Split (2017)

Split (2017)

IMDB Rating : 7.4/10 (as on 22.04.2017)

PG-13 | 1h 57min | Horror, Thriller

Three girls are kidnapped by a man with a diagnosed 23 distinct personalities, they must try to escape before the apparent emergence of a frightful new 24th.

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Writer: M. Night Shyamalan

Stars: James McAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy, Haley Lu Richardson

IMDB link here

At once solemn and preposterous, sinister and sentimental, efficient and overwrought, “Split” represents something of a return to form for its writer and director, M. Night Shyamalan. Or maybe I should say a return to formula. The movie, shot in and around Philadelphia, Mr. Shyamalan’s hometown, proceeds nimbly and with suave misdirection toward a pair of rug-pulling final twists that an attentive viewer will probably be able to anticipate. It’s not exactly a Choose Your Own Adventure, but you can opt either for the pleasure of surprise at the end or for the satisfaction of working out the puzzle as you go along.

What I can safely divulge is that three teenage girls are kidnapped after a birthday party by a close-cropped guy named Dennis in a buttoned-up shirt. He is obsessed with cleanliness, and he sounds weirdly like John Turturro for a guy supposedly from Philly. In fact, Dennis is played by the soft-eyed, shape-shifting British actor James McAvoy, as are the other 23 personalities residing in the body of a guy who shares the surname of a famous (and famously odd) Philadelphia-born artist.

These “alters” — a word familiar to fans of the Showtime series “United States of Tara” and other pop-cultural treatments of a controversial and often poorly understood psychological disorder — are a diverse bunch. Some are male, some female, at least one is a child (named Hedwig) and another (named Barry) is a gay stereotype. What they want with their captives is not immediately clear. What Mr. Shyamalan wants is to strip them down to their underwear and to explore, exploit and occasionally subvert the basic tropes of the female-victim psycho-slasher movie.

Mr. McAvoy, for his part, revels in the chance to use his sensitivity for evil, and to showboat his way through a series of appropriately overwrought characterizations. This breathlessly melodramatic thriller shouldn’t be taken as a psychological case study, any more than Mr. Shyamalan’s laughable “Lady in the Water” should be mined for clues about the habits of film critics.

 “Split” is lurid and ludicrous, and sometimes more than a little icky in its prurient, maudlin interest in the abuse of children. It’s also absorbing and sometimes slyly funny. Some years back — it’s startling to contemplate just how long ago it was — Mr. Shyamalan was puffed up into a cinematic visionary, hailed on the cover of Newsweek as “The Next Spielberg.” That hype (and his own self-aggrandizing tendencies) placed a disproportionate burden of significance on a filmmaker who has always been, at heart, a superior genre hack.

 “Split” is being released by Universal under the Blumhouse label, a brand associated with unpretentious, clever, neo-traditionalist scare-pictures like “Insidious,” “Paranormal Activity” and “The Purge.” That seems like the right company for Mr. Shyamalan, and the January pre-Oscar doldrums may be the perfect moment to appreciate his skills. He is a master of mood, pace and limited perspective, moving the camera so that the thing you most desperately want to see — and are most afraid of seeing — remains teasingly out of sight.

He uses Ms. Taylor-Joy’s enormous dark eyes as a mirror and a lure for the audience’s attention. He delays the inevitable, inevitably deflationary revelations for as long as possible, minimizing the obligatory third-act flurry of chasing, fighting and bloodletting. And he sneaks in a few self-referential winks, including an allusion to his last really good movie that feels at once like a promise of better mischief to come and an implicit apology for all the disappointment in between.

Read full review at New York Times

Movie Rating 🌟🌟🌟☆☆  

M Night Shyamalan twists again – and again

Steve Rose

The traditional response with a new M Night Shyamalan movie is, “Oh no, what’s the twist ending this time?” But Split is more of a feature-length twist: its chief antagonist has dissociative identity disorder, which means he cycles between two dozen personalities. It’s lurid and warped and more than a little dodgy, but it comes off thanks to the bravura performance – or performances – of James McAvoy, who throws himself into the role – or roles – with an admirable mix of skill and abandon.

We first meet McAvoy as Dennis, a cross-looking neat-freak who abducts three young women from the shopping mall and imprisons them in his labyrinthine underground lair. But next time he visits them, he’s Patricia, a prim English governess. Then he’s Hedwig, a lisping, nine-year-old Kanye West fan, who warns them about “The Beast”, suggesting this psycho wants to chew on more than just scenery.

The traumatised hostages don’t know what to make of him – or them – though the outsider of the group (The Witch’s Anya Taylor-Joy) senses an opportunity. Meanwhile, as Barry, a relatively well-adjusted Brooklyn fashionista, McAvoy is also visiting his therapist, who dishes out pseudo-clinical exposition but shows little concern for what his other personalities might be up to.

Split wants to have its cake and eat it in terms of mental illness, but it’s an unpredictable, suspenseful little tale that comes together surprisingly satisfyingly, thanks to clever plotting and a truly committed performance from McAvoy. Plus a sting in the tail that non-Shyamalanites will find utterly bewildering.

Read full review at The Guardian

James McAvoy plays a kidnapper with two dozen personalities in M. Night Shyamalan's latest thriller.

Three high-school girls become prisoners of a very peculiar captor in Split, a new thriller by M. Night Shyamalan that — wait for it — has a supernatural twist or two in store for viewers. Mental health advocates won't be giving any awards to a film that plays up fears surrounding those with dissociative identity disorder (DID), more commonly known as split-personality disorder (at least no one refers to our troubled villain, energetically played by James McAvoy, as "schizophrenic," which is a different thing entirely). But genre fans should embrace what is arguably the director's most satisfying picture since The Sixth Sense. In some quarters, it will generate talk of a comeback for a filmmaker who has suffered both critical drubbing and box-office humiliation over the past decade.

In parallel to Casey's maneuvering, we watch a series of appointments in which Dr. Fletcher conducts her own delicate interrogation — not yet knowing there's a crime in progress, but sure Barry has a problem he's not ready to share. Whatever its scientific merits, Shyamalan's pop-psychology approach makes dramatic sense here, painting a picture of the community of people inside the patient's mind, each created to help him survive childhood and adult traumas. Some eyes may roll when this talk veers into science fiction, asking if DID sufferers have "unlocked the potential of the brain" and are able to access supernatural abilities. The director's fans probably don't need a "spoiler alert" before being told the answer is yes in this case, though one hopes the specifics, very exciting in at least one respect, won't be ruined for future viewers by those seeing Split long before its release date at this Fantastic Fest preview.

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. And as for that final twist, it's a doozy.

Read full review at HollywoodReporter

Movie Rating 🌟🌟🌟☆☆  

James McAvoy throws himself into multiple parts in M Night Shyamalan's taut, grisly comeback  

Robbie Collin

When is a twist not a twist? And, while we’re at it, can a twist ever be no twist at all? At this point in the career of M Night Shyamalan, anything’s possible, and the uneven multiplex auteur has only himself to blame on that front. His early run of psychological thrillers, from The Sixth Sense to The Village via Unbreakable and Signs, became so renowned for their audacious rug-pulls that it became second nature on the way into a Shyamalan film to scrutinise the flooring for dubious scuffs.

His latest, Split – a vigorous clamber back towards previous form, following an agonising 10-year creative slump – has a generous share of appealing bluffs and dodges, and a plot that springs surprises on you all the way to its winkingly outrageous final shot.

But while every detail matters, they don’t all point towards a kick-yourself climactic revelation. All you have to do is climb aboard, keep checking your blind spots, and enjoy the rackety ride.

Known until recently as multiple personality disorder, it’s the very cinematic psychiatric ailment which gave us Mrs Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and Bobbi in Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill  – and McAvoy, who looks just darling in a twinset and locket, does enough peeped-upon cross-dressing here to leave you in no doubt of what Shyamalan’s aiming at. (Though for what it’s worth, it feels more like a dry reference to the classics than bona fide kink.)

Two of Kevin’s less appealing personae, obsessive-compulsive Dennis and passive-aggressive Miss Patricia, have staged a psychological coup in order to prepare the way for ‘The Beast’, a brand new and mostly shirtless 24th identity – think Mr. Hyde meets Magic Mike – with a fetishistic hunger for innocent flesh. As such, the film begins with Dennis-Kevin kidnapping three teenage girls and imprisoning them in a hidden lair until sacrifice o’clock.

Split is a taut and gristly creation, and was co-produced by Jason Blum, whose company Blumhouse was also responsible for Joel Edgerton’s The Gift: another controlled psychological thriller built thriftily, but also to last.

After the asinine bloat of The Last Airbender and After Earth, and the abortive down-and-dirty comeback of 2015’s found-footage horror The Visit, this measured, diligently crafted register feels like Shyamalan back on home turf.

Seemingly chastened by the intervening years, even his cameo’s self-deprecating, as a dopey security camera operator whom another character points out is getting flabby in his middle-age. Thank goodness his technique is crunching its way back to a six-pack.

Read full review at Telegraph

Movie Rating 🌟🌟☆☆  

James McAvoy is great; twist ending is ludicrous

Michael O'Sullivan

M. Night Shyamalan just can’t leave well enough alone. In “Split,” the writer-director’s new psychological thriller, “well enough” is James McAvoy’s remarkable (if distractingly showboat-y) turn as the film’s villain Kevin, a man with dissociative identity disorder (previously known as multiple personality disorder). Kevin’s 23 distinct alters include the effeminate fashionista Barry; the creepy neat freak Dennis; the matronly den mother Patricia; and an inquisitive, hip-hop-loving 9-year-old with a lisp named Hedwig. Hedwig — who seems to be a boy, but has a girl’s name — has a cute habit of dropping the phrase “et cetera” in conversation. It’s an amusing tic that underscores the multifariousness of Kevin’s shattered psyche, while at the same time calling attention to Shyamalan’s writerly affectations and inadequacies.

The assumption at first is that the girls’ captor has prurient interests in mind. When Dennis takes one victim (Sula) into a private room, Casey whispers to the girl to “pee on yourself” as a defensive strategy. Given Dennis’s germaphobia, the ploy works, although it soon becomes evident that sex slavery is not on the table. But what is?

A better question might be: How does Casey know so much about sexual predators? Shyamalan addresses that over the course of several increasingly sickening flashbacks. He also sheds some light on Kevin’s history by cutting away from his hostages to his ever more desperate sessions with his psychiatrist, Dr. Fletcher (the wonderful Broadway veteran Betty Buckley). Fletcher’s empathetic couchside manner makes for a good counterpoint to the mounting tension occurring at her patient’s home, although she soon suspects that the gregarious, chatty Barry — her previous main contact and Kevin’s “host” personality — has been replaced by one of the other alters.

It gets complicated, not just because the character’s alters occasionally engage in conversation with each other, but because they also, at times, impersonate one another. Fletcher, who has treated Kevin for so long that she has — ahem — a sixth sense about who she’s talking to, starts to suspect that another, less well-integrated personality may be starting to take over.

There is a certain pleasure, to be sure, from watching McAvoy, who delivers a bravura performance — including a scene-stealing dance as Hedwig and an array of mannerisms, accents and vocal nuance — that is almost worth the price of admission. It’s nicely balanced by Taylor-Joy’s low-key grit as the heroine, although Shyamalan deprives the audience of true gratification, in the heartless way he ultimately dumps her character.

Whether audiences will buy into Shyamalan’s preposterous twist depends on how much entertainment they get out of the mystery that comes before (and just after). For all the outrageousness of Kevin’s alters, the movie falls oddly flat: less tantalizingly enigmatic “et cetera” than “blah blah blah.”

Read full review at Washington Post

Movie Rating 🌟🌟🌟☆☆  

An untidy horror film with a twist ... or two ... or three

Craig Mathieson

 

M. Night Shyamalan's rehabilitation from blockbuster failure, which began with 2015's found-footage thriller The Visit, continues with Split, an untidy but often effective horror film. Reflecting Shyamalan's reinvention of himself as a low-budget filmmaker, it's a film about identity and using fear to become who we truly need to be, not to mention quite possibly the worst doctor and patient relationship ever.

Shyamalan, whose breakthrough feature was 1999's The Sixth Sense, is working on a concise budget again, but here he tries to tell too many stories. There is an excess of scenes with Kevin, a vessel for differing personalities who have an elaborate hierarchy, visiting his therapist, Dr Fletcher (Betty Buckley). In her eagerness to convince the world that DID is so real that a body will have differing characteristics for each personality, she has failed to notice that Kevin has really gone off the rails.

The real terror and intrigue – as opposed to clue planting for the inevitable Shyamalan twist(s) – lie with the young women locked away in an underground lair. Claire and Marcia want to fight back, but Casey refuses, calmly detailing his advantages. She's compliant, but also observant and well-versed, and childhood flashbacks add another layer of storytelling to a narrative that sometimes feels as if it's marking time until the final act ramps up.

Taylor-Joy has a sense of self-possession so fierce it's frightening, and, after headlining the remarkable 2015 period horror film The Witch, her performance here does a great deal to pull Split above its sometimes queasy use of unspeakable trauma as a plot point. McAvoy gets the showy turn, transforming himself with each sighting of Kevin, but Taylor-Joy brings a horrifying stillness to the movie.

One of Kevin's personalities is a cleanliness freak who confiscates the captive's dirty clothes – half-naked females is one horror trope the film didn't need – but Shyamalan's technique is sharper than his writing. He teases with vertical and horizontal slits of available sight, while his camera ominously encroaches. Thankfully, the director still has the ability to gently personalise his lurid revelations: a brief shot of Kevin's bathroom reveals dozens of toothbrushes, each awaiting its owner.

 Read full review at Sydney morning Herald

Trapped in a psychopath’s brain

 Kennith Rosario

The human brain has never ceased to fascinate humanity, especially artists. Everything we know and comprehend ultimately rests with this organ, allowing mankind to mould its surrounding in its favour. But is the fear of what lies beyond the human understanding – the supernatural – an offspring of the brain’s imagination or a reminder of its limitations? Do we control the brain or does the brain control us?

Throwing open these questions, M. Night Shyamalan’s Split dives right into its plot with merely a scene to set up the film. Shyamalan means business. There’s an abduction right at the beginning and the thrills begin even before you’re half way through your bucket of popcorn. But the thrills aren’t cheap or gimmicky. They are confined in a series of close-ups and monologues. They make you imagine, trap you in your thoughts and take you on a flight of analysis.

Despite the lost opportunity, the film remains deeply claustrophobic. When not trapped in freakily long close-up shots, the struggle of the three teens to get out of an underground tunnel, where they are kept kidnapped, will make you feel breathless. While you want the girls to escape, each failed attempt is like a free fall: you know it won’t end well.

Beyond all the usual tactics of a thriller – some that work and several that don’t – the film eventually belongs to McAvoy. Despite the Scottish actor being given a role that is enviably meaty on paper itself, he takes it up 23 notches higher. Each personality is nuanced, relies little on costumes and is bereft of exaggeration. The teenage girls, on the flipside, make up for the lack of stoicism and over-dramatisation, barring Taylor-Joy who plays the gritty and intuitive Casey.

The movie is touted widely as Shyamalan’s big comeback but there are only those many ways in which a filmmaker, who has spent his entire career making thrillers, can reinvent the genre. Fortunately, Split retains the delicate spookiness of The Sixth Sense (1999), but unfortunately is ridden with the predictability that infested his other movies.

 Read full review at The Hindu

Movie Rating 🌟🌟✬☆☆  

 M Night Shyamalan, James McAvoy deliver a class act

Shalini Langer

M Night Shyamalan’s trademark twist here is more of a tool, and his treatment of three kidnapped teenage girls who are made to remove their clothes, not too much but not too little either, is only just short of exploitative. However, if Split marks a return to firmer ground for writer-director Shyamalan and his supernatural/psychological thrillers, the credit goes to McAvoy. He is Dennis/Patricia/Hedwig/Barry/Jade etc etc, going up to 23 personalities, as the film repeatedly tells us. Split never gets anywhere close to a glimpse of all 23, but McAvoy at least seems capable of holding them — and, yes, one more; the film’s big reveal — all in.

As long as McAvoy is on screen though, in different voices, clothes, stature, posture, smiles, and even gaze, Split needs little else. He evokes menace, desire, love, respect, pity, and fear. And not necessarily in that order.

The twist in the end, if one can call it that, is ultimately worthwhile for acknowledging this class act.

 Read Full review at Indian express

M. Night Shyamalan's Twisty 'Split' Ties Itself Up In Knots

Scott Mendelson  

The movie business is different than it was in 2004. Mel Gibson was still a movie star! The Visit was a critical comeback as well as a relative (for a $5 million Blumhouse film) commercial success for all parties. More so than any time since 2004, M. Night Shyamalan’s name on the marque is as much a promise as a threat. A mere repeat of The Visit ($25m opening/$65m domestic/$108m worldwide) would be a fine figure for Universal/Comcast Corp.

The only caveat, a minor one with a film of this size, is that the subject matter (three teen girls trapped and menaced in an underground prison) is a bit less “thrills and chills for everyone” than “Gee, grandpa and grandma are acting kind of weird!” I am most curious as to whether we’ll see a Shyamalan bounce for this one, at least on opening weekend, thanks to the whole “Hey, we all liked that last one” effect.

Considering the filmmaker’s somewhat unfair reputation for mind-blowing (and occasionally self-destructive) plot twists, the most shocking thing about M. Night Shyamalan’s Split is how straightforward it turns out to be. The film’s core premise is established within the first reel, and the picture mostly goes about where you expect it to after that, to the point where it undercuts its own themes. Shyamalan the director is in fine form, once again relishing the opportunity to do whatever he wants to do within the comparative financial straightjacket of the Blumhouse universe. Alas, Shyamalan the screenwriter lets us down, delivering a relatively conventional yet contradictory thriller.

Read full review at Forbes

Movie Rating 🌟🌟🌟☆☆  

James McAvoy plays a man with 23 different personalities, with the less-than-pleasant 24th about to emerge, in Split. Directed by M Night Shyamalan, the horror-thriller is full of plot holes, but McAvoy’s joyful and menacingly lunatic performance papers over most of them.

Our shaven-headed villain has multiple-personality disorder and in his incarnation as Philadelphia building janitor Mr Dennis he kidnaps three (inevitably very pretty) teenage schoolgirls and locks them in a basement. The problem is that every time he unlocks the door he seems to be a different person: the American Mr Dennis is superseded by the English headmistress-type Miss Patricia, with the addition of high heels and a skirt, while a nine-year-old boy, Hedwig, later emerges.

There’s plenty of tension in the conversations between the girls and their mercurial captor and a series of stupid escape attempts. Irritatingly, Shyamalan somehow ensures the teens’ lipstick remains glossy and hair bouffant, while they lose most of their clothes down to their bras. Still, the movie provides plenty of twists and turns, although it seems a cop-out to have the talented McAvoy concentrate on five personalities when he could easily have given us the full 24. The final chap out of the mixed bag is a vein-popping muscled superhuman and with this, sadly, the film jumps the shark. 

 Read full review at The Times

To all of the shocking developments of the last 12 months, we may now add yet one more: M. Night Shyamalan has made a good movie.  

Or perhaps that’s overstating it a bit. The writer-director’s latest offering, Split, is more good-bad, a B-movie that earns itself no better than a solid B. That said, given the precipitous grading curve down which Shyamalan has been slaloming for well over a decade, this is a moderately remarkable achievement.

Now, with a very notable assist from actor James McAvoy, Shyamalan has succeeded in making a movie that’s actually worth seeing, at least for those in the proper mood. McAvoy stars as “Kevin”—or rather, as someone who was long ago known as “Kevin.” Over the subsequent years, his psyche has fractured into 23 distinct personalities, some of them more unpleasant than others.

For its first two-thirds or so, Shyamalan keeps Split admirably creepy and well-paced, eliciting a nice performance from Taylor-Joy and solid ones from the rest of the supporting cast. (Buckley, in particular, was owed a decent role in recompense for the awful one Shyamalan saddled her with in The Happening.)

The movie falls out of kilter in the final act, however. An unsavory backstory regarding Taylor-Joy’s character that appeared to be completely unnecessary is instead revealed to be a component of the movie’s painfully Shyamalanian final twist. (Seriously, dude. Not every one of your movies needs one of these. Consider this an intervention.) Moreover, once the film’s ultimate villain is unveiled, what ought to have been a 10-minute finale is stretched to twice that. (There is, however, an unexpected Easter Egg at the end for Shyamalan aficionados.)

But the director’s strengths and weaknesses aside, it’s McAvoy’s performance(s) that elevate the film above its otherwise low-horror potential. (I was reminded of Edward Norton’s breakthrough role in Primal Fear, another B-movie elevated by an A+ split-personality performance.) In each of the “characters” McAvoy inhabits, he finds sparks of charm and wit—elements that have all too often been lacking in Shyamalan’s oeuvre. “He did awful things to people and he’ll do awful things to you, too,” the pre-adolescent Hedwig warns the kidnapped girls, before quickly adding, “I have blue socks.” And the twinkly delight that Patricia takes in a sandwich she has made for the girls—“It’s good. It’s got paprika”—is positively contagious.

Thanks largely to McAvoy, Split is easily Shyamalan’s best film since Signs, and perhaps even Unbreakable. Moreover, along with The Visit, it suggests an obvious path for him moving forward. It may be the case—indeed, it certainly looks to be—that Shyamalan will never again rediscover the elegance and control he displayed so early on in The Sixth Sense. But the world needs second-tier, quasi-guilty-pleasure entertainments, too. And with Split, Shyamalan may have finally found himself the productive niche that eluded him for so long.

Read full review at Atlantic