SPLIT Movie Review

"The broken are the more evolved." Maybe more than any other prominent director, M. Night Shyamalan has had a roller-coaster ride of a career. Bursting onto the scene in 1999 with the smash hit that was The Sixth Sense, a supernatural thriller with an infamous twist, Shyamalan became an overnight prodigy, with some people going so far as proclaiming him to be “the next Spielberg.” Although he never made a film that amassed as much critical and commercial success after The Sixth Sense, he followed it up with a string of really good films in the early 2000’s with Unbreakable, Signs, and the highly underappreciated The Village.

What happened after that is perplexing to say the least. Starting with 2006’s Lady in the Water (a film that is, without exaggeration, one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen), Shyamalan’s films became really bad really fast, so much so that they didn’t even feel like they were made by the same director whose earlier films had shown so much promise. By the time his abysmal Jaden and Will Smith vehicle After Earth flopped, many had written off Shyamalan as a hack, and his career appeared to be running on life support.

Then in 2015, Shyamalan made The Visit, his first halfway decent film in 11 years. It wasn’t anything special, but it was at least watchable and competently made, as Shyamalan returned to his roots with a low-budget, character-driven genre picture, much like the ones he began his career making. Now, with Split, Shyamalan has carried over many of those same traits he rediscovered with The Visit, once again making a small, intimate, and suspenseful chamber piece. But if The Visit was a minor glimmer of hope for Shyamalan, Split is his fully fledged return to form: an immensely well-realized, nasty psychological chiller that represents the best film he has made in well over a decade.

By now, you’ve probably seen the trailer or at least heard about the basic premise of Split- a man named Kevin with dissociative identity disorder (aka split personality disorder), whose body houses 23 distinct personalities, kidnaps three teenage girls and locks them in a small basement room in an unknown location. To say anything more about the plot would be a crime; this is one of those films that you should know as little as possible going into it. Rest assured though, the film is entertaining and engaging throughout, messing with the audience's expectations in a way that keeps the story from feeling predictable or stagnant. In typical Shyamalan fashion, the plot moves at a leisurely pace, but I was never bored watching this movie. There’s always something interesting going on, as the layers of the story and these characters are peeled back in a deliberate way that will reward patient, attentive viewers. This is not your run-of-the-mill horror/thriller that moves from point A to point B with cheap jump scares or shock value; instead, Shyamalan's methods are more methodical- he builds and builds on every scene that came before the current one, allowing him to achieve this unique effect where the movie kept getting stronger as it went on, culminating in an excellent, edge-of-your-seat third act and a more than satisfying ending.

On the acting front, Kevin is played by James McAvoy, in a show-stopping role that sees him fully embodying this character to a frighteningly disturbing level. McAvoy has already proven that he is a very good actor, and he is clearly having a great time playing all of these personalities that the script allows him to show off. Opposite him, Anya Taylor-Joy (who you may remember from last year’s The Witch) gives another sterling performance as Casey, the teenage girl who is given the most focus by the narrative. She matches McAvoy on a scene-by-scene basis, digging into her character and creating believable emotions with her remarkably expressive face and eyes.

But even though the lead performances are an obvious highlight, it’s Shyamalan’s formalism on display that manages to leave the biggest impression. This is the best directed movie I’ve ever seen from Shyamalan, as he exhibits carefully-placed shot compositions and experiments with tons of interesting formal techniques (particularly shifting of depth of field and using wide-angle close ups in conjunction with odd angles). Shyamalan is helped in large part by the hugely talented cinematographer Mike Gioulakis (of the exceptional horror film It Follows), who brings his trademark style to craft the perfect look for this film, one which serves the story's purpose and compliments the strained, yet intimate tone Shyamalan is going for extremely well.

Shyamalan goes to some incredibly dark and uncomfortable places here that most other Hollywood directors wouldn't dare touch. I've really got to give it to the man, he commits to his vision 100% without a shred of compromise. Certain elements could be problematic for some, but to me, Shyamalan seems to be fully aware of this. He is not interested in making a surface-level piece of exploitative thrills, he genuinely cares about all of these people in this story, and similarly to his best work (i.e. Unbreakable and The Village), he sensitively mines the material for the extraordinary qualities he believes it possesses (and those same qualities that his main characters in these films, to one degree or another, both knowingly & unknowingly possess), finding not only depth, but emotional poignancy in his complex exploration of the cycle of abuse and the tragic loneliness induced by the stigmatization we place on those who are struggling with mental health and trauma.

As for problems that I had with this movie, there aren’t many. It’s plagued by a few of the recurring issues that are present in all of Shyamalan’s films, specifically that, in my opinion, he’s a much better director than he is a writer. This is one of Shyamalan’s better written scripts, but there are still times when some of the dialogue comes off as clunky or too exposition-heavy, and the occasional attempts to inject humor don’t really work. Also, Haley Lu Richardson, who plays one of the other girls who is kidnapped, was a bit shaky at the beginning. However, her acting did become better as the film went on and it’s not as if she ruined the film for me. One other minor flaw is that I thought some of the flashbacks the film utilized could have been handled a little better than they were, though that’s more of a personal nitpick than anything.

In totality, the tremendous strengths of Split far outweigh its few negatives. The first great movie of 2017 has arrived and I can’t wait to see it for a second time. There’s still a lot more to dissect, but for the moment, this might just be my new favorite Shyamalan. It’s been a long and hard road back to relevance for the Indian-born American auteur, but if he can capitalize on the success of Split and stay on the current trajectory he is on, we could be looking at one of cinema’s greatest comeback stories. I, for one, will be there rooting for the guy every step of the way. Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2 (4.5 stars out of 5)

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