Split

I've had skepticism with M. Night Shamalayan lately. His films have been kind of hit-and-miss these past few years. I think if he does more of what he did with this movie, he can be back on top in a few years. This movie is crazy intense! It was actually a lot darker than I thought it would be. There are some extremely mature and dark themes and subject matter and it almost goes into rated R territory at points. However, it is these themes and subject matter that make these characters who they are, and explains why they act the way they do. James McAvoy's performance is particularly impressive. This film proves that he can play anyone a director needs him to play. There's moments where he's funny there's moments where he's chilling, and there's moments where his performance makes you hold your breath worried he'll harm you. The three young actresses in the film provide stellar performances as well. There's such range of emotion with them. You sympathize with them, you fear for them, you feel what they feel. Genuine, tearful performances, that actually look tearful and not like acting are hard to come by, and they pulled it off very well. Like I said, this film is very heavy. It's a hard PG-13. I don't want to advocate for this film due to the dark, heavy themes and subject matter so I don't want to say that it was a good movie. At times, it is very hard to watch. But judging it purely from a filmmaking standpoint of "Was it well made? Was it well written? Was it well acted? Was it well directed?" etc. the answer is yes. If you're a fan of M Night's earlier work, this hearkens back to that. It's still too early at this point to say if he's redeemed himself from the garbage that was "The Last Airbender" and "After Earth", but if he can keep doing what he did with this film, he just might.
Grade: B   8/10    4/5