Lazily 2017's crop grows in relevance. So much the better. Most recent addition: M Night Shyamalan's Split.
Split is the 12th feature film directed by M Night Shyamalan and confirms his return to full form as one of the silver screen's foremost poets of anguish and wonder, after the relatively minor digressions of The Last Airbender (2010) and After Earth (2013). His previous The Visit (2015) was already close to the par of older masterpieces, the most famous of which are The Sixth Sense (1999) and Unbreakable (2000). The very best are said 2 plus The Village (2004) and The Happening (2008). The MacMahonian warmly welcomes Shyamalan back to the fold.
Suggestively for such an impressive film, Split closely follows basic horror movie convention (I'll refrain from alluding to Howard Hawks once more…): schizo-psycho (James McAvoy, histrionic) abducts 3 teenage girls (including leading damsel in distress Anya Taylor-Joy, staggering) whose anguishing plight for survival and escape we are then made to witness, climaxing in (semi-spoiler alert) a not-so-happy end with a twist hinting at an already well-publicized sequel in the works.
As McAvoy's schizophrenia unfolds onto no less than 23 reported personalities – although we become acquainted with only about half a dozen – his victims understandably lose heart, but for Anya, who like her captor suffered child abuse, although not quite the same degree of damage, and manages to survive due to a mixture of luck, plot necessity and some educated guessing of the abused psyche.
Know thy enemy, they say. I wouldn't know.