Truth be told, I've never been a big fan of M. Night Shyamalan. "The Sixth Sense" is a film that got spoiled for me and it really ruined my experience with it. "Unbreakable" didn't really impress me but I'm definitely going to give it another go soon. "After Earth" is an absolute atrocity to the word cinema, and I haven't seen the likes of, "The Happening", "The Last Airbender", and even "Signs". The main reason I became truly excited for "Split" was more than just the early positive buzz it was receiving and the fascinating premise. James McAvoy (an extremely underrated talent) and Anya Taylor-Joy (the biggest up and coming star Hollywood has) at the forefront were the two main reasons for excitement. Needless to say, and as expected, Joy and McAvoy delivered on every level. McAvoy's performance in this film is definitely Oscar worthy. Obviously the year has just begun and there is no way he'll get nominated, but McAvoy having to pull off so many different personalities was a tough task to accomplish. Having to tackle all of that and do it convincingly could not be pulled off by some rookie who is just joining the ranks. Anya Taylor-Joy, who starred in Robert Eggers' 2016 period piece horror film "The Witch", needs to be in more films. I hope her agent doesn't start making her the face of a franchise and then end up ruining her name too soon and end up being the next Jennifer Lawrence. Great at first, but over saturated before the age of 30. Both of Anya's performance don't really showcase much range, but you can see that she is destined to be a movie star in due time. A lot of what makes "Split" work is just the performances, but the execution of the premise is quite great. M. Night is notorious (or so everyone says) for forcing in nonsensical plot points into his films just for the sake of, "the twist". In "Split", it's very direct and never tries to implement a twist for the sake of screwing up the audience's perception of what they are expecting. When people think,"Shyamalan", they think of the word "twist", and rightfully so. Here, Shyamalan allows "Split" to be exactly what it set out to be and directing the story in the right direction without ever letting it get into "implausible territory". To be quite frank, "Split" doesn't have A twist, it has some really neat, clever, and *extremely* well-timed reveals and that's it. Mid-way through, I completely forgot that Shyamalan even directed and wrote this film. It felt like some up and coming director, who was just trying to making a name for himself by introducing a great premise, with talented stars, and executing it well enough to craft a great movie going experience. Sounds awfully familiar... Shyamalan should stick to making independently produced films and stop trying to be overly ambitious just to be cool. Don't twist our perception of the film just to say,"GOTCHYA!" When Shyamalan directs films that are smaller in scale they just so happen to be some really entertaining films. When he tries to scale everything up, it turns into a disaster, "After Earth" is a prime example of this. I would definitely recommend "Split" to any fan of Shyamalan, Blumhouse Productions, and any fan of film in general. It's a great time at the movies and make sure to bring someone along with you so you can discuss afterwards. Make sure they're not talkative or overly reliant on their phone, it'll just end up being a bad time for you...etc. "Split" gets an 8.1/10
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