Split

Having really enjoyed M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable, I wanted to see what all the talk was about with Split from 2016. It had been hailed as a return to form for the director and was also very successful at the box office so, with only the synopsis in my head, I pressed play and prepared for a film about a man dominated by several personalities.

Wasting no time at all, Shyamalan begins with the swift kidnapping of three girls by James McAvoy before they are locked away underground. They think they know their captor until he reappears but dressed as a number of different people; some personalities are happy to talk whereas others are far more brutal making the girls realise how truly dire their situation is. It's tense, dark and very unsettling to witness but Shyamalan knocks the audience off key when McAvoy attends pleasant meetings with his therapist.

It's engaging to watch, owing much to McAvoy's standout performance but also in thanks to his hostages one of whom played by a wide-eyed Anya Taylor-Joy, and Split successfully hits Hitchcockian levels of greatness. And while it is easy to make comparisons to Psycho with thrillers like this, it is deserved due to Shyamalan's tight direction and the film's well-handled cinematography which kept me intrigued all the way through. That's also no easy thing for thrillers which tread very close to the two hour mark but Spit's methodical pacing gives the film enough momentum to justify its length. Even the director's obligatory cameo works well and adds a much needed element of humour to balance out the film.

Split ranks up with some this decades best thrillers and I'm very excited to see where the sequel will go next. While there were the odd genre moments that had me rightly guessing what would happen next every so often, this still gets a strong recommendation and fans of the genre would be silly to miss out.