'Split' Review

Image from Blumhouse

By Darian Scalamoni

            M. Night Shyamalan has had somewhat of a return to form over the stretch of his last two films between The Visit and his most recent film, Split. The latter was just released on Thursday and follows a man named Kevin who suffers from a personality disorder and kidnaps three young girls. Not only is it a personality disorder that Kevin is dealing with but a massive personality disorder in which he has twenty-four distinct personalities. The twenty fourth personality labeled as “The Beast” is what drives Kevin to kidnap these young girls and finish out his constructed fate.

            James McAvoy stars as Kevin, Patricia, Hedwig and Dennis just to name a few and does a masterful job portraying all of these personalities for the main character. He’s over the top with one character and then a completely different person when we shift gears as he plays Patricia with subtlety. Hedwig is by far my favorite persona because of the way McAvoy can truly play a nine-year old child in a 30-year old’s body. It’s hilarious to see with your own two eyes but also sadly terrifying. Though McAvoy stands out in the film, there are also admirable performances by Anya Taylor-Joy, who starred in The Witch, which was regarded as one of the best horror movies in years. She plays Casey, the only girl with a real head to try and survive even the worst nightmares, some in which she’s dealt with previously in her past. You can tell the heartbreak she has just in her eyes alone how weak her character comes as the days continue to wind with her struggling to understand why her captor took her and her friends. The most underrated performance in the whole film though is Kevin’s therapist, Dr. Karen Fletcher, played brilliantly by Betty Buckley. Fletcher is a student to the learnings of Kevin’s condition, while also doing her best to keep him sane. Though some of most of his personalities have been welcome into “the light” by Dr. Fletcher, others are shunned out because of outlandish and wrong behaviors. Fletcher’s character adds another layer to the film that digs deeper into how people with these conditions think and act when jumping from personality to personality.

            Though much of the film falls on its performances (and for good reason), the movie is constructed to be dark, ridiculous but also has a tremendous pay off. It feels very much like a B-movie but Shyamalan’s direction and script makes it worth your while in the theater. As someone who is usually not a fan of the horror genre, I have to say it really isn’t much of a horror movie, rather a psychological thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat the entire time. After his successes with The Sixth Sense, Signs and Unbreakable, Shyamalan had a really bad stretch of filmmaking with movies like The Last Airbender and After Earth. It was when he took a step back with smaller budgeted and simpler ideas like Split and The Visit where it seemed he felt more comfortable and found his footing before his creative gene came back.

            Split is not the best movie of the year by any means but it’s led by great direction, a good script with solid ideas and a fantastic Shyamalan twist at the end. The amazing performances just elevate the project and make it for already one of the more pleasant surprises of 2017 for which you can dictate, at least for the time being, that M. Night Shyamalan is back.

7.7/10