This week's movie is Split, and just the trailer got me very interested. How the mind works and different possibilities has always been an interesting topic for me as long time readers might know. I enjoy checking out movies that give a focus to these ideas. For some added fun this one is a thriller, so hear are my thoughts on if it lived up to the hype.
The movie starts with what looks like the end of a birthday party and a girl, Casey Cooke (played by Anya Taylor-Joy), sitting at the table but looking alone. Next we see two other girls, the birthday girl Claire (played by Haley Lu Richardson) and her best friend Marcia (played by Jessica Sula), talking to Claire's father (played by Sebastain Arcelus) about how this happens when you give a pity invite. They are talking about Casey who is standing alone by a window on the phone. She walks over and explains that her ride broke down and will not be coming and she will just take the bus. Claire's dad says he will give her a ride home.
We follow them out to the car where they start loading up all of Claire's gifts into the trunk. Clair's dad keeps loading them while the girls get in the car. While the other two girls talk in the back, Casey watches in the mirror for Clair's dad. When she hears the trunk close, they all put on their seatbelts, but Casey stopped when she noticed some of the stuff spilled on the ground instead of being in the trunk. A man, who we find out later is named Kevin (played by James McAvoy), gets in the driver seat in place of Clair's dad. The girls in the back say he got in the wrong car, and he puts on a mask and sprays them with something, knocking them out. Casey, who hasn't been noticed yet, tries to slowly escape, but when the door opens it makes noise in the car, and she gets sprayed too.
The acting was extremely well done by James McAvoy. The way he had to play multiple characters in one body was crazy, and he played them all perfectly. The acting by Anya Taylor-Joy, Haley Lu Richardson and Jessica Sula wasn't quite as good, but they were only having to portray one character. The characters of Claire and Marcia were almost stereotypical of rich privileged girls with little understanding of anything else. This is probably what they were suppose to be like to enhance everything James McAvoy had to do and the subtle acting of Anya, but it dragged the movie down a little as well.
The story plot was slightly confusing at times, only because of a lot of back and forth scenes. I understand having some of them there helped with the building suspense, but a few flashback scenes just didn't tie into the story as well. It may have been to add to character development, but more seemed added in to make it be longer and took away from the build up. However, it had a great theory behind the whole thing and what makes it even more chilling is how possible it really is. I did a little reading on real Dissociative Identity Disorder's (DID) and it was interesting. You can check out these ten famous cases here.
Overall, the acting could have been better from some people, and the story plot could have had some things cut out as far as I could see. It was still a very well made movie, and really did make for a great thriller movie. For these reasons above I would rate this movie 8.6/10.
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