Suspenseful New Thriller Split

Split is an interesting take on the Suspense/Thriller genre. I was very skeptical on whether this movie would be good or not because it was directed by M. Night Shyamalan, a director notorious for ruining “The Last Airbender.” The movie centralizes around Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy), who suffers from dissociative identity disorder (DID), giving him more than one person, and Casey Cooke (Anya Taylor-Jay), a girl who suffers from depression because of past traumatic experiences.

The movie itself is based on modern times, so sometime between 2016 and 2017. Casey Cooke is kidnapped by one of Kevin’s personas, as well as two of her friends, Marcia (Jessica Sula) and Claire (Haley Lu Richardson). They are held as captives in a basement , which is soon revealed to be the basement of a Philadelphia Zoo. Casey and her friends are kept by his personalities that call themselves “The Horde.” They are told that they are essential for ‘a great cause’. This ‘great cause’ is revealed to be the “Beast”, a twenty-fourth personality that has never taken over Kevin’s body before. The movie takes you through a roller-coaster of suspense and almost unpredictable twists to the plot.

A very interesting and appealing part of the movie is the camera’s angle. For example, the camera is placed in Casey’s point-of-view while she is waking up, giving the audience a view of what she sees in her vision and making the scene creepier than it already was. Although the camera work was very good, some of the angles felt forced and making the scene less necessary. In some of the scenes that involved walking up and down the stairs used the exact same angle and it ended up being overused.

The actors did a very good job and impressed me, but James McAvoy did a spectacular job. His portrayal of each personality states was mind-blowingly believable. The way that Anya Taylor-Joy could keep a straight face in the most dire situations was amazing. I didn’t like that Haley Lu Richardson and Jessica Sula didn’t play any type of role and had little to no screen time.

The movie is a PG-13 and I recommend it for a mature audience. Most horror films are unoriginal and contain overused cliches, but the plot was original as well as its concept. I would rate the movie an eight out of ten.