Rating of
3/4
"Split"
Yojimbo - wrote on 08/15/19
Three high school girls are abducted and imprisoned by a stranger who they soon come to realise is suffering from a multiple personality disorder.
M. Night Shyamalan returns to the world he created in one of his early successes Unbreakable in this unusual take on the serial killer genre. The twist in the tale concerns the fact that many of the characters are in fact the same person, and both his victims and his psychiatrist must negotiate the situation by discovering which are the innocent who may actually help, and which are the not so innocent. It's a reasonably interesting concept despite the fact that the whole "multiple personality" conceit passed into cliche quite some time ago. James McAvoy is obviously having some fun with his multiple parts, Anya Taylor-Joy makes for a likeable and intense heroine and it is their interplay that makes up the majority of the film which is largely set within the same location of McAvoy's home-made prison. Some may consider it something of a cheap move for Shyamalan to try to resuscitate his faltering career by revisiting past glories, but in the end, it works.
A reasonably suspenseful thriller-cum-chiller that seems rather more interested in whetting the appetite for a sequel than providing a satisfying resolution, but in this it actually succeeds.
