**WARNING** This post may contain plot spoilers, however I will be sure not to reveal the twist!

Welcome back Gals and Ghouls! Today I am here to share with you my honest review of the new movie Split. I was fortunate enough to see it last night (Thursday, January 19th, 2017), which was technically a day before the official release date because my local theatre released it one day early. Needless to say, I was extremely excited and went with my boyfriend to see the film. 

Brief Synopsis

Following a cheery, teenage birthday party, three teenage girls are kidnapped from a parent’s car. Best friends, Claire and Marcia, along with their art class’ outsider, Casey (played by the actress from The Witch), are held captive by a strange man in the windowless basement of a local zoo. Their captor tells them that they are sacred guests and offers them the strangest of welcomes. We learn that their captors name is Dennis, and Miss Patricia, and Hedwig… But mostly Kevin Wendell Crumb, a man who suffers from a personality disorder called DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder). Kevin’s 23 personalities and his psychiatrist all fight for the light as Dennis, Miss Patricia, and Hedwig prepare to serve the girls to the 24th personality, one that the others call “The Beast”.

Critics’ Reviews

“There are plenty of proper twists to follow, none more unexpected than the fact that Shyamalan himself has managed to get his groove back after a slew of increasingly atrocious misfires”
– Peter Debruge (Variety)

“It twists the themes of fate and trauma that have been his stock-in-trade since The Sixth Sense into a very entertaining genre exercise—some of his strongest work since The Village and Signs”
– Ignatiy Vishnevetsky (A.V. Club)

“Filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan launches a full-fledged comeback with this tense, satisfying horror-thriller”
– Jeffrey M. Anderson (Common Sense Media)

My Opinion

This review is going to be especially hard for me because all I want to do is spoil EVERYTHING. This movie has me so excited on so many levels that I just want to share my full opinion and everything that happens with anyone who will listen to my ranting. But, my goal here tonight is to NOT ruin this film for you, because I want each and every one of you to experience it for yourselves.

I think the one thing that stood out the most in this film is the focus on mental illness. I thought it was going to be a straight up “be afraid of the crazy ones” kind of movie, but it’s quite the opposite. By injecting Kevin’s psychiatrist into the story, you see someone who truly tries to humanize the features that a lot of people consider “crazy”. It also gives us an interesting idea about DID that at least I had never considered before.

DID is probably one of the most fascinating mental illnesses that I’ve ever come across, because what a lot of people don’t realize is that it’s not just multiple personalities that manifest in one person, but it’s completely different people as well. Each “alter” as they’re known, has different physical attributes as well as psychological ones. Often patients will have one alter that is protective while another is a young child, but one alter may be allergic to peanuts, while none of the others (including the patient themselves) are. Or, for example, in the film, one alter is diabetic and requires insulin injections, while not even the host body has that physical attribute. Because of this extraordinary aspect of the illness, the psychiatrist relates it to the supernatural. The fact that the mind can change the physical attributes of a person at the drop of a hat, means that we don’t know what our minds are truly capable of. (This will make a lot more sense when you watch the film for yourself)

The scare factor of this movie definitely came when you first encounter “The Beast”. Not so much that the creature itself is scary, but the fact that the human body is capable of something so extreme is kind of terrifying. I definitely would not consider this a horror movie, but I think it falls perfectly into the thriller or crime category even.

The only thing that I absolutely did not like was the very, very end of this film. It didn’t necessarily ruin the entire film, but I feel like it’s not totally relevant anymore. There’s no point in directing your film at younger movie goers who want a good scare if you’re going to reference something from 16 years ago when some of them weren’t even born. Now, I understood the reference and still wasn’t a huge fan just because I thought it was unnecessary, but otherwise this movie was phenomenal.

Also, anyone who follows M. Night Shyamalan’s cameos in his films (for those of you who don’t know, he has a cameo role in every single one of his films), this cameo will give you a good little giggle, that’s for sure.

That’s it for this week folks! I’m working on some bigger stories that will hopefully be coming out soon, as well as potentially expanding to posting multiple nights per week, so I hope you all look forward to that. As always, please leave a comment or contact me if you have suggestions for future stories or if you just want to share something scary as all hell! I’m open to anything (within reason…) Don’t forget to give this post a like and share it on your social media using the links provided below!

Until next time… Keep it spooky!