier McAvoyâs character(s) starts to sound. At the same time, among the would-be victims, only Casey gets treated like a real person, as Shyamalan gradually reveals the young ladyâs troubled backstory via flashbacks to childhood hunting trips. Taylor-Joy, who recently starred in Robert Eggersâ
âThe Witch,â has a knack for suggesting dark undercurrents to superficially lovely characters, to the extent that we start to wonder whether McAvoy has meet his match.
Shyamalanâs goal is to keep us guessing, and in that respect, âSplitâ is a resounding success â even if in others, it could have you rolling your eyes. Still, scaling down to a relatively modest budget and just a handful of locations has forced him to get creative with the script, while a handful of new hires â most notably âIt Followsâ DP Mike Gioulakis, whose crisp, steady-handed gaze plays against the gritty confusion of the genre â elevate the result in such a way that weâre more inclined to consider the charactersâ psychology, even though Shyamalan appears to be making it up to suit his purposes.
Ultimately, âSplitâ belongs to McAvoy, who has ample scenery to chew, but doesnât stop there, practically swallowing the
camera as well with his tiger-like teeth. With his head shaved, the actor depends ever so slightly on costume changes (sly contributions from âThe Danish Girlâsâ Paco Delgado), but otherwise conveys his transformations almost entirely through body language, facial expression, and accent as his various selves take âthe lightâ â since, per Fletcher, only one can come out to play at a time. As in âPsycho,â thereâs a tendency to over-explain, and while Shyamalan is basically making up rules for Dissociative Identity Disorder as he goes along, the condition has afforded McAvoy the role of his career.