This was pretty awful.

The entire movie was trying to dictate something to the audience, but I couldn't put my finger on what it was.

At no point do you feel anything at all for the characters. The kidnapped girls and Casey's dad are not developed at all, so their deaths don't carry any weight.

The one smart character (the doctor) doesn't act rationally. The whole lecture sequence made me cringe. The doctor is originally presented as someone who approaches her patients methodically. She is perceptive and crafty. Then she gives a Skype lecture where she pleads with a group of scientists to believe her. She doesn't present proof or make a convincing argument, even though she _must_ have that capability.

Then in dangerous situations she shuts down. While she can write out his name, she doesn't call it out or check for his presence. She knows how dangerous he is. She suspects him. She even stuffs the tissue into the keyhole, but she still doesn't call out his name to snap him out of it.

The girls are also in an unrealistic state while trying to escape. In most other movies, people in this type of situation are either 1) competent, 2) paralyzed by fear, or 3) completely frantic and flailing. These girls were none of those. Their maddeningly slow pace was inconsistent with the terror they must be feeling.

The whole parallel with Casey's uncle (and being imprisoned after being "released" into his custody) didn't match well with the main story. Why did she pull the trigger on The Beast but not her uncle? At first it seems like both stories were parallels, where at this point in her life she actually overcomes her fear and confronts her aggressor. But then she just goes back to her uncle. It's very unclear what her character is feeling and what she's going through.

Also, the fact that The Beast is immune to gunshots and has superhuman strength is out of nowhere. The story abides in the natural world before derailing into the supernatural. While the supernatural element should be a big reveal, it wasn't. His powers build up step by step, so there is no surprise factor. The lack of surprise implies that we should expect this. Yet the world presented doesn't give us any hint before the build up. Tying it into _Unbreakable_ at the end was jarring as well. The tie-in explains more about the movie's universe, but nothing about the movie's tone or world-building mirrored _Unbreakable_.

McAvoy's performances were decent but spread very thin. So many characters (8?) are introduced that none of them were well developed. The other thirteen aren't explored at all, which was pretty disappointing. MNS might be saving them for the sequel, but I doubt most viewers will be willing to sit through another ordeal of this magnitude.

The only success of this movie is when Casey goes for a gun and the non-Beast personalities plead for their lives one by one. It makes you think about the twenty-some actual people who would die if she pulled the trigger in self defense. Unfortunately, this was the only redeeming quality of the movie and not enough to justify a watch.