Split (2017)
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
Though Kevin has evidenced 23 personalities to his trusted psychiatrist, Dr. Fletcher, there remains one still submerged who is set to materialize and dominate all the others. Compelled to abduct three teenage girls led by the willful, observant Casey, Kevin reaches a war for survival among all of those contained within him — as well as everyone around him — as the walls between his compartments shatter apart.
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64 films that influenced Split
What critics say influenced Split
The film looks spectacular, full of Hitchcockian homages that remind one of Vertigo and Psycho, to name only a few.
It’s a number that substantially ups the game on earlier horror incarnations of the disorder such as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho , the latter of which gets several obvious references throughout.
He’s obviously and respectfully nodding to silken, scary movie predecessors played by Anthony Perkins in Psycho and Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs, but he’s better here than he’s been since Atonement because he’s complex and oddly sympathetic—in addition to being a deeply creepy lunatic.
The film’s B-movie aesthetic is enhanced further by McAvoy’s confidently showy performance, which feels like an homage to Psycho’s Anthony Perkins and other actors who have played imbalanced bogeymen.
Writer-director M. Night Shyamalan reminds everyone why folks used to associate him with Alfred Hitchcock, swiping a mental condition from Psycho, a sympathetic shrink from Spellbound, and a bold theorist from Rope.
Shyamalan has never bothered hiding his adoration of Hitchcock, and in Split, the references start with the movie’s Psycho-inspired title sequence.
At the same time, a lot of what is going on with Dr. Fletcher turns out to be a massive red herring, almost as if Shyamalan is channeling his inner Stephen King treating her much in the same way that iconic horror author dealt Sheriff Buster in Misery or Overlook Hotel chef Halloran in The Shining .
It wouldn’t be fair to reveal how Shyamalan works out this scenario, but one can say that he ties together Kevin’s story with Casey’s past in a fairly canny fashion, and that the narrative borrows some of its beats from “Psycho” and “The Shining,” among other pictures, along the way.
In short, McAvoy's work here should go into the annals of great psycho performances alongside Anthony Perkins in Psycho, Jack Nicholson in The Shining and Kathy Bates in Misery.
If you are reminded of “Psycho,” “The Three Faces of Eve,” Shyamalan’s own “Unbreakable” and the overrated “10 Cloverfield Lane,” it’s for good reason.
“Multiple personality disorder” has been a favorite Hollywood disease since Joanne Woodward won an Oscar in 1958 for The Three Faces of Eve .
We’re a very long way from The Three Faces of Eve, baby.
I mean, it's certainly equal to multiple-personality interpretations by Joanne Woodward ("The Three Faces of Eve") and Sally Field ("Sybil"), and each of them walked away with Best Actress Oscar and Emmy statues, respectively.
More pseudo-thriller than psycho-thriller, “Split” is like “The Three Faces of Eve” (or “Sybil”) meets “The Silence of the Lambs.”
He’s obviously and respectfully nodding to silken, scary movie predecessors played by Anthony Perkins in Psycho and Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs, but he’s better here than he’s been since Atonement because he’s complex and oddly sympathetic—in addition to being a deeply creepy lunatic.
At times, “Split” suggests what you would have if “The Silence of the Lambs” had focused solely on Brooke Smith’s Catherine Martin.
More pseudo-thriller than psycho-thriller, “Split” is like “The Three Faces of Eve” (or “Sybil”) meets “The Silence of the Lambs.”
But, given what we find out, it seems possible that the afflicted protagonist, Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy), is no more a typical D.I.D. sufferer than Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs was transgender.
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The film looks spectacular, full of Hitchcockian homages that remind one of Vertigo and Psycho, to name only a few.
Split's excellent widescreen camera work seems inspired by the ruthless beauty of It Follows, and the claustrophobic plot takes cues from Green Room and 10 Cloverfield Lane.
Shyamalan pulls out one ingenious camera move after another with the help of Michael Gioulakis, the cinematographer of It Follows , echoing Split’s subterranean setting and subconscious concerns through creative and formalist thrills.
Indeed, Split finds Shyamalan in a formally invigorated mode, likely due in no small part to his collaborations with a younger crew (take, for example, director of photography Mike Gioulakis, who has shot recent independent productions such as David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows and Mike Ott’s Lake Los Angeles).
All of this is well shot by Michael Gioulakis of “It Follows,” who brings a smooth calm to such potentially disjointed material.
But it isn’t just McAvoy and Taylor-Joy’s fine work that creates that feeling of unease; cinematographer Michael Gioulakis proves he’s just as good with revealing the terror in confined spaces as he was with wide expanses in “It Follows.”
It’s the scariest film he’s ever made, augmented by the ominous camera work of “It Follows” cinematographer Mike Gioulakis.
If you are reminded of “Psycho,” “The Three Faces of Eve,” Shyamalan’s own “Unbreakable” and the overrated “10 Cloverfield Lane,” it’s for good reason.
Pitched as a spiritual sequel to Unbreakable, Split plays coy with its central conceit.
Nevertheless, the more significant and spoiler-proof astonishment here is that Shyamalan — after nearly a decade-long creative (and sometimes commercial) drought — has reclaimed much of the formal precision and conceptual daring that made his earlier pictures, “The Sixth Sense” and “Unbreakable” chief among them, so memorably creepy.
But Split does unify Shyamalan’s films in other ways, specifically through its three biggest themes, which thread throughout most of the other movies he’s written and directed, from The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable to The Village and The Visit .
He followed “Sixth Sense” with “Unbreakable” and “Signs,” not quite matching the potential of his first movie but still showing great promise.
While his second film, “Unbreakable,” is almost as great as “The Sixth Sense” (despite its much smaller box office haul), each film seemed like a step down from the previous one, a seemingly never ending parade of high concepts undone by ludicrous twists and bad writing.
It also seems to help that Split is not a puzzle movie, that nebulous subgenre inspired by The Sixth Sense and Christopher Nolan's Memento, which rewards the viewer for piecing together the plot from a slow dribble of ambiguous information.
Ever since he made “The Sixth Sense,” his one good movie and far and away his biggest hit, writer-director M. Night Shyamalan has been attempting to rekindle the fire.
Stark and soaked in dead-silent tension, the short recurring sequences build a sense of dread that’s woefully absent from the rest of the movie, an eerie reminder of Shyamalan’s no-kid-gloves approach to childhood trauma in The Sixth Sense and other films.
Nevertheless, the more significant and spoiler-proof astonishment here is that Shyamalan — after nearly a decade-long creative (and sometimes commercial) drought — has reclaimed much of the formal precision and conceptual daring that made his earlier pictures, “The Sixth Sense” and “Unbreakable” chief among them, so memorably creepy.
But Split does unify Shyamalan’s films in other ways, specifically through its three biggest themes, which thread throughout most of the other movies he’s written and directed, from The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable to The Village and The Visit .
It's the sort of outlandish setup one might expect from The Sixth Sense mastermind M. Night Shyamalan, and thanks to inspired turns from Taylor-Joy and Scottish actor James McAvoy, Split is often as engrossing as it is implausible.
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The logic implies a twist not unlike 2003’s Identity , but ultimately is a taste too exploitative, as if the script needs to break Casey utterly.
Split plays like a cross between Identity and Red Dragon (three of the alters are awaiting the arrival of a 24th alter, known as “The Beast”), making some bold statements about mental illness that may generate similar criticisms.
Yes, Kevin has Dissociative Identity Disorder, and yes, some mental health advocates are protesting “Split” and calling for a boycott — but it’s difficult to imagine any adult seeing this film and believing for a second it’s an attempt to be a scientific, seriously analytical take on DID, any more than “Psycho” or “Dressed to Kill” or “Identity” or “Fight Club.”
At the same time, a lot of what is going on with Dr. Fletcher turns out to be a massive red herring, almost as if Shyamalan is channeling his inner Stephen King treating her much in the same way that iconic horror author dealt Sheriff Buster in Misery or Overlook Hotel chef Halloran in The Shining .
In short, McAvoy's work here should go into the annals of great psycho performances alongside Anthony Perkins in Psycho, Jack Nicholson in The Shining and Kathy Bates in Misery.