'Split' Reviews: Is M. Night Shyamalan's New Movie Good?
M. Night Shyamalan's career can be fairly characterized as "rocky" — from early hits like The Sixth Sense to total flops like The Last Airbender, he's taken critics and audiences on quite a ride. In his follow up to 2015's well-liked The Visit, can Shyamalan cement his comeback with the help of James McAvoy and his two dozen split personalities?
Split stars McAvoy as Kevin (or Dennis, or Barry…), a man with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). The film spins DID into a pulpy premise: there's a secret personality, "The Beast," that Kevin's evil identities hope to summon. As part of the plan, Kevin has kidnapped three young women: Claire (Haley Lu Richardson), Marcia (Jessica Sula), and Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy). Do Shyamalan's penchant for the supernatural and love of twists help this set-up pay off? Here's what the reviews say:
'Split' Puts Smart People In Horror Movie Peril
Anya Taylor-Joy is as good as she's able to be as Casey, our audience surrogate captive. She is a troubled and traumatized young woman who, as the film argues a few times in distinct yellow highlighter, is stronger via her pain.
[Forbes]
The girls are smart from the word "go". They make choices any of us might make in their situation, proactively seeking escape with a fighter's spirit, and occasionally, an intuitive wit. It's easy to sit back and judge fictional characters, but at no point do any of them make an obviously stupid decision, and much of the film plays out as a thriller as we root for the strong-willed young women to find a way out of captivity.
[Collider]
It's Trope-y, But McAvoy Can Juggle The Different Identities Pretty Damn Well
Although there are some supernatural elements to the film—mostly revolving around a heretofore un-manifested 24th personality, "The Beast"—Split functions more like a mystery-thriller with horror elements than as a horror movie, unlocking information about Kevin through his therapy sessions with Dr. Fletcher (Betty Buckley), a psychiatrist who believes that people with DID have unlocked new areas of the brain inaccessible to normal human beings.
[AV Club]
Split goes all-in on McAvoy slipping from persona to persona, and luckily he's got the acting chops to sell it. With only minor costuming changes he morphs from an angry clean freak to a flamboyant fashion designer to a precocious kid. The character suffers from such an acute form of dissociation that, so Fletcher argues to a conference of colleagues who just don't get it, his mind changes his actual anatomy.
At Its Best, 'Split' Is A Confident And Competent Genre Film…
As with The Visit, Shyamalan makes excellent use of limited locations to create claustrophobia and tension as the girls try to escape their predicament, with occasional flashbacks to Casey's childhood and cutaways to McAvoy's character seeing his doctor (Betty Buckley) as she tries to figure him out.
[Nerdist]
Escalating suspense as Fletcher comes close to uncovering Barry's crime hits all the right genre notes, veering into outright horror near the end. The director ties themes together at the end with more finesse than usual, letting a couple of meaningful visuals speak for themselves where he might have thrown in a line or two of explanatory dialogue.
But It Really Doesn't Do Much To Elevate Its Hokey Premise
Even with sexual peril quickly taken off the table, Split is mostly about a scary guy who dominates captive teenage girls in conventional and unconventional ways while punishing them when they refuse to be submissive. It's just in the DNA.
[Forbes]
In addition, the pacing slows to a crawl in scenes where Dr. Fletcher is relegated to an explanatory role, reciting big chunks of DID theories upon the audience, much like Morgan Freeman's lectures in "Lucy."
Yes, There Are Some Twists — Including One That You Might Not Get
It isn't a whopping reveal like the one in The Sixth Sense; it's more like the snap of a puzzle piece on a wider game board you didn't know you were playing. For many film fans, it will be extremely gratifying. For others, it'll fly right over their heads, and they'll wonder why others in the audience are shouting, "Oh my God!"
TL;DR
M. Night Shyamalan has avoided flop territory with Split while making a film that his fans may only consider "an okay one of his movies." McAvoy chews scenery like a champ, supernatural elements creep into the story, and you'll have a twist to debate with other moviegoers. You won't get more than that from Split, but you could've gotten a whole lot less.
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