*SPOILER FREE REVIEW*
*Starring James McAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy, Hailey Lu Richardson, Betty Buckley, and Jessica Sula
THE PLOT: A few teenage girls are abducted and held hostage in a basement by a psychopath (James McAvoy), who thinks he’s 23 different people. This man has multiple personality disorder and so throughout this film, we delve deeper into his psychology, but at the same time, these girls must find an escape from the clutches of such a mysterious and dangerous figure.
Now if I’m being honest here I’ve grown a strong appreciation and love for M. Night Shyamalan because of the amazing films he’s accomplished in the past with films like The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and my personal favorite, Signs. I’m also the guy who loved The Visit, really enjoyed The Village and liked, I repeat, LIKED Lady in the Water. Of course, Split looked promising because of our first look at the trailer. It had that creepy and intense vibe going and the mystery surrounding that story just fascinated me. The trailers looked promising and revisiting those great Shyamalan films excited me more. Now after seeing it coming off of 2015’s The Visit, I can say Shyamalan has done it again and made a film that I cannot wait to watch again.
Right off the bat James McAvoy delivers an absolutely magnificent performance as this psycho character. Not only was it so amazing to see him act out this character, but to complement an already quality screenplay, there’s so much seen with this character that he becomes such an enticing character to watch on screen. Ever since he starts interacting with the girls and seeing his quirks play out, you just want to learn more about this guy and why he turned out this way. Anya Taylor Joy also gives a very good performance because we see her play a character that isn’t just a throwaway lead female character in a horror/thriller. We see that she’s a character that we can sympathize with and that there’s also more to her than meets the eye. Betty Buckley is also great in the film playing McAvoy’s psychiatrist.
Performances all around were satisfactory, but like I said earlier the reason why these performances were so great and spoke volumes was because of such a rich, layered and cleverly written screenplay. The sheer ideas that Shyamalan came up with and just seeing how they play out in the film, just really amazed me because it shows the endless possibilities of what can be done in a story with these really well-done characters and how a movie surrounding what’s cleverly written on pages can accomplish such amazing things visually. I also really liked the eerie sounding score, which gave the movie that creepy and intense vibe. On a filmmaking perspective, the visual presentation looks great as always! Shyamalan knows what it takes to make another great looking film. Of course, there is the big Shyamalan twist/reveal that happens in almost every movie and while I won’t go into detail about what it is, I can say that it completely changed how I saw the movie and made me want to see it again, but also is something that in my book is worth the price of admission.
It was actually pretty tough to find flaws with this film in all honesty, but I guess the only small issue I have for me is the actress who plays Claire, Haley Lu Richardson. She did kinda overact a little bit towards the beginning of the film. That’s really the only flaw I have and I think it’s merely passable than just terrible. It just could’ve been done better.
Also, this might be more of a nitpick, but there were times when I just wasn’t sure where this movie was going and I wasn’t sure what to think, but as it progressed the film just left me being totally satisfied with everything in regards to revealing plot detail at a fine pace, which Shyamalan is great at accomplishing. All and all Split was another excellent film written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan that had an insanely clever screenplay, a phenomenal performance in McAvoy yet satisfactory performances all around and an intense visual presentation that for sure fit the overall tone.
Verdict: A
Well guys, thanks a lot for reading this review and if you couldn’t tell from my high praise, please go support this film. It’s, of course, worth your time. Also, because I wasn’t able to scratch the service with some of the detail revealed in the story, for next week I’ll be releasing my Spoiler-Filled thoughts about the movie, so be on the lookout for that very soon. Thank you all so much for reading. Be sure to see some movies and all that good stuff!
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