Split Is No Cinematic Masterpiece But Still A Fun Thriller
Split’s horror lies in the familiar. It targets the dark tides that lurk behind the mundane, the mad-workings of men who walk among us, hiding demons in their psyche. Director M. Knight Shyamalan explores this part of the mind, shining a light on its existence and demonstrating what happens when ordinary people are caught in excesses.
The film follows high school outcast Casey Cooke (Anya Taylor-Joy), who is abducted, along with two other girls, by Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy), a man with 23 different personalities living inside him. The girls are held captive in an undisclosed location while Kevin’s personalities wait for the coming of someone known only as “The Beast.”
McAvoy is the highlight of Split. He weaves through Crumb’s identities with the grace and brutality of a cutlass. Every identity is its own character.
One learns while watching the movie which personas are most dangerous and which are most helpful. McAvoy’s performance inspires fear, revulsion, sympathy and laughter. However, despite his emotional manipulation, a sense of tension always lurks behind his character, threatening to break open.
Subtle touches by the director reinforce this tension. Bright blues and greens spill out to create a false sense of safety, the blood is pulpy and red, and each of Crumb’s identities has its own wardrobe, some marked by oak burgundy and others by taxi-cab yellows. Shyamalan also controls the lighting, being comfortable evoking fear in both shadow covered subway tunnels and sun specked woodlands.
However, Split’s writing is not up to par with its directing. At instances it stalls, often getting caught up providing redundant exposition. This is made worse by most of the supporting actors, whose performances are familiar to those used to direct-to-video slasher flicks. With the exception of Izzie Coffey and Brad William Henke, who play Cooke’s five-year-old self and her uncle respectively, the supporting characters are unmemorable.
Taylor-Joy counters McAvoy’s variation with stagnation, maintaining throughout the film the grimace of someone in the middle of swallowing a rotten oyster and the temperament of a particularly sleepy librarian. Her companions, Marcia (Jessica Sula) and Claire Benoit (Haley Lu Richardson), are duller, only serving as sources for the obligatory horror movie chase scenes. The most grating performance comes from Betty Buckley, who plays Kevin’s psychologist Dr. Karen Fletcher.
While her acting is okay and her interactions with McAvoy give more insight into Crumb’s personas, most of her screen time is dedicated to monotonous over-exposition of cognitive-dissonance disorder. However, while the performances are uninspiring, none of the supporting characters are enough to bring the film down.
Split is no cinematic masterpiece. However, it is cleverly directed, thrilling and most importantly, fun. While nowhere near as iconic as Unbreakable or The Sixth Sense, Split is a decent, well-rounded horror movie that will surprise moviegoers who only know Shyamalan due to After Earth and reinvigorate the interest of fans of his older films.
