Back in the Grind

Conditions: Biblical 

Film Review: Split 

Okay.  Night Shymalan created a name for himself as the king of the twist ending, and certainly played up to that title in film after film.  But his films gained a certain ...ridiculousness, and even pretentiousness as time went on, and he fell out of favour with audiences.  Recently he popped up as a director for hire in a couple of dire movies, but then did a small well made film called The Visit.  This was something of a return to form, and suddenly there was some momentum behind him again.  Split is his latest film, and the buzz was all over it.  Critics and preview audiences were raving about it, so then after all these years we get to go see another Night movie - opening night.

The hook is that the main character, played by James McAvoy, has 23 personalities stuffed into his head, and switches between them all.  He abducts three girls and imprisons them in a basement.  The problem, it turns out, is that that's also all there is.  Seriously, that's basically all the movie has.  James McAvoy is as mad as a bicycle, kidnaps three girls, and keeps them in his basement.  In between menacing the girls he goes and sees his therapist, who is very nice to him.  And time goes by.

It's one of the more odd thrillers I've seen in a while.  There's no hint of cops, detectives, parents, not even a psychic.  It's not that kind of film.  All we have is the three girls, skeeved out, and trapped in a room.  We keep wanting them to overpower McAvoy, he's not that big after all.  But it's not that kind of film either.  Instead, Night chooses to delve into the backstory of one of the captives, who it turns out is abused by her uncle.

So basically there's misery in every direction you look here.  Night's thrown us down a hole, then shoveled dirt on our faces.  And just when we start to think about looking at our watches, the first big twist arrives.  The doctor's been banging on and on about how research has shown different personalities in people with this disorder can have different physical characterisations (like being blind, or left/right handed, or needing insulin).  This idea is then stretched past breaking point where McAvoy has a new personality arrive, called the Beast, who is capable of extreme levels of strength.  Worse than that, the Beast's skin can withstand knife wounds, and can even deal with a shotgun blast.

This is the point where I cross my arms and start laughing at the film.  Different personality quirks is fine, but withstanding blunt force trauma?  Climbing walls with bare hands?  Bulging muscles and veins?  Ha.  The Beast dispatches the doctor and two of the girls before coming after the third one.  She runs, grabs a shotgun, and finally locks herself in a cage.  Whatever, the shark has well and truly been jumped now.  Anyway, the final twist comes right at the end, after this tense dark thriller has turned into a comic book film we get the revelation that it actually is a comic book film, a sequel to Unbreakable with Bruce Willis wearily sitting in a cafe, sipping a weary cup of coffee while wearily contemplating digging all that shit up again.

The cynic in me suspects that Night changed the ending to perhaps pump it up a bit.  And so I would love to know what the original ending to this thing was, what really happened between that lost girl and the madman.  I suspect she engaged him on his broken level, maybe did something clever and dramatic to save herself.  Instead, we got this mess.  Foiled again.  One quirk out of five.

- Peace out