The Visit

Two precocious adolescent siblings leave their single mother to visit their grandparents whom they've never met, and videodocument the entire encounter, although things are immediately amiss upon their arrival. M. Night Shyamalan's return to twist centered, old fashioned shocks also attempts to incorporate comedy and melodrama, and fails at all three, the scares being routine and obvious, the laughs feebly attempted and geared toward a preteen audience, and the melodrama unearned and coming out of nowhere. The young stars are obnoxious and insufferable.

* 1/2 out of ****

Split

Three teen-aged girls are kidnapped from the parking lot of a restaurant and held captive by a man (James McAvoy) with dissociative identity disorder, 23 distinct personalities to be exact, who converses with his psychiatrist (Betty Buckley) while trying both to cultivate and ward off the monstrous, superhuman 24th temperament that is quickly emerging. After years of poor reviews, misguided genre exercises, and big budget flops, Split is a mostly welcomed return to form for M. Night Shyamalan thanks largely to an amusing, winning performance from McAvoy, in a turn that could have easily been laughable, Anya Taylor-Joy's presence as the focal victim, and the subplot involving Buckley. The finale is unsatisfying and too simply arrived at, as is a post credits cameo which is supposedly leading to a tie-in feature involving one of the director's previous films.

*** out of ****