Late last year, M. Night Shyamalan staged something of a comeback with The Visit, an intimate, nerve-shredding horror experience that had the illustrious filmmaker team with Blumhouse – a studio that has engineered numerous low-budget, high profit entries in the genre over the years.
Eager to keep up that budding streak, particularly after a run of lowly misfires, Shyamalan and Blumhouse are collaborating once again for Split, and today brings forth the electrifying first trailer.
Taking point as Kevin, an unhinged schizophrenic with a twisted personality disorder, is James McAvoy, who flies off the handle to kidnap three hapless teenage girls. Anya Taylor-Joy of The Witch fame is among that unfortunate trio who, judging by today’s first-look teaser, get an unnerving peek into the deranged psyche of McAvoy’s lead.
Here’s the synopsis:
While the mental divisions of those with dissociative identity disorder have long fascinated and eluded science, it is believed that some can also manifest unique physical attributes for each personality, a cognitive and physiological prism within a single being.
Though Kevin (James McAvoy) has evidenced 23 personalities to his trusted psychiatrist, Dr. Fletcher (Betty Buckley), there remains one still submerged who is set to materialize and dominate all the others. Compelled to abduct three teenage girls led by the willful, observant Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy, The Witch), Kevin reaches a war for survival among all of those contained within him—as well as everyone around him—as the walls between his compartments shatter apart.
Also starring Betty Buckley, Jessica Sula and Haley Lu Richardson, Split immediately captures our attention with James McAvoy, who portrayed a deluded, drug-addicted police officer so brilliantly in Jon S. Baird’s Filth.
Could we see a similar intensity in M. Night Shyamalan’s latest? Split opens on January 20, 2017.
