After the runaway success of superheroes-for-adults film Unbreakable 20 years ago and the respectable Split in 2016, it was only to be expected that Shyamalan would return to the key characters of the two previous instalments, bunging them all into one to bounce off each other. This has mixed results: Bruce Willis, as the indestructible David Dunn, has little to do except be stoic and Samuel L. Jackson as the comic-fixated criminal mastermind with brittle bones is apparently catatonic for a large part of the opening, and so it's left to James McAvoy as the man with 24 personalities overrun by a 25th, a physical manifestation of pure animal aggression known only as 'The Beast', to keeps things chugging along much as in Split, wowing us with his ability to morph from one persona and accent to another at the drop of a hat. The middle part, where all three are imprisoned and confronted by a daft psychiatrist trying to convince them that they're all just delusional and not superhuman at all, is diverting, but leaves the plot with nowhere to go except the inevitable stand-off between the three. It's by no means as bad as most critics would have you believe, with McAvoy again quite mesmerising every time he's on screen, but rather wastes most of its other potential assets and, with that, yet more residual goodwill towards Shyamalan.
5/10
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