The initial hour of M. Night Shyamalan’s new flick Split, made audience terrified. The writer, who is also the director of the movie , had viewrs exactly where he wanted them to be. Emotions like tense, shutting eyes in anticipation of gore which dissapointed and didn’t come, even gave a little shallow breathing because it made viewrs was so frightened that the three girls locked up in a basement would die slowly and horrifically at the hands of a man called Kevin, who is inhabited by 24 kinds of distinct personalities. The director used the camera and characters to create nightmares, which he does best.
That too of course has never been satisfying for the filmmaker. He insists on collecting myth about how one becomes stronger due to suffering. Kevin suffers from dissociative identity disorder. At one point, his therapist enquires wether these individuals through their suffering unlocked the full potential of the mind. The flick is also made as an origin story for Kevin’s 24th personality that being a beast which is a character who has superhuman strength and the power to walk on walls and a taste for human meat. The Beast says lines like: “The broken are more evolved. Rejoice.”
As you can easily imagine, this scenario and story goes from being frightening to stupid pretty quickly. There’s also thing icky in the total set-up , for no logical reason, the three girls were asked to strip and the camera’s gaze starts to feel exploitative. What keeps the film from getting totally derailed is the performance of James McAvoy who is at places exagerrating but hypnotic. He switches between Kevin’s many personas with a skillful seamlessness. Barry(one of his personalities) the fashionista and Hedwig the 9 year-old who asks for a kiss are most creepy but most compelling.
Marvelous Anya Taylor-Joy as Casey, a girl having a past who doesn’t fit in at school but seems unmistakably capable of taking on a beast. Anya looks haunted. Her big black eyes are so pained that she unsettles viewrs without saying a word. Do not miss this movie!
