Split is a movie about three teenage girls being imprisoned by a man with split personalities who claims that The Beast is coming. Meanwhile his psychiatrist suspects that her patient is not as well as he claims. Will the girls escape? Will the psychiatrist figure it out? Who is The Beast? What makes someone special?
Split is the latest M. Night Shyamalan movie, which is usually enough to attract or repel viewers. Even though I understand that Shyamalan is not as good as he once was and is filled with gimmicks, I still see most of his films in the theater except for the truly dreadful ones, which are The Last Airbender and After Earth, which I still have not seen. (Side note: Praying with Anger does not count because it is not available anywhere, and when Wide Awake was in theaters, I did not even know that Shyamalan existed.) I like the gimmicks even when intellectually I know that they are awful. My attraction to Split was a given, but I was surprised by the sense of urgency that I felt to get to the theaters.
James McAvoy was the reason behind my desire to see Split. McAvoy is an amazing actor, and he is fun to look at, but lately his film choices have been dreadful. Other than the X-Men franchise, which has consistently fallen short of the mark, I do not see his films in theaters because he may give an amazing performance, but the actual films are crap. So subjectively, I really wanted to see Split, but intellectually I thought that Split was going to be awful and a waste of my time and money. The heart wants what the heart wants. I acted uncharacteristically, braved the cold, a terribly delayed train, and Saturday night crowds in a major metropolitan theater (I usually see movies in the day at a little theater). When I left the theater, I was jubilant. Split is a reward for Shyamalan’s fans that stuck with him since The Sixth Sense.
Split has very few special effects, and it does not need any because McAvoy is the special effect. Each personality is distinct and recognizable just by the way that McAvoy moves. Even without the hair and as Split’s villain, McAvoy is one fine man. Betty Buckley plays the psychiatrist, and her performance grounds Split’s premise in a credible reality. Side note: I want her home. It should surprise no one that I have a weakness for characters who are older professional ladies that live elegantly alone. Still she needs to watch more movies. Even though the villain kidnaps three girls, only one is really the main character of Split, not McAvoy, so she has to give an equally strong performance to retain the audience’s attention, which Anya Taylor-Joy does. Split’s narrative is well crafted as it transitions from the present day perspectives of the lead girl and the psychiatrist and flashbacks that reveal the lead girl’s past. I actually figured out where the girls were trapped.
I am not sure if new viewers will feel the same as I do. Split is definitely problematic if you are not familiar with Shyamalan’s work. If you were watching Split without knowledge of Shyamalan’s mythology, you would think that he is making two dangerous conclusions in a vacuum: victims of child abuse are more special than those who are not, and even nice, sympathetic people with dissociative identity disorder are dangerous. I think that Shyamalan is actually trying to be empowering by making the first statement true in his universe, and regarding the second statement, he is not making a generalization, but using a stereotype as the basis for a specific formula in his universe that leads back to the first. In Shyamalan’s cinematic universe, people with mental disabilities, physical disabilities or victims of others are special, but they can become villains. The real, underlying problem with Shyamalan’s universe is that being different may make you better than everyone else, but it usually makes the special indifferent to others and see them as a means to an end instead of all life as being inherently valuable. If what makes you special is not inherently noticeable to others, then you are safe.
I am certain that I did not come up with the following theory. If a movie is great, but the last five minutes are not, people will not like the movie, but if a movie is mediocre, but the last minutes are terrific, people will love the movie even more than it deserves. Split’s last five minutes gave me hope in humanity and felt like encouragement from God, especially considering how hard it was to actually see the film.
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Feel free to think less of me, but one of my favorite films is Unbreakable. I understand that Unbreakable is NOT a great film because the end feels abrupt as if the studio told Shyamalan to shut it all down, and he still had a half hour that he had to film. I used to watch Unbreakable on my birthday. I frequently listen to the soundtrack. I loved watching Unbreakable because it was a beautifully filmed movie, the acting was superb, and the story line was great. Unbreakable basically told audiences that the stories that you love are real, but in the real world, things are not like in the story.
In Split, when I suddenly heard the score from Unbreakable playing in the diner, I realized that Split was a SEQUEL TO UNBREAKABLE SIXTEEN YEARS LATER!!!!!! The Horde is the next supervillain, and if Unbreakable was a hero origin story, then Split was a supervillain origin story! Shyamalan had promised fans that we would get a sequel to Unbreakable, and he delivered. When the people in the diner started talking about the news, I screamed “MR. GLASS” at the same time as Bruce Willis, the hero of Unbreakable, who makes an uncredited cameo in Split. Which side will the final girl choose? “We are what we believe we are.” So what does she believe? Who will she be? There is a great moment when even Hedwig is wary of her because she is messed up in ways that he can’t imagine, and he knows about The Beast. I am leaning towards Kevin because he is a sympathetic and tragic figure despite his monstrous appetite.
The showdown between the Horde and David Dunn should be interesting because they both have similar abilities, but the Horde may have the advantage because he has no discernible weaknesses except Kevin and his nicer personalities, who want none of this mess. Kevin is a magnificent, sympathetic character unaware of his loss in the dark for years. Also the train as the focal point of the super villain and super hero’s origin story is a great moment that I could appreciate more in retrospect. Shyamalan may have a terrific twist on what a confrontation in his movie looks like as opposed to a Marvel or DC Comics film. Shyamalan’s world of heroes and villains is more subdued, emotionally resonant and historically and scientifically textured than any depicted in a summer blockbuster.
I am 41 years old with a considerable academic pedigree and a little over sixteen years in my chosen profession. The theater was packed with young people who clearly did not get the significance of this moment so I spontaneously discarded all my dignity, whooped, clapped then shouted, “See Unbreakable, people!” I am officially old. I really think that I am the only in there that got the reference. Split reduced me to the crazy, shouting old person in the theater.
I understand that Split is far from the best movie in the world, in that month, or even on that day, but Split made me super excited, which is what a movie is supposed to do. Also think about how much money studios are spending on the DC Extended Universe, and it still sucks. M. Night Shyamalan managed to do in TWO movies what Warner Brothers will never be able to accomplish with the DC Extended Universe, and Shyamalan did it in an interesting, emotionally compelling and genuinely new way. Shyamalan shows that the way to compete with Marvel is to NOT compete with them, but by telling a story well with fine filmmaking, a complex narrative and terrific performances.