Meet James McAvoy, he’s your run of the mill everyday kind of guy with twenty-three personalities bouncing around that shaved noggin of his and he decides to invite three young girls to his secluded hideaway and needless to say, shenanigans ensue. Actually, it wasn’t really an invite but more of an abduction and it’s not really a secluded hideaway but more of a reinforced underground bunker, and it’s not really shenanigans but some really creepy and disturbing scenarios that will make your skin crawl.
Yes, Split is the new M. Night Shyamalan movie - wait, don’t stop listening to the review just yet, hear me out - that stars James McAvoy as a man with dissociative identity disorder who kidnaps three young girls and locks them away to prepare them for what he calls, “the coming of the beast.” The girls must work together to out-smart the many creepy personalities of McAvoy and find a way out of the secure underground bunker of doom before the beast comes.
Now this film really does live and die on the performance of James McAvoy as he gets to toy around with a range of accents, facial ticks, gestures, postures, costumes and mannerisms throughout the hour and fifty-seven minute run-time. Each character is quite distinct and he does a pretty solid job of slipping between each character while the camera is trained on him. The film claims that he has twenty-three different personalities however we are lucky if we see five at best, but don’t let that detract you from the film. There’s some solid performances from the other cast including Anya Taylor-Joy, who’s coming off of a few stellar projects including The Witch, Netflix’s Barry and Morgan. The film has also pulled some of the best additional supporting cast Netflix has to offer including Orange Is The New Black’s Brad William Henke and House Of Cards’ Sebastian Arcelus. Of course M. Night Shyamalan has his obligatory role in the film - once again, do not let that put you off.
OK, so let’s get down to it: there is always a lot of baggage that comes with an M. Night Shyamalan movie. Once considered the Hollywood golden-boy and the next Spielberg, his name is more associated with a string of Razzies than anything else, and depending who you ask, he’s maybe had three good movies in his career, maybe two, maybe one. So it’s really easy to criticise his films more profusely than you would another director’s work - and in this case, when he makes something that’s actually half-good, it’s hard not to pick out the flaws: there aren’t many, mostly the occasional leap in logic and questioning why a professional with intimate knowledge of James McCoy’s condition would be so nonchalant about so many of his actions. There are some really good technical choices in the film, which Shyamalan is known for, such as the way the camera may pan or drop-focus once and a while to draw out attention to something, however there is the occasional choice which is questionable such as why he would frame certain shots in certain ways and why such a harsh and unnecessary editing cut? - but once again, would you be picking out these flaws if the film had been directed by someone else? Honestly, it’s too hard to tell.
Ultimately though, this is definitely a case of where the good outweighs the bad with this film. Don’t just stay for the creepy skin-crawling moments and effective jump-scares, but stay for McAvoy’s blistering performance. Although you might want to leave before the epilogue where Shyamalan is either using it to announce his next film or eluding to a shared Shyamalan-Universe which is sure to having many a person slapping their head with frustration.
Split gets Three and a Half out of Five Stars (or Three and a Half out of Five personalities competing for screen-time.)
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