She’s able to convey emotion with both clarity and subtlety, whether that is the horror of recognizing that she is about to be kidnapped, the inkling of an idea for an escape, or a suppressed sadness. Aside from a few exchanges with Hedwig where she is trying to convince him to help her, Taylor-Joy has precious few lines in the script, so most of her performance is in her face. She also has a kind of patient observation about her that serves her and her friends well throughout the film, and we understand how she developed these skills in a few flashback sequences to her as a five-year-old. She’s easily the most clever of the abductees and the most capable. She lends her character Casey a reserved sadness, for sure, but Casey is no pushover. The other personalities are ancillary, so don’t expect to see them all equally.Īnna Taylor-Joy, first introduced to me in the fantastic horror film The VVItch, again delivers a stunning performance. The final “main” character in Kevin is Hedwig, a young boy who befriends the girls and represents their best chance for escape. Kevin has the light infrequently in the story, as a recent conflict has placed two more domineering characters in charge: Barry, the man responsible for the kidnapping, and Patricia, a strict woman who oversees the health of the captive girls. Kevin’s mind is described through the metaphor of all of these personalities sitting in a circle of chairs, and whichever one, “has the light”, gets to control the body. There’s the “official” personality Kevin Wendell Crumb, but we only see him sparingly. Though billed as having 23 distinct personalities (with a 24 th representing the major threat of the film), McAvoy only received billing for eight of the personalities, because those are the only ones that appear on screen. Together, these aspects heighten what would otherwise be a fairly rote kidnapping thriller.Īt the center of it all is James McAvoy and his collection of characters. The strength of Split is derived from two main sources: the strong performances from McAvoy and Taylor-Joy, and some astounding camerawork from Shyamalan and his DP, Mike Gioulakis ( It Follows). Fletcher (Betty Buckley), who begins to suspect that something is awry. The narrative is also punctuated by Kevin’s visits to his therapist Dr. The remainder of the film details the girl’s horror and slow realization of Kevin’s pathology, and attempts by Casey to take advantage of some of Kevin’s kinder personalities to effect an escape. In the parking lot, the three girls are abducted by a stranger who we come to learn is Kevin (James McAvoy), the man dealing with 23 separate personalities. Friends Claire (Haley Lu Richardson) and Marcia (Jessica Sula) tell Claire’s father that it is okay to leave Casey, but he insists on giving Casey a ride home. The film opens at public party where one girl, Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy) has only been invited as a courtesy. The plot isn’t much more complex than I have already laid out. Aided by two spectacular performances (and a collection of other strong ones), Split is easily the best film Shyamalan has made in over a decade – and may be second only to The Sixth Sense. The film is commendable for its uses of classic camera techniques to disorient the audience and ratchet up the more realistic aspects of the film, while downplaying the more fantastic and silly elements. Known to us as “Kevin”, the man harbors 23 distinct personalities, and as some of them begin to run things, we’re confronted with a powerful force living inside Kevin – a 24 th personality known only as “The Beast”. The film follow the abduction of three teenage girls by a man with dissociative identity disorder (DID). Night Shyamalan’s latest thriller Split will not make audiences forget about the director’s most embarrassing missteps, but the film evokes The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable more than The Happening and After Earth.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |