By Emilio Frenk.
Director: M. Night Shyamalan.
Cast: James McAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy, Haley Lu Richardson, Sebastian Arcelus, Jessica Sula, Brad William Henke, Betty Buckley and Bruce Willis.
Rating: Excellent.
Academy Award director and writer Nominee M. Night Shyamalan and director of “The Sixth Sense”, “Unbreakable” and 2015´s “The Visit” makes another thriller and does it “Split” and again Mr. Shyamalan delivered amazing results.
Like most of M. Night Shyamalan´s movies, this one takes place in Philadelphia,Pennsylvania where three teenager friends Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy), Claire (Haley Lu Richardson) and Marcia (Jessica Sula) are kidnapped by Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy) who at that point was having the personality of Dennis.
Now the three girls are been locked in a room with no windows and need to find one ofthe 23 personalities that Kevin has so they can be free before the 24th is loose which will take the form of a “Beast”.
The three girls need to stay together and survive before Kevin´s 24th personality is unleashed and can harm them.
M. Night Shyamalan´s career is been taking off again after a series of flops like “The Happening”, “The Last Airbender” and “Afterearth” and I can tell that he has learned from those movies that at some point put his career in jeopardy.
Now he did it with “Split” and went back to his origins of movies like “The Sixth Sense” and “Unbreakable” and did a wonderful thriller and suspense film.
The script that was also written by Shyamalan is very well written and how he got into the mind of Kevin´s character and the psychological elements he added were very well used and Shyamalan did this in an effective way.
The performance by James McAvoy as Kevin with the 24 personalities is frightening and terrifying but as always is a pleasure seeing this magnificent actor portraying which I most say this is sor far the most challenging role of his career.
The only note that I have for “Split” is a I mentioned before the script was very well written but the movie could have been shorter in terms of length. There were flashbacks in the film that were not necessary to establish Anya Taylor-Joy´s character Casey. With one by the most two flashbacks would have been enough since we understood the nature her character.
Speaking of Anya Taylor-Joy´s career it really took off with 2016´s “The Witch” another fantastic thriller and horror film and I hope we can see good things on the future about this young actress.
The directing by Shyamalan and the technical choices he made were very good and accurate and as a member of the audience I was very surprised and I admit that I jumped out of my seat in the moments were tension was building up.
The score which by the way was not composed by James Newton Howard, who has collaborated with Shyamalan in his previous films was very effective and this time the turn was for West Dylan Thordson, who composed the scores for 2014´s “Foxcatcher” and 2015´s “Joy” was very engaging and he knew how to use those elements of surprise in this movie.
The ending of the film is one of the biggest surprises and once you leave the theater you will be answering yourself a lot of questions to it.
With that being said “Split” is one of the greatest thrillers of 2017 that recently started and I give it a huge recommendation for it´s directing, writing, acting and score.
I invite you to leave your comments at emilio.frenk@gmail.com or my twitter @FrenkEmilio.