Monday at the Movies - December 11, 2017

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” This week, I’m a year late to the Split party, but imagine how the rest of the audience felt when they wound up sixteen years late to the party. Caution: spoilers for Split do follow.

Split (2016) – M. Night Shyamalan is a figure of some controversy, the bulk of whose oeuvre Wikipedia aptly describes as “poorly received but sometimes financially successful.” Split was reviewed by many as the debut of late Shyamalan, a slight return to form and a turn toward a more prosperous cinematic career. Split is, to be fair, leaps and bounds better than much of Shyamalan’s recent work, but – in the words of Mark Kermode – “so is, y’know, slamming your hand in a car door.” Split features a rightly well-regarded performance by James McAvoy as Kevin, possessed as he is by 24 personalities, some of which drive him to abduct a trio of vulnerable teenage girls (Anya Taylor-Joy, Haley Lu Richardson, Jessica Sula) for sinister, mysterious purposes. The film is largely competent and even occasionally terrifying as the girls are menaced by McAvoy’s multiple personalities; McAvoy does a remarkable job creating personas recognizable by different distortions of the same face even before he speaks in a variety of intonations, and Shyamalan has found three actresses very effective at bearing the burden of the film’s horror. The film’s climax, though, felt a bit of a letdown as the plot quite literally runs away after making what might be a condescending interpretation of self-harm before pulling a Prometheus and deferring the story’s end for a future installment; the truth about Kevin is apparently revealed (though not much else is resolved, and even that’s up for a spot of interpretation).  But Shyamalan makes a bizarre decision when his final scene casts the entire film as a sequel to Unbreakable (2000). It’s a peculiar way to build a franchise, and indeed a third film – Glass – is evidently due in 2019 to unite the two disparate films, but it does feel that Shyamalan has traded an ending for a reminder of what might have been his last great film. Come for McAvoy’s compelling performance, but leave with a peculiar taste in your mouth as the film ends with a few bewildering creative calls. Having said that, though, I’m always up for more Unbreakable.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you next week!