Movie Review: SPLIT

Split

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Grade: 2.5 out of 5

Cast: James McAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy

He’s back! The film director that I’ve despised for years is trying to return to formal glory of filmmaking . He tries….so I give him credit for that.

“Split” is about a guy with multiple personalities (23 to be exact) who kidnaps three girls and holds them hostage. One personality in particular named “Dennis” is orchestrating this plan with the help of a female personality named “Patricia” and appearances by a 9 year old named “Hedwig”.

I will say the visual style is cool, Shyamalan still knows how to operate a camera. Some of the choices he makes reminded me of his older films, stylewise. All the performances are pretty decent (watch out for the obligatory Shyamalan cameo…yawn) especially Anya Taylor-Joy as “Casey” the main girl , and Betty Buckley as Dr . Fletcher, the psychiatrist try to help all the different personalities. Now, this is a complete powerhouse performance by James McAvoy as the different characters. He totally sells it and was able to bring the right amount of tension and comedic timing when the scenes required it. He’s absolutely amazing in this film.

The story is what I was having trouble connecting with. There’s multiple times throughout the movie where a character is delivering exposition, and someone will say “I don’t understand….” or “what’s going on? ” and I was right there with them. The story peels back and unravels and brings up some interesting ideas about where it’s going. Where it lands, although I enjoyed the concept, I really couldn’t buy the execution of all of it. The story seemed to missing a bit of something.

Now it is a suspenseful thriller about abductees trying to escape from their captors, but in a 12 month span containing “Room” and “10 Cloverfield Lane”, I think the concept may have been done a little better in those films. At least Shyamalan is heading in the right direction.

-“Marquee Mark ” Markellus