Split (2017) Review

"I just ate a hot dog."

-Hedwig

Kevin (James McAvoy) has 23 distinct personalities.  Most of them are totally fine people, but three of them have sinister beliefs in the existence of a 24th personality known as "The Beast".  It's supposedly incredibly strong and bloodthirsty.  Kevin's extremist personalities, Dennis, Patricia, and Hedwig, take over and kidnap three teenage girls to sacrifice to The Beast.  Can the girls and Kevin's less violent personalities stop the madness before it's too late?

What Works:

You can't talk about Split without talking about James McAvoy.  The guy is simply incredible.  We don't get to see all of the personalities, but the ones we do see feel like extremely different characters.  McAvoy does a fantastic job in the role and his performance is what excites me most about seeing Glass.

The story elements in Split are very interesting and made it easy for me to become engaged in the story.  I find dissociative identity disorder to be fascinating.  I know this film exaggerates elements of the disorder, but it gives us an interesting story.  Every bit of information we got about the different identities pulled me deeper into the film and I just wanted more.  

The horror elements also worked very well.  We don't know what the evil personalities have in store for the captive girls and that lets our imaginations run wild.  It puts us in the perspective of the girls and makes it easy for us to empathize with them.  We don't know what's going to happen and that makes the film terrifying.  And when we finally do learn what The Beast intends to do with them, it's horrific and not underwhelming in the least.

Finally, the reveal that this all takes place in the same universe as Unbreakable was terrific.  The first time I watched Split, I hadn't seen Unbreakable, so I really didn't understand the ramifications of what that final scene meant, but on the rewatch, having seen Unbreakable, I picked up on a lot of the same themes between the films, plus the plot points having to do with the train have interesting potential for Glass.  I love that this movie was a surprise sequel and all it does is enhance this film.

What Sucks:

My only real problem with Split comes from some of the interactions between the girls.  We are immediately shown that Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy) is very smart and a survivalist when she tells Marcia (Jessica Sula) to urinate on herself to get away from Dennis, which is great.  I figured the other two girls might be in hysterics for most of the film and it would be up to Casey to lead them, but that's not what happens.  Claire (Hayley Lu Richardson) and Marcia both quickly become determined to find a way out no matter how unlikely the success of their plans are, but Casey seems content to wait and keep the status quo.  That doesn't really jive with some of the stuff we saw from her earlier in the film and it makes the interactions between the girls frustrating at times.

Verdict:

Split is a fascinating movie and a stronger film than Unbreakable.  James McAvoy is incredible, all aspects of the story are wholly engaging, and the surprise reveal that this is a sequel to Unbreakable works very well.  Not all of the interactions between the girls click, but that doesn't stop Split from having it going on.

 9/10: Great