By Mac Spain
Split is all about a group of young girls who are abducted by a man with split personality disorder, yes that’s right, Kevin has 23 different personalities living inside of him. Throughout the film, it cuts between his therapy sessions and these three girls, although it’s not quite clear what he wants with them, to begin with. His therapist is fascinated by the possibility of someone suffering from such a condition being able to change their body chemistry so, for example, one of the personalities might be diabetic, while the rest could be perfectly fine.
The more this concept was played around with, I could feel myself becoming rather skeptical, but thankfully they were still a lot of other aspects I liked about the film, enough to be patient and I can say without an ounce of uncertainty that it was worth the wait.
One of the film’s strongest qualities would have to be James McAvoy’s performance, which could well be a career best for him. I mean when you think about the amount of preparation he must have had to put in, the workload probably felt like the equivalent of several different films all rolled into one. He obviously comes off as menacing for a large portion of the film, but surprisingly there’s also a sprinkling of humour.
One of Kevin’s 23 personalities is a 12-year-old boy who refers to himself as Hedwig, and McAvoy really plays off the craziness of that particular personality. Don’t be fooled though, a lot of the scenes with Hedwig can have you laughing one minute and in a state of terror the next.
Split is directed by M. Night Shyamalan who was once tipped for greatness when he had films such as The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable under his belt, but somewhere along the line he lost his way. As someone who’s crazy about their films it was really quite upsetting to me, he clearly had the gift of a good eye behind the camera, but his once great reputation had now degraded into something of a running joke.
When he released The Visit back in 2015 it received fairly average reviews among the critics, but a few people seemed to be singing its praises. The Visit was a return to his beginnings and with Split I can confirm that he’s well and truly back on the wagon! It’s hard to know exactly what happened, but after Unbreakable when everyone was pulling for him to be the next Spielberg, I think the pressure led him astray. The harsh reality is that he’s just not cut out for making high budget blockbuster entertainment. He seems to have finally accepted that, and now he can flourish doing what he does best, contained psychological thrillers!
Aside from one of the biggest career flops in the history of directors, Shyamalan is also famous for his twist endings. Split has one of the most finely tuned twists we’ve seen from him yet and I’m amazed that he’s managed to keep it a secret for so long, in a time where scripts and spoilers are constantly being leaked. I can see a lot of viewers being confused with the way things are wrapped up in Split though, I mean if you’re not that familiar with Shyamalan’s work then the ending will be lost on you and for that reason I can see it dividing audiences. But for me on the other hand, I couldn’t have been happier and that’s why Split gets a solid 8/10.
Next week I’ll be reviewing Danny Boyle’s long awaited sequel to the 90’s cult classic Trainspotting! So watch this space….
