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Scribbles About Movies: Split

I finally got around to watching the movie Split by M. Night Shyamalan. I've been wanting to watch this for a while... but right now I've been really into suspenseful movies... in fact- I might just end up watching a lot of horror movies or something and reviewing them here... so let me know if you want some more reviews like this.

And I'm going to kind of roast this movie a little for the complaints I have about it... but then I'm going to talk about what I liked about it because it was a genuinely good movie and I liked it a lot. 

It starts out slowly and weirdly... maybe it's just because Social Media wasn't that big of a thing when I was in high school and I never really cared about being invited to parties with people I didn't actually like... but it starts out with the 2 "Popular girls" Claire and Marcia saying that they didn't want to invite the "outsider" Casey to their party... and it just seemed weird. She invited the whole "art class" (art class?ART CLASS? SERIOUSLY?) to the party... which is weird. Why specifically Art Class- it was at a restaurant- there was no art involved. Also it doesn't seem to have been an art school, and the subject of Art literally never comes up in the movie again. They don't use artistic reasoning with Barry talking about fashion, they don't draw anything for Hedwig... DON'T PUT IT IN THE MOVIE IF THERE IS LITERALLY NO PURPOSE!

Anyway... the way that the girls get kidnapped is also weird. It happens fast, which is a good thing... But the bad guy drugs the dad that was taking Casey and the other girls home and then he just gets in the car and takes it while the girls don't fight back at all... and he drugs Marcia and Claire but not Casey... it's just weird. So the pro of that was that it got things moving faster than they were... because it was pretty slow for a while... but the con was that... it made little to no sense.

They mentioned that Dennis had been following the girls around for a few days or something too... they could have shown that or something... anything would have been more exciting and realistic than what they showed. The girls didn't really act like real teenagers either... it was just really weird and clunky.

Also the ending is hard to decide whether or not I like it. I've never seen Unbreakable and I didn't know this was a pseudo-sequel for that movie... and you wouldn't know it until the very end... and that's presented at the twist when really it isn't much of a twist. In CinemaSins they said "Cinematic Universes are EXPECTED at this point rather than a twist." So... presenting this as a twist is kind of a downer... and I think that downgrades it as a horror movie. It's kind of more of an elaborate setup for a third movie about Superhumans... which isn't what this is. This is a suspenseful thriller... so yeah.

Okay so back to the things I liked about the movie... as a whole I did like it... it kept me on the edge of my seat- it held my attention- even in the parts where the Therapist was being a therapist... It wasn't anything un-interesting.

I also thought that Kevin, Casey and Dr. Fletcher were all pretty well developed characters by the end of the movie. We know about the themes of abuse from Kevin and Casey, as well as Dr. Fletcher's genuine sympathy for her patients and her struggle to have her work recognized. I think that if there is a third movie... this will make it even stronger because we have these strong,well established characters already in the works... I think really the story just needs to be suspenseful and not only a "hero vs. villain" story... because M. Night Shyamalan is really better as a psychological thriller director than as a superhero movie director... I've never seen Avatar or After Earth... but I think I'd rather see him do thrillers or horror movies than superhero movies.

Slight spoilers for the end of the movie... but there are 3 deaths- including Claire and Marcia... and there characters are never really established. I don't even think I could tell you which one was which but... they're definitely the most boring characters and they're not in most of the movie because their locked up... so their deaths don't really matter... normally I would say this is probably the worst thing that could happen in a horror movie... but at that time I think so much else had happened in the movie that you aren't just concerned about whether or not the girls are going to make it out. The thing that was driving the plot and the suspense at the very start of the movie barely matters in the end of the movie... and I think that's a good thing. I feel like that makes the twist a little bit better. I am genuinely worried for Kevin in the same way I'm worried for those girls.

Now... here's something kind of deep that I just thought of... but I think Hedwig is maybe the saddest of all the personalities. Kevin's personalities help him deal with the grief of his childhood and his abusive parents... and with the "undesirable" personalities of Dennis and Patricia, Hedwig is just a 9 year old boy caught in the middle of it. He doesn't need to be on Dennis and Patricia's side... but he's abused and he wants to stay on their good side for that- I guess... I don't know but there's a really sad story there and it breaks my heart a little because Hedwig does seem like a middle-ground sweet personality... but the other personality calls him out at the end.

So I think that is everything. I hope you guys like this little movie review... I'll probably do some more soon too!

Also... while watching this movie... I split my pants... there's a twist for the next movie!

Byeee!
-Shannon 

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