To say I am not an M. Night Shyamalan fan is putting it mildly. I have given him so much shit over the years, and yet I always find myself watching his movies waiting to be disappointed (it's those damn trailers, always convince me that maybe this one is different). He's made a couple good movies like Unbreakable and Sixth Sense, but most of his movies are duds. So, I walked into the theater on Friday ready to be disappointed and man was I surely and utterly surprised.
Well, Mr. Shyamalan, you deserve a round of applause, because Split is a fantastic movie that completely caught me off guard. This movie is fantastic from the beginning to end, with a twist, that not only makes sense but actually supports the story and makes it all that wonderful. The film is about three girls who get kidnapped by someone with multiple personalities. The girls have to figure out how to escape their prison before the kidnapper can execute their plans. James Mcavoy as Kevin and the 24 other personalities gives a masterclass of a performance. Every character he plays feels like a complete character that could star in a separate movie. Each personality, especially the ones that take up the most screen time, have this uneasy edge to them that makes each scene that Mcavoy is in feel like shit is about to go down.
Anya Taylor-Joy as Casey is also a joy to watch as she plays an uncharacteristically calm person who seems to also have a past. Every moment she is on screen from the very beginning Casey looks like a combination of calm and scared like she has already given up. The entire movie feels like it is on a knife edge with every character on screen about to snap. There is not a single scene that allows you to rest. So all in all, Split is a perfect film to start 2017 and I highly recommend this film to anyone looking for an intense thriller. M. Night Shyamalan has hit a home run with this movie. From this point on, I'm going to talk about SPOILERS, so if you haven't seen the movie yet, just stop right here and go watch the film.
SPOILERS
If you're reading this, hopefully, it is because you've watched the ending and you were as blown away as I was. M. Night Shyamalan movies are known to have a twist and this twist was way out of left field and it changes the story in such a different way. Usually, when I go into a movie that I know has a twist I always try to figure it out before it was revealed, but I was way off on this one. So let's just get it out of the way, the story of Split takes place in the same universe as the movie Unbreakable. That's right, in the last moments of the movie we hear people talking about the last time a madman was on the loose and someone answers when they inquire who that guy was, and that person says that madman was Mr. Glass (Samuel L. Jackson) and the person who answers is David Dunn (Bruce Willis). I was truly left in shock and awe.
What makes this revelation so interesting is that while Unbreakable was a grounded superhero origin story, Split is essentially the origin story for a supervillain. Mcavoy's character even gets a supervillain name, The Horde. So will we ever see David Dunn take on The Horde? What M. Night Shyamalan has done here is prove to all of Hollywood that you can make a villain-centric movie without turning it into a story about redemption. Where movies like Maleficent or TV shows like Lucifer have failed, this movie with barely any flash (just a damn good story and performances) has surpassed them all. So here is hoping that it won't take another 17 years to see another entry into this weird and intriguing universe.
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