Review #1,191: 'Split' (2016)

To say that the output of writer/director M. Night Shyamalan has been on a steady decline since his hit debut The Sixth Sense in 1999 would be a little bit of an understatement. While The Sixth Sense and his next feature Unbreakable (2000) had people announcing him as the next Steven Spielberg, the likes of Lady in the Water (2006) and, especially, The Happening (2008) left audiences scratching their heads at how this once-wunderkind could become such an absolute laughing stock. Each of his subsequent movies were inevitably built-up as the one in which Shyamalan would re-discover his form, only for them to receive a panning commercially and critically. However, it would seem that Shyamalan has finally located a smidgen of the talent teased in his early works with Split, a routine kidnapped-girls-in-peril horror elevated by an outstanding central performance.

Friends Claire (Haley Lu Richardson) and Marcia (Jessica Sula), along with 'weird' outsider Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy), are kidnapped in brought daylight by a stern-looking bespectacled man. They are locked in a windowless room by their captor, seemingly without any hope of escape. The girls soon to become puzzled by their abductor, who is a buttoned-up OCD-sufferer one minute, and speaking warmly while dressed in women's clothes the next. He also appears to them as a lisping, goofy 9 year old boy, and through the man's psychiatrist Dr. Karen Fletcher (Betty Buckley), we learn that the man, whose real name is Kevin, suffers from dissociative identity disorder (DID), and is harbouring 23 different personalities. He appears to Fletcher as Barry, but the doctor suspects that new personalities have emerged as dominant and that they putting the pieces in place for the arrival of a mysterious 24th personality, known as The Beast.

There is a fundamental issue with the characters of Split, and it's that the only one who truly matters is James McAvoy's Kevin, and the many personalities associated with him. Everyone else is reduced to either skimpily-clad horror-bait or exposition tool. The one exception is Casey, whose troubled background could mean that she shares more in common with her captor than we initially realise, but the film relies too heavily on lingering close-ups and clunky flashbacks to make any real impact. The other girls are only there to frustrate the audience with their terrible escape plans and inexplicably lose their clothing. Split is far more interesting when away from the kidnap plot and delving into the film's speculation on the potential of DID sufferers. Fletcher believes that different personalities can have different physical ailments, for example one could be paraplegic and the other able to run great distances, and theorises that they could even possess untapped powers. It's just a shame that her character is designed to do little more than explain this to us.

Yet while all the Shyamalan tics we've come to know and hate are present and annoying - such as his obligatory cameo and nails-down-a-blackboard dialogue spoken in the real world by nobody ever - Split really comes alive when McAvoy is on screen. He is scary, charming and funny, often all at once. In one scene, he dances around a character to pumping techno music, and this could be viewed as a suitable metaphor for how McAvoy puts his supporting cast to shame. This being Shyamalan, there is the inevitable twist ending, although it is not one that you could possibly guess. Just when I was at the point of thinking that he had gone and taken a story of potential and ran way too far with it, the final scene made me completely re-evaluate the entire movie. Don't get me wrong, it's nothing particularly clever, but it is a nice little bit of fan-service that helps put the movie into perspective and, I admit, left me giddy. Shyamalan is not "back to his best", and I think it's quite clear he never will be, but Split has at least got me somewhat excited for his next film. He'll never be forgiven for The Happening though.


Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan
Starring: James McAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy, Betty Buckley, Haley Lu Richardson, Jessica Sula
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie