After watching M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable, which I thought was absolutely amazing, I wanted to follow it up with another one of his highly reputable films, the one I’m about to talk about, as it was leaving HBO Max soon. Split is about a man, played by James McAvoy, with twenty-three distinct personalities, who kidnaps three young girls and warns them that the twenty-fourth personality is far worse and more dangerous than any of the others. I was intrigued by this concept because I was curious to see how McAvoy was going to do performance-wise, as it sounded pretty demanding to play all twenty-three and potentially twenty-four personalities.

Not all the personalities were really used in the film, but just a fair few; however, James McAvoy absolutely hit it out of the park. His performance was incredible and eerie, seamlessly switching between different personalities. There were really only three different personalities he primarily used, with two of them being more serious and the other one, to my surprise, being pretty funny, even if a little creepy and incredibly awkward. Anya-Taylor Joy also really sold her character, playing Casey, and I bought her fear throughout.

There were also some really great, thrilling moments, mainly towards the end, as I was waiting for the final personality to finally come out. Thriller is my favorite genre, so of course, those were my favorite parts of the movie. The third act had a great “ticking clock” aspect to it, and I was on the edge of my seat for sure. This part of the movie also has some of the best, surprising, and shocking moments that kept me into it.

Per usual, from the two previous Shyamalan movies I’ve seen, Unbreakable (the one I already mentioned) and Signs, the cinematography and camera work were excellent. It really felt claustrophobic the entire time, which helped with the tension aspect of it all. Shyamalan and his crew pulled off some really neat camera tricks, just like in Unbreakable, though maybe not to that degree, which I also thought were really interesting.

Though, to be honest, I wasn’t really a fan of this film; it just wasn’t for me at all. I admire it and think it was well made, but I wasn’t really into it for a multitude of reasons. The first one was that it just weirded me out. Yes, James McAvoy gave a fantastic, extremely complex performance, but his character was way too over-the-top in my opinion, and after doing some research, his portrayal of Dissociative Identity Disorder was over-dramatized for obvious movie reasons. Shyamalan just made some really odd writing decisions that went along with that, especially towards the end, that I have no idea why they were even put in.

Speaking of things I was confused about, I had no idea what this movie was really even about or if it was even trying to say something, which I found incredibly frustrating. Obviously, I knew what it was about on a very concrete level, but on a deeper one, again, I have no clue. What definitely didn’t help with this is that it started to feel very repetitive after a while, with really the only thing seemingly happening, at least to me, being McAvoy interacting with Casey and his therapist (who I’ll talk about next) over and over again. It never, at any point, until the third act, felt like it was actually building up to anything, despite the premise.

There were also two aspects of the movie, one being the therapist, that, both while watching the film and after, I have no clue why they were even in there. Neither of them was interesting at all, and the pacing took a hit whenever they were brought in. I don’t know why the therapist was in there, because by the end of the movie, she really didn’t change anything much when it came to the events of the story. It seems like she was just there because it made sense for a person with severe Dissociative Identity Disorder to have a therapist. The other aspect I was confused about was that there was all this flashback stuff with Casey. I guess that they kind of tied into the main narrative, but not to a level that I actually thought they were really needed very much.

The most disappointing thing to me about Split, though, was that, for being a thriller, I really didn’t find it very intense at all until the third act. As I said before, I never felt like it was ever building up to anything, along with it feeling incredibly repetitive. I thought it was a lot more weird and uncomfortable to sit through (and not in a good way) than intense or scary.

I get that this was well-made, but this definitely goes on my “not for me” list of movies. I feel that this would have been a much better film if it had been more focused on being a simpler thriller.