Split

This and the next movie are examples of why I'm slowly but surely getting into horror movies. Both Split and Us are films that when they came out were marketed as straight up horror films. And while I will talk about how Us haunted my jet lagged dreams on my way to Spain, Split is really not that scary of a movie at all, and rather emphasizes an eerie atmosphere and good writing. Which is odd because this is coming from the same guy who only 6 years prior made one of the worst movie ever made (See Avatar The Last Airbender), M Night Shyamalan. Boy does that guy like to play jump rope with his good and horrible movies.

Split has a pretty simple premise. Three teenage girls are abducted by a strange man (played by James McEvoy) as they leave a birthday party. The beginning of the movie just seems like a Room-like horror Scenario where the victims are tormented by their captor in an underground cellar looking room.

However, the plot turns when the girls realize that the man holding them captive has multiple personalities and those personalities are individually cognizant. The main character, a misfit teenager named Casey (played by Anya Taylor-Joy) starts conversing with some of the personalities and the movie becomes about them trying to outsmart and play the personalities against each other in an attempt to escape.

All the while, we learn more and more about this man, Kevin and the mysteries he and his other personalities hold.

And this movie is very, VERY good.

It is intense and yet it doesn't rely on jump scares. It is well written, and it isn't very predictable. It is a very small (and apparently a very small budget) film with characters you really start to care about throughout the film. Even McEvoy's character is a complex character that you have a mixture of emotions about.

I heard that the performance here was really good but I kind of had to see it to believe it. He has this immense range of characters that is all packaged into one and yet they never feel out of place. No matter how wacky the character is, McEvoy changes his posture, voice, facial ticks, all of the above to bring a unique blend of characters to one person. And its a somewhat tragic character from a certain point of view.

And so it makes sense that M Night Shyamalan would want to expand this character and give him more of an opportunity to shine, especially with the open ended ending this movie has.

And its not much of a spoiler anymore as Glass has come out, but Split is stealthily connected to one of M Night Shymalan's previous films, Unbreakable, with a cameo of Bruce Willis's character at the end.

I'm going to try and see Glass soon because now I'm interested. On one hand, I'm kind of ambivalent to the idea of these movies being connected. Overall, I loved Split but I was pretty mixed on Unbreakable. There is a logical connection there, but it also didn't need to happen.

Split could have had its own sequel dealing with the fallout of the events of the first movie or expanding the way in which McEvoy's character survives with that many personalities in his head. I don't think it needed to connect to another superhero universe to cram two properties together.

I don't mean to shit too much on Glass quite yet because I don't know if it's good or not, but I do think it underlines the way that this movie has more potential on its own then it has as a franchise.

Split does horror right because instead of it just being about jump scares or offing characters we don't care about, it manages to make us care about the main protagonist in Casey, but also the villain. It creates intrigue and leaves you wanting more. There needed to be a continuation of this story no matter what and if that means it has to happen in a Glass franchise, I guess I'm okay with that. I will let you know when I see Glass and I can give you my thoughts on that.

But overall, Split is just a fantastic movie. I don't think its an perfect movie but it does show that within the nonsense that is M Night Shyamalan, there is the capability to make a really good movie. And I think at the end of the day, its his budget. Shymalan needs to be constrained in order to make his best work. His best movies, this and the Sixth Sense were smaller films with little to no special effects and they were smaller stories about people, not about his ideas or his twists. I think the reason I and other people can't really find too many meaningful flaws in this movie is that its almost hard to believe its coming from the same man who did such horrible films as The Last Airbender and The Happening.

If you haven't checked out Split, do yourself a favor and check it out. It does not matter if the "twist" was spoiled for you (maybe even by me in this review), it is so much more than a Glass prequel film. Even people who do not like horror films, this is more of a psychological thriller and is well worth your time.

But those are my thoughts on Split. What do you think? Do you think this needed to be apart of the "Glass franchise"? Have you seen Glass? Without spoilers, what am I getting myself into? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposisum as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

Thanks for reading!