Movies: Split (2017) Review

I’M ALIVE! Hey everyone, I apologize for not having posted in a while. Luckily school will be over in about another month, so I should begin posting regularly soon. Personal matters have kept me away from entertainment for a couple of weeks, but everything is fine now and with any luck I’ll be checking out some new releases soon. In the meantime, though, I recently had an afternoon of free time and I decided to spend it watching Split, which is what this post is about. OK, update concluded. On with the review!

M. Night Shyamalan is probably one of the most infamous directors in all of Hollywood. Starting out in 1999 with The Sixth Sense, which essentially served as his directorial debut, he was almost instantly branded as the next great filmmaker. Sadly, however, it since the release of his breakout hit, his quality has steadily declined. In 2015, Shyamalan released The Visit, which even though not loved by critics, turned out to be one of the best film’s he had produced in a long while. Two years later, in 2017, Split hit theaters, and everyone loved it.

Split was my first experience watching a Shyamalan film. Being a kid of the 2000s, by the time I was old enough to really remember, Shyamalan had already reached his lowest point. Before this movie all I had seen from him was fragments of Avatar: The Last Airbender and a bit from After Earth, so you can understand why I was skeptical and put off watching any of his other films.  Some of the critics I follow who reviewed Split talked about it glowingly, they said he was back. So, after seeing this as well as the cast I knew I just had to check it out.

Split is marketed as a thriller and psychological horror. It stars James McAvoy in the lead role, as a man suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder with 23 radically different identities. One of the man’s identities kidnaps a group of young girls and proceeds to hold them hostage in a mysterious location. As the young girls attempt to devise a means of escape and are learning the secrets of their captor(s), one of the man’s other identities has sought counseling again. His doctor attempts to uncover this mysterious “24th identity” a few of them keep speaking about.

This was a great movie. In addition to Shyamalan’s clever direction and solid writing, the main performances were excellent. James McAvoy takes his role seriously, but he also lets himself run absolutely wild with the characters. I don’t think the film would’ve worked with any other actor. Out of the three that have been kidnapped, the film chooses to focus most on the young girl played by actress Anya Taylor Joy. She gave a fantastic performance. She still seems to be somewhat new to the world of acting, but I’m definitely interested in seeing how her career develops.

There really wasn’t much about Split that I disliked. I thought the story progressed at a decent pace, and although the movie wasn’t a particularly serious or accurate look at mental illness, it was still an interesting watch. The film also managed a bit of humor despite its dark subject matter. The only thing about the movie that I might’ve changed is the mysterious last identity. To avoid spoiling the movie, the only thing I’ll say is that the identity has a science fiction twist to it. I know it’s definitely a Shyamalan thing to do, but the movie probably could’ve done without it. I think it would’ve been just as effective if Shyamalan radicalized one of the other preexisting identities instead of constructing another one. But that’s just my opinion.

I really enjoyed this film. Watching it, it was clear that Shyamalan dedicated a lot of time and energy to this project. It is something he truly cared about. Between his interesting use of the camera and choice of perspective and the performances, Split managed to be not only the most surprising release of January, but of all of 2017. It is definitely worth a watch. Shyamalan’s next film, titled Glass is set for release in 2019. If IMDb is to be believed, the film seems as if it will be a continuation of the Split storyline merged with the world of Unbreakable. It’s impossible to say definitively that M. Night is “back”, but Split left me feeling hopeful. I suppose we will just have to see what happens.

FINAL REVIEW SCORE: 4/5