Split

There was a time when a bad movie could kill your entire career. Make one notorious bomb and you're blacklisted for life. Nowadays, studios and the public are a little more forgiving. One bad movie isn't enough to sully a good actor's reputation, or kill a popular character, and struggling writer/directors can find their saving grace by going back to their roots. People will still go to Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson movies after Baywatch, Spider-Man can be rebooted almost immediately after his last reboot, and M. Night Shyamalan can make small scale thrillers suited to his skill set that earn money and critical acclaim. So today, we look at Shyamalan's apparent comeback: Split.

The movie begins with the kidnapping of three young girls by James McAvoy's Dennis. However, once the girls begin to take in their surroundings, it becomes clear that their captor has multiple personalities, 23 to be exact, and that a small faction of these personalities are preparing for the arrival of a monstrous 24th personality known as "The Beast." Fighting against time and an unpredictable captor, the girls attempt to escape and find help before the "The Beast" is unleashed.

So a quick disclaimer regarding the film's portrayal of Disassociative Identity Disorder or DID. I have no idea how accurate this is. My impression is that multiple elements of this still highly controversial disorder are altered for the sake of the plot, but I can't say that with certainty. I will note that presenting someone with DID as violently dangerous is a bit irresponsible, considering how most people sufferng from mental ailments are victims of violence rather than perpetraters, and the film could've spent more time digging into the trauma that created this condition rather than the "bad personalities" taking over. I was able to watch to watch this as fiction, but I understand that many view this film as irresponsible or misrepresentative.

That said, Split is an excellently crafted thriller. One of the reasons so many of Shyamalan's more recent movies have failed is that they are drenched in mythology, needlessly complicated, or are built around a twist, instead of having a twist that suits the story. Here the premise has inherent tension. The girls are danger with an unstable captor and there's an undefined but limited amount of time to escape. Thus the main parts of the story are about the girls attempting to escape with their captor's back story and motivations getting filled in as it goes along.

The premise does wonders because it not only makes the situation feel more unpredictable and dangerous, but also keeps leaving bread crumbs about what might be ahead in the film's finale. Saying much more will give up the game, but the movie does a great job at piquing the audience's curiousity and giving you just enough information to keep you interested. The premise also means that logical missteps by the competent villain feel less like writing errors and more like natural happenstance.

Granted the premise doesn't work unless you have an actor that's up to the task and James McAvoy hits a home run. McAvoy has always had the talent to drift between dramatic and comedic roles but rarely has he had a chance to let it all hang out in a single film. At one moment he's full of quiet intensity, another he's being amusingly and irritatingly childlike, and then turns on the intimidaton when needed. It's great stuff.

There are a couple of missteps. Despite advertising 24 different personalities, the film focuses on four or five main personalities for the bulk of the film, and I'm unsure if I even saw glimpses of ten. It's a litle disappointing because some of the personalities get a bit irritating after a bit, which isn't helped by the film's two hour run time. If you go close quarters thriller ninety minutes is the magic mark in my book.

Likewsie, the back story for our main female protagonist is....ugly. I won't say what it is, but there are far better ways to show the audience that her life has prepared her for situations like this than what Shyamalan came up with. This feels trashy. I also wanted a litle bit more about our villain's backstory, perhaps make humanize him a bit more, but that's a slippery slope that can turn a scary villain boring.

Pulpy, simple, and thrilling, Split shows that Shyamalan still has film-making talent to spare and gives James McAvoy a chance to shine. Check this one out.