It is horrifying how much of our growth is the product of pain. Even more terrifying is the fact that an M. Night Shyamalan movie in 2017 was something that made me dwell deeply on the subtle ways that my experiences have shaped my personality and being. It’s important that you understand how viscerally this offends me, in order to understand the significance of any praise this movie deserves. The director of Lady in the Water, The Last Airbender, and After Earth, shouldn’t be able to convince a child to sympathize with a bunny dying of rabbit cancer in her mother’s fluffy, tear-soaked arms. And yet, I find myself uttering the impossible, with Split, Shyamalan has made another great film.
Split follows Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy), an unexpectedly capable teenage heroine. She doesn’t have friends, she sulks in corners while the cool kids celebrate their sweet 16’s. Casey is the kind of person you want to have around when a deranged man (specifically James McAvoy) kidnaps you and your acquaintances and locks you all in a ten by ten cell deep underground. When this happens to Casey and her acquaintances, they learn that their abductor is afflicted with Dissociative Identity Disorder and that each one of his twenty three unique personalities has a different idea of what to do with them. This is when Casey learns what lengths she will go to in order to escape.
Split is the kind of movie that seethes and boils silently beneath your skin. It is equal parts innovative and quaint, restrained and madcap, sentimental and malevolent. There is a carefully teetering balance between schlock and drama that is always threatening to tip too far in one direction, but the moment of failure never comes. It serves as a testament to the values of careful direction and fine-tuned performances that this story manages to take such overused elements of modern horror and allow them to ferment, creating an atmosphere of distrust that lingers long after the screen goes dark. The cinematography enhances this even more, knowing how to hide pertinent visual information until the sheer frustration of the viewer seems to telekinetically influence the camera to move. This film is secure in its tone and its content in a really encouraging, and honestly invigorating, way. It’s not always masterful, but Split never lets the tension droop. Every scene is just efficient enough to move you onto the next before things get too uncomfortable, and not too soon to be accused of backing down from its subject matter.
James McAvoy is the primary reason Split works at all, and deserves all the praise he is being adorned with by pundits. There is an inherent challenge in taking on a role that requires one to inhabit what are essentially twenty three different people, each with their distinct sets of mental, physical, and spiritual characteristics. It is an even greater challenge still, to do so deftly. Somehow, he manages to do so. He’s so good in fact, that you when you see him contort his body and mind between many personalities in a single scene, you can catch of glimpse of someone deeply in love with their craft.
With Split, Shyamalan manages to take a premise that’s campy, unempathetic, voyeuristic, shoved into the Osh Kosh overalls of modern filmmaking that is the PG-13 horror/thriller, and mold it into something with surprising thematic coherence. It’s incredibly refreshing to watch a film in this muddled genre actually have something important to say about human psychology, interaction, and trauma. If you were wondering why I haven’t mentioned the trademark Shyamalan twist yet, I’ll just say that if you’ve kept up with his filmography, you’re in for a treat. It’s nice to have you back M. Night.