Photo Courtesy / Zambia
Hayley Smith
Editor-in-Chief
When three teenage girls are kidnapped by a man, they come to realize that he has multiple personalities and are left trying to figure out which personalities will help them escape their captor and which will stop them from doing so. Split is a film that will keep moviegoers interested and entertained throughout the film.
James McAvoy stars as Kevin Wendell Crumb…and Hedwig…and Barry…and about 21 other personalities. Some of these personalities are women, such as Patricia, who is always quick to scold the other personalities, Hedwig is a nine-year-old boy and Dennis is the personality that kidnaps the teenagers in the beginning of the movie. Kevin is the body that houses each of these personalities. The acting of these personalities was fantastic.
McAvoy was astounding. Each personality that was depicted in the film, which to clarify, was not all 23 of them, was completely different from the others. Each has their own way of talking and their own little quirks, and McAvoy did an amazing job showing how different each personality was, though they each exist within the same body.
Split is directed by M. Night Shyamalan, who also directed The Sixth Sense, Signs and Unbreakable, along with many other feature films.
I was expecting more from the movie because of the hype that the first previews got on social media. I was expecting some crazy, super suspenseful film that would make me afraid to sleep for a week. Don’t get me wrong, it was a decent movie, but it was not great. It did keep me interested for the most part, but it is not a movie that I would pay to see again in theaters.
The beginning of Split was great. At least the first two thirds of the movie kept me insanely interested and on the edge of my seat as the girls attempted to escape time after time. It kept me thinking and I found myself trying to guess what was going to happen next.
A part I was not a fan of was a backstory to Casey, one of the girls who was kidnapped, played by Anya Taylor-Joy, that did not seem to really seem to be too important to the plot of the movie. It would have been basically the same movie without the darkness of that story in it.
If you want a movie that will start to confuse your brain and kind of freak you out, then definitely go see Split. But if you are expected a spooky, crazy thriller, then you should probably opt for a different film. I would end up giving Split six out of 10 stars.