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Split (2017), PG-13, ★★★

James McAvoy as a creepy kidnapper.
I have heard about this movie when the trailers came out and I saw the trailer and I thought to myself, maybe the director, M. Night Shyamalan is returning to form once again. However, when Shyamalan was tackling a subject associating with a psychological disorder, I thought it was bold for him to place a routine situation but relevant situation in his myriad of movies. Now, I would not categorize this movie as a horror movie but even though there are elements of horror, it is psychological thriller aspect that jolts this movie into such curiosity. Now with two movies in a row, Shyamalan's resurgence is now noticeable as he has made his most solid and well-crafted movie in a long time since Signs.

Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy) is invited to Claire's (Haley Lu Richardson) party out of pity. Claire tells his father that Casey frequently gets into trouble and gets sent into detention in school. When Casey hears that her ride broke down, Claire's father obliges to take Casey home with him and Claire. The girls leave along with another friend, Marcia (Jessica Sula). Moments later, a person named Kevin (James McAvoy) gets into Claire's dad's car. Claire thinks he got into the wrong car but Kevin, wearing a facemask sprays the girls with some sort of toxin to knock them out.

Kevin brings the girls to a windowless room in an unknown location where they keep them trapped. The girls try any way to escape the room. However, later, when Claire and Marcia call to a woman for help. She approaches the door, but it is only Kevin wearing a skirt and high heels. He switches to Patricia, a polite British woman, who assures them that she knows why they are there and the captor is not allowed to touch them. Meanwhile, Dr. Karen Fletcher (Betty Buckley) is in a Skype conference in which she discusses her patients, most of whom are suffering from dissociative identity disorder, and say that other identities could be hidden and can be unleashed with could possibly foreshadow an event.

The three girls trapped.
I am not going to post spoilers in this review so I am going to be very careful here. Again, Shyamalan has made his most suspenseful film in a long time and I believe that the psychological thriller aspect is even with the horror aspect but I question the psychological thriller aspect with Kevin having 23 identities but when Kevin goes into the therapist's office and discuss a potential revelation of a 24th identity and says that it is real, then I sort of cringed and went with it because I thought, in the end, this could be some sort of anticlimax. And, in a way, the revelation of the 24th identity could be defined as an anticlimax.

However, Shyamalan's latest movie is helped by an impressive and fantastic performance by James McAvoy, who probably gives one of his best performances, if not his best, ever because his character is a ticking time-bomb or 23 ticking time-bombs that you will not expect who Kevin will transform into. He has a balance of being a gleeful and scary abductor and occasional humor in his personas. Anya Taylor-Joy also gives a quietly good performance with a character that is troubling but tries to find a way to redeem herself to avoid her persona and get out. However, her character's backstory is a bit icky in a way but also circles back in the end as to how her character will get out of the situation. Betty Buckley is solid as the therapist. Haley Lu Richardson and Jessica Sula are fine but not as memorable in their roles.

However, there is a moment in the movie that changes the whole complexion of the story and my questions regarding the main story and I will leave at that because it is an awesome moment. It is a great pay-off. So, what Shyamalan creates is a claustrophobic vibe with theme of psychological distress, rage and also some implied themes of abuse that could turn off some people but the movie is clever, in some aspects, with those themes as it digs deeper towards the end of the movie. I said a long time ago that a movie called The Last Airbender was marked as "the death of M. Night Shyamalan's career". Well, even though The Visit was marginally good, Split is a rebirth for M. Night Shyamalan's career as it is a tout, tense, chilling, entertaining and well-paced film that will make you say that he has still got it after so many years. This is a good movie.

***


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