Video review: "Split"

Yes, “Split” is based on one of the oldest scary movie clichés there is: split personalities. The film, from writer/director M. Night Shyamalan, scores no points for originality. It’s about a villain who has 23 distinct identities, who each vie with each other for time “in the light.”

We watch as his not-hapless (hapful?) victim (Anya Taylor-Joy) struggles to negotiate this delicate balance of power, doing whatever she can to stay alive and thwart her enemy … or should that be plural?

Still, it’s a surprisingly effective thriller that understands the audience is going to laugh during parts of the movie. Rather than flee from this expectation, Shyamalan lands on it with both feet and milks the laughs when appropriate.

That doesn’t change the fact the film is very creepy and effective at times, anchored by James McAvoy’s performance in the lead role.

When we first meet him he’s Dennis, a massively strong but dimwitted type who has a forbidden fascination with young girls. He’s kidnapped three of them (Haley Lu Richardson and Jessica Sula play the other two) and has them ensconced in his underground bunker. We seem to be heading to a dark place.

But then we meet Patricia, a charming woman, and later Barry, a gregarious fashion designer, and Hedwig, a mischievous 9-year-old lad. As with other split personality movies, they don’t bother to flesh out the other 19 identities to any great degree.

Even as the girls try to find a way out of their captivity, their captor sneaks away to see his therapist (Betty Buckley). She has some revolutionary ideas about patients like him, arguing that multiple personalities represent the next stage of human evolution. The mind’s ability to believe anything can even grant the body supernatural powers, she supposes -- a theory that we know is going to be tested.

Even as it trundles toward a final act we surely can guess well ahead of time, “Split” rarely fails to entertain. It’s downright disturbing how giggles and shrieks go together so well.

Bonus features are ample, and are the same for DVD and Blu-ray editions.

These include an alternate ending, deleted scenes, a making-of documentary, and in-depth features on McAvoy’s transformations and Shyamalan’s unique filmmaking process.

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Review: "Split"

It would be hard to deny the silliness in “Split.” Certainly, any movie that in 2017 dusts off the hoary chestnut of split personalities as its main dynamic risks ridicule and guffaws. But I think writer/director M. Night Shyamalan is aware of this, bends our expectations to his purposes and sneaks plenty of genuine scares in between the smirks.

The two impulses feed off each other and co-exist in something that’s not exactly harmony, but at least stability.

After years of big-budget failures, Shyamalan returned to his supernatural horror/mystery roots with the ultra-cheap “The Visit” in 2015, and continues his career resurgence with this movie.

It mostly works because it depends upon the abilities of two very talented actors, James McAvoy – probably best known as the young version of Professor Xavier in the recent “X-Men” movies -- and Anya Taylor-Joy, who made a big impression in last year’s “The Witch.”

It starts off with a pulp horror setup: three teen girls are drugged and kidnapped by a mysterious stranger, who ensconces them in an underground bunker reminiscent of Jame Gumb’s from “The Silence of the Lambs.” All sorts of rape/cannibalism scenarios are soon flashing through their minds.

Haley Lu Richardson and Jessica Sula play the more popular girls, who invited Casey (Taylor-Joy) to a birthday party out of sympathy. She’s the school’s problem child, in and out of detention and more serious beefs. But it also makes her oddly better equipped to deal with their dire circumstances.

Their captor is just as creepy as we might figure: dressed in gray coveralls, skinhead, glasses and a perpetual scowl. He’s massive and strong, so thoughts of overpowering him fade. This is Dennis, who cannot abide disorder or uncleanliness. If one of the girls gets a tiny bit of dirt on an article of clothing, even if it’s the result of his own actions, he forces them to remove it. They, and we, are sure we know where this is headed.

But then they hear a woman’s voice, and think they are saved. Only it’s Patricia, one of 23 identities inhabiting one body, warring for time “in the light.” It seems Dennis and Patricia were banned long ago for bad behavior, but lately they’ve shunted aside the rest to take control of things – to protect all of us, they say. Other personalities include Barry, a friendly and positive fashion designer, and Hedwig, a 9-year-old with naughty tendencies abetted by the new order.

Complicating things is Karen Fletcher (Betty Buckley), the therapist who treats this multitude. She’s a bleeding edge practitioner, who believes that people with dissociative identity disorder actually represent the next step in human adaptability. Simply by believing they are separate identities, parts of Dennis et al are capable of needing glasses or not, having diabetes, tremendous strength – perhaps even more.

McAvoy achieves some pretty amazing transformations through sheer technical craftsmanship. Despite his head never changing, from that blank, pale hairless orb, he actually seems to shrink and grow in size, and displays a wide range of mannerisms. Dennis looms over the girls like an ogre, while Hedwig seems like a scrawny naïf.

Yes, the movie becomes goofy at times. That’s partly the nature of the material, but also partly the design of Shyamalan. He knows that the audience is bound to titter, and milks the humor rather than fleeing from it.

And yet “Split” is undeniably disquieting, too. It harkens back to the best of Shyamalan’s early films … perhaps too obviously in the end.

Review: "Fury"

One of my favorite things to do as a critic is to point people to great movies they’ve probably never heard of. Case in point: “End of Watch,” which was in and out of theaters so fast in 2012 you probably missed it even if you didn’t blink.

Writer/director David Ayer’s next film, the Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle “Sabotage,” similarly disappeared without a trace. I’m hoping that won’t be the case with his latest, “Fury,” a World War II action/drama starring Brad Pitt that mostly takes place inside a single Sherman tank.

Fair notice: this a grim, dark movie about the dank corners hidden away inside men’s souls. It makes “Saving Private Ryan” seem like a lullaby.

The battle scenes are gruesome, and what happens when the shooting stops is often even more troubling. American soldiers are portrayed not as decent men who sometimes commit evil deeds in the heat of combat, but killing machines who only want to murder the Germans before the krauts murder them.

What a pitiable world Ayers has drawn for us. Unlike most WWII movies that are set when the Nazis still have the upper hand, here it’s April 1945 and the Germans are offering their stiffest resistance before the collapse they know is inevitable.

The soldiers are all scarred, grimy beasts; the German landscape is an open wound, ripped and gasping; the detritus of war lies all around, smoking armored hulks like prehistoric behemoths brought low. It’s not so much that death and carnage are everywhere, but everywhere is death and carnage.

To wit: when the fresh young recruit, Norman (Logan Lerman), is assigned to the crew of the “Fury,” the battered tank that has survived many battles, his first duty is to clean out the bloody mess left by his predecessor. While doing so, he finds part of the man’s face, perfectly intact, staring at him.

So again I say: not for the squeamish, this.

Pitt has a stout, merciless role as Don, aka “Wardaddy,” the sergeant who commands the Fury. His face done up with scars and hair chopped in a deliberately unattractive fop with shaved sides, Don is sure-handed and unrelenting with the enemy, and the same with his crew. He’ll let them bicker and bitch, but when it’s time for them to perform he will brook no hesitation.

When Norman fails to spot and kill a German soldier with an anti-tank gun, and absolutely horrific results ensue, Don makes personally sure that the lad will not flinch next time, using brutal but effective means. He’ll let the Neanderthal gunner, Grady (Jon Bernthal), indulge his base instincts, but only up to a point.

Don takes a softer hand with Bible, a thoughtful young man played thoughtfully by Shia LaBeouf, and Gordo (Michael Peña), the rock-solid tank driver. The sergeant has promised all his men he will keep them alive, but their latest mission will test that pledge.

The Fury is assigned to a platoon of five tanks to guard a crossroads against a force of fresh German troops, who are threatening the advancing division’s supply line. If they fail, the entire Allied advance will ground to a halt and the war could last months longer.

Ayer shows an expert hand for the battle scenes, keeping the focus on the men inside the Fury while giving a pulse-jumping view of the action outside. Tracer bullets and ordnance flash at the screen like lasers, lending the proceedings an eerie stuck-out-of-time feeling. An encounter with a technologically superior Panzer Tiger is especially effective.

The movie works better as a war picture than a character piece. We never quite get all the way inside the heads of the characters, so their peril doesn’t carry as much emotional freight as you’d expect. And a scene inside the apartment of a German woman and her cousin goes in many different directions at once, like a grenade, rather than focused, like a sniper’s bullet.

Still, this is one depiction of war destined to linger in our memory. At times this movie almost seems like a pugnacious middle finger to the classic war epics, in which disparate men come together for a violent but altruistic cause. “Fury” crushes the notion of the nobility of war under its grinding, pitiless treads.