Review of Split (2017) by Patrick L — 03 May 2017

"M. Night Shyamalan's "Split" is a delicious mind-bender".

Movie Review: Split.

Date Viewed: January 21 2017.

Written and Directed By M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, The Village, Signs, The Last Airbender, The Visit and After Earth).

Starring: James McAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy, Jessica Sula, Haley Lu Richardson, Betty Buckley, Brad William Henke, Sebastian Arcelus and Neal Huff.

Welcome back M. Night Shyamalan! After four terrible movies and a disappointing found footage flick, the Oscar-nominated filmmaker is back in his wheelhouse again with a low-budget psychological horror thriller called "Split". It stars James McAvoy as a mentally troubled young man named Kevin who kidnaps three teenaged girls and he keeps them as prisoners for his multiple personalities. His 23 different personalities as a matter of fact.

Shyamalan's technical skills as a filmmaker are back in shape and he makes "Split" into a very good horror film. The movie begins in a high school classmate's birthday party where we meet high school loner, Casey Cooke (Anya Taylor-Joy) as she gets a ride home with two of her classmates, Claire (Haley Lu Richardson, from "The Edge of Seventeen") and Marcia (Jessica Sula). Suddenly, all three girls are kidnapped by the mentally troubled Kevin (McAvoy) who inhabits one of his 23 personalities, "Dennis".

Some of Kevin's 23 personalities end up being very strange or creepy, his personalities include a 9-year-old kid named "Hedwig", a flamboyant British woman named "Patricia" and even a New York fashion guru named "Barry". When he's out of his cellar, Kevin makes frequent visits to his psychologist, Dr. Karen Fletcher (Betty Buckley) who tries to help him with his severe dissociative identity disorder or DID for short. Dr. Fletcher believes that Kevin's disorder in extreme cases can cause permanent physiological changes in his body. When Kevin inhabits the body of Hedwig whom Casey tries to befriend, he informs the three captive girls that they will be sacrificed to "the Beast" which is Kevin's super-strong 24th personality. Claire and Marcia try escaping from the cellar but they get caught by Kevin and he locks them in two separate rooms.

What is "the Beast" exactly? Well, it's a personality who embodies super-strength and speed and he cannot be killed. As Claire and Marcia fear for their lives, Casey attempts to be smart and willful with Kevin as she tries to figure out her own way out of this underground lair. Anya Taylor-Joy who was a creepy and forceful presence in her two previous movies "The Witch" and "Morgan" (which I didn't care for) gives a quiet and unsettling performance as Casey and James McAvoy is amazing as Kevin who has to juggle with 23 different personalities.

This movie reveals the M. Night Shyamalan we want to see. His homages to Hitchcock are still present in his filmmaking, he turns James McAvoy into a pathologically interesting character and he delivers his best work since "Signs". Shyamalan does hit a hurdle though by showing us some flashback sequences to Casey's troubled childhood. That aspect of the story doesn't work at all but nevertheless I still really liked the movie.

"Split" may spur anger and controversy from mental health advocates over it's depiction of mental illness but M. Night Shyamalan has made a delicious mind-bender that also delivers a surprise WTF twist-ending you won't see coming.