It is nice to know however that Shyamalan may truly be the Hitchcock of our time after all.
After a few of what seemed like unforgivable flops – After Earth and The Last Airbender to name just two – many may have begun to question whether Shyamalan still had his magic. Well, from the looks of it, he does.
Split’s storyline is reminiscent of Shyamalan’s earlier works like The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, and in the hands of this Indian-American film director-screenwriter-producer-actor, the story comes to life in terrifying ways, that as morbid as it sounds, is pretty engaging all the same.
In Split, a man named Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy), who harbours 23 different personalities, daringly kidnaps three teenage girls from a parking lot in broad daylight. His psychiatrist, Dr Karen Fletcher (Betty Buckley), says his dissociative identity disorder is like nothing she has ever encountered before.
Locked together at a location none of them can recognise, the terrified girls soon discover their captor’s various personalities – Hedwig, Dennis, Patricia, The Beast, Barry, Orwell, Jade – and scramble to work out which personalities will help them escape and which are hellbent on making sure they don’t.
Lead actor McAvoy’s performance as the man with different personalities is brilliant to say the least and the movie truly gives him the stage to show off his talent as an actor. Each personality he portrays is either chilling, compassionate or childlike as the character dictates and he is convincing in every single one of them.
In fact, where the movie falls short is the lack of exploration into McAvoy’s character’s dark past and how the different personalities he carries within the confines of his mind, came into being. But Shyamalan might need a spin-off series to do this considering the sheer number of personalities at hand.
The ones that truly shine however are the obsessive-compulsive Dennis and nine-year-old Hedwig.
Anya Taylor-Joy, who plays one of the girls, Casey Cook, whose character is pertinent to the story, also fails to show the depth required of her character to be believable enough. Sad to say, at times her performance is similar to that of Kristen Stewart as the bimbo of the Twilight series, though no one deserves a comparison that insulting.
Scenes with McAvoy and his psychiatrist as well as with Taylor-Joy are particularly intense, leaving one on the edge of their seats as they try to guess which personality McAvoy is currently displaying.
Those who have been loyal followers of Shyamalan will be left with a pleasant twist from the master storyteller at the very end of the movie, while those who are new to Shyamalan will be left gobsmacked for sure.
Although many who’ve seen the movie have compared it to James Mangold’s Identity, doing so would be a mistake. While both movies revolve around the main theme of split personality disorders, Split focuses on deeper messages such as the power of the mind over the body as well as child abuse.