Who You Talking Too?

M Night Shyamalan, a director I have written about in length is one of the most interesting cases in Hollywood. Bursting onto the scene with the amazing Sixth Sense he would follow that up with the also impressive Unbreakable. Since then however he has directed one dud movie after another seemingly attempting to make each film worse than the last.

Which brings us to 2017 and his new movie Split which has been touted by some as somewhat of a return to form for a director who is struggling to justify his early reputation. Going into Split I have to admit that I had my reservations as to whether Shyamalan would ever make another worthwhile again but I was hoping to be pleasantly surprised.

The film begins at the end of a party where two cool girls are waiting for one of their dads to take them home but he refuses to do so until the loner girl that nobody likes is picked up. When it transpires that her lift has broken down the dad offers her a lift home much to the chagrin of the two popular girls.

So they get into the car and the dad is knocked out my a stranger who climbs into the car and knocks the girls out with a spray of some kind. The stranger in question is a young man by the name of Kevin although we will not discover this until later on in the film. Kevin is played by none other than James McAvoy who is for the most part awesome in everything he does which is one of the reasons I was hopeful that this might be a turn around for the director.

Anyhow Kevin locks the girls in a room in a basement somewhere and holds them prisoner. Whilst we don't know why this is initially things begin to become clear as the film trundles along. It quickly becomes clear that Kevin is a very disturbed individual as each time he enters the room to speak to the girls he is a different person. This confuses them until they learn that Kevin suffers from multiple personality disorder and that he is actually 23 people inside one mind.

We the viewer learn more about Kevins illness by way of trips he makes to his doctor who has been treating him for years. During the course of the film it is revealed that two personalities by the name of Dennis and Patricia have been banished by the others as they are too troublesome and that a more friendly personality named Barry has been running the show. However something has happened which has released Dennis and Patricia to take control of Kevin and the other 21 personalities, in fact it was Dennis that kidnapped the three girls and Dennis who is trying to convince the doctor that he is actually Dennis.

You see a person with Kevins disorder can manifest unique traits depending on the personality they are living in. For instance one personality may be right handed whilst another be be left. This principle can be taken further where a blind person may actually manifest a personality that can see despite their bodies physical disabilty.

After a couple of incidents involving the girls they are seperated into different rooms and via flashbacks we learn more about the loner girl who was abused by her uncle who she ended upliving with after her father passed away. We are even shown that she had an opportunity to kill him once but failed to take it (remember this as its important later on).

Down to the meat and bones of why Dennis kidnapped the girls and it turns out they are to be sacrificed to a 24th personality known as the Beast who the doctor believes does not exist due to Barrys description of his size and abilities (he can crawl on walls and has skin as think as a rhino. Whilst she knows of the bodies abilities to change depending on the personality in charge she does see how it would be possible to do the things that the Beast can supposedly do.

Theres plenty of exposition between loner girl and the most innocent of Kevins personalities a 9 year old boy named Hellwig but all of this is of course leading towards the inevitable appearence of the Beast.

Now anyone who has seen a Shyamalan movie will know that he made his name with the surprise twist and that whilst they were initially successful overtime they have become more than a little cliche and inducing of a facepalm so as I headed toward the end of Split I was dreading what was to come and lo and behold M Night did not let me down.

After the doctor arrives in Kevins basement and is unsurprisingly locked up too Kevin transforms into the Beast and true to form a Shyamalan ending descends into a touch of farce as the Beast does indeed crawl along walls and takes two shotgun blasts to the stomach but survives. The Beast then kills the two superficial girls and the doctor but stops short of killing loner girl as she is covered in scars from self harming and Kevin can relate to her pain as he too was abused by his mother (this turn in events is as groan inducing as it sounds.

So Kevin/the Beast leaves and loner girl is saved only of course to be returned home to her abusive uncle. It is at this point that Shyamalan actually saves the ending of what has been a fairly good film with his secondary twist. You see loner girls story is being reported on the news and is being watched on the tv by the patrons of a diner. We then overhear two women talking about how scary it is that Kevin is free somewhere and they make reference to a wheelchair bound man who was locked up for killing hundreds of people but they cannot remember his name. Then we hear a mans voice say that he was called Mr Glass and are shown that it is David Dunn (played by Bruce Willis) who is the superpowered hero from Shyamalans second film Unbreakable.

I will admit that this was quite a pleasant surprise, in fact I'd argue that it is the best ending to a Shyamalan film since the Sixth Sense. Yes the ending to Unbreakable was good but every film (and by proxeach ending) has been frankly terrible (although 2015s The Visit was a fairish return to some sort of form but is still not in the calibre of his first two films or Split) and many were of the opinion that maybe he should quit while he was behind. To his credit however Split is a good film though it is helped by a tour de force performance from McAvoy who is certainly a far better actor than the Happenings Mark Wahlberg.

McAvoy makes you believe that each of Kevins personalities are completely different which is a testament to his abilities rather than the writing of Shyamalan although the dialogue here is far less ridiculous than in some of his other movies.

As I've already said the film was on the verge of undoing all of McAvoys good work with the final reveal of the Beast but this can be overlooked by the appearance of Willis as Dunn in the final scene of the film.

The ending also opens the exciting possibility of a sequel to both Split and Unbreakable where we see Dunn do his best to try and take down Kevin who we last see completely in the grasp of Dennis, Patricia and the Beast. This is good news as if what is displayed here is anything to go by then we can only hope that Shyamalan continues this upward trajectory and that Willis doesn't just phone in his performance which he has been prone to do in recent years.

So to the score which I'm going to break down as follows -

The opening two thirds of the film pre the Beast are definately worth a strong 8 out of 10

The Beast and his sparing of loner girl only gets a 4

The second ending with David Dunn is certainly another 8

Therefore Split gets an aggregate score of 7 which I am going to upgrade to an 8 because I did genuinely enjoy this film and am eager to see what comes next.