This past week, my horror-loving friend and I ventured out to see M. Night Shyamalan’s “Split”, a movie that some critics hailed to be a comeback for the director after many recent cinematic failures (I’m looking at you, “The Last Airbender”). In Shyamalan's new film, James McAvoy stars as a man named Kevin with dissociative identity disorder (DID), who kidnaps Anya Taylor-Joy’s character, Casey, in an effort to satisfy superstitious beliefs held by two of his personalities. The movie focuses on Casey’s struggles to survive while Kevin struggles with a clash between his multiple personalities and the demons within himself.
Even though the movie was generally well received, I still don’t believe it to be a strong film–although I do agree that it was a strong work for Shyamalan personally. James McAvoy undoubtedly carried the entire film with his scene-stealing performance as the solo antagonist. His ability to switch between different personalities within a scene was phenomenal and I was led to believe that I was witnessing a different person each time McAcvoy came onscreen, even though it was just the acting chops of one man. Anya Taylor-Joy’s performance was enjoyable as well, as she is able to capture her wide range of emotions and fearfulness through only her eyes, which was very engaging. Her vulnerability contrasted with the menacing presence of McAvoy’s character offered a unique dynamic to the movie. Additionally, the cinematography was breathtakingly gorgeous as small spaces were cleverly framed to give the audience a sense of entrapment faced by the main heroine.
With that being said, the writing has to be the biggest downfall of the movie. The dialogue spoken between the teenage girls made it seem like they had special one-on-one survival training from Bear Grylls himself and didn't seem believable one bit, and that's just one amongst many other quirky dialogic mishaps. Furthermore, Shyamalan lacks trust in the intelligence of his audience and finds the need to lay out every single detail of his story, as opposed to having the viewer figure it out the mystery for his or herself. History has taught me this important lesson as a filmmaker: always assume that your viewers are of the utmost intelligence. There is no need to beat the audience over the head with a point you are trying to make and Shyamalan failed immensely in this department.
With all of my critiques aside, I have talked to some people who had very much enjoyed this film. It seems that there are very polar responses to "Split," but if you were to ask me, I would say to skip this movie at theaters and to wait for it to come out on Redbox. After all, there are much more thought-provoking horror movies coming out in February like “A Cure For Wellness” and “Get Out,” so I would just wait for those. Besides McAvoy's superb performance, "Split" is nothing remarkable.
