I actually just wrote a mini-review of this movie for my speech class. It reads as follows: Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, Split tells the story of three young girls abducted by a man named Kevin(played by James McAvoy), who is afflicted by an extreme case of multiple-personality-disorder. Unlike many of M. Night’s films, Split engages the audience from the outset and wastes no screen time whatsoever. Kevin has 23 different personalities (only about 10 of which appear in the movie), with several of them having extremely dysfunctional characteristics (obsessive compulsive disorder, gender dysphoria, pedophilia, sociopathy), while many of his personalities are highly-functioning and marked by exceptional ability. Two of the man’s more destructive personalities begin working together to undermine the others and take control of Kevin. Their ultimate goal is to accommodate the emergence of a 24th personality which they claim is Kevin’s ultimate form. This is where the young girls come into the story; they’ve been kidnapped to serve as a sacrificial meal for the 24th personality when it finally emerges. James McAvoy’s talent becomes increasingly apparent as the plot progresses and he begins playing nearly a dozen characters in rapid succession, with multiple characters appearing in the same scene. This film is truly one of a kind and is perhaps such a masterpiece that we may finally forgive M. Night Shyamalan for writing the screenplay of Stuart Little in the same year as The Sixth Sense.
