Whatever it may say about us, audiences can’t seem to get enough stories about abducted women (see: Room, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Thirteen, most of the programming on Lifetime), and M. Night Shyamalan is only happy to indulge the obsession. The writer-director of The Sixth Sense and Signs adds to the genre with Split, a forthcoming thriller about three young women kidnapped by one very bald, very creepy James McAvoy. Sporting the ‘do that’s served him well as Professor X, McAvoy plays a man with 23 personalities, at least one of which is majorly threatening to the young women’s prospects for both escape and survival.
The unlucky young women are played by Anya Taylor Joy, who broke out in 2015’s historical horror film The Witch, and Haley Lu Richardson and Jessica Sula, who both star in the Freeform series Recovery Road. The film reunites Shyamalan with Sixth Sense producer Jason Blum, and the director also enlisted cinematographer Mike Gioulakis, who helped propel It Follows to one of the most buzzed-about horror movies in recent years.
Split hits theaters on Jan. 20, 2017.
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