Could have been decent

Rating: 3/10 (3 February 2017)

So Split is the latest movie from M. Night Shyamalan. Not having seen any of his movies since The Village nor being that familiar with the actors I didn't really have any expectations about this movie.
Anyway, Split is a classic kidnapping-thriller. Three girls are kidnapped by an unknown assailant with multiple personalities and spends the movie trying to escape. Along the way they uncover disturbing truths about their kidnapper. In a parallel story the kidnappers psychiatrist suspects something and starts investigating on her own. Hardly groundbreaking stuff, then again there are plenty of fantastic movies with unoriginal structures.
I was quite drawn in by the first half of the movie. The gradual reveal of the plot works fairly well. Sure, the dialogue was fairly wooden and there was little to no background on the main characters. The flashbacks that was supposed to breathe some life into the main character didn't really add much to the story or give much nuance to the character so much as being a pretty cheap plot device to tie the cheap ending together. For all it's flaws the first two thirds of the movie worked for me. The gradual reveal of the main antagonists personalities and motivation along with some decent acting from James McAvoy makes for just enough suspense to keep the viewer hooked.
Like so many other movies the end is where it all falls apart. There is a special place in hell for writers who incorporate supernatural elements where there is absolutely no need for them. This movie would probably have worked much better as a semi-realistic thriller. The foreshadowing of supernatural elements are vigorously shoved in the viewers face during the whole film but I didn't really suspect they would be so over the top. Subtlety doesn't so much get thrown out the window as shot in the chest with a shotgun. Not to mention the protagonists escape that is heavy handedly tied to the forced flashbacks that plague the film and makes the end both over the top and anti-climactic at the same time. Honorable mention goes to the cheap tie in to Unbreakable in the movies dying seconds that seems lifted from a superhero movie rather than a sort of serious thriller.
A seriously bad ending destroys what could have been a decent film.