Taglines: Kevin has 23 distinct personalities. The 24th is about to be unleashed.
Split Movie Storyline. The film opens with a birthday party for Claire (Haley Lu Richardson). Her classmate Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy) was invited out of pity, as Claire tells her father (Neal Huff) that Casey frequently gets into trouble with teachers and gets sent to detention. Casey calls for a ride home but is told the car broke down. She’s about to take the bus, but Claire’s dad insists that she go home with them.
The girls leave along with another friend, Marcia (Jessica Sula). Claire’s dad is approached by an unseen person. Moments later, the person, a man named Kevin (James McAvoy), gets into the car. Claire thinks he just got in the wrong car by mistake, but Kevin puts on a face mask and sprays the girls with some kind of toxin that knocks them out. Casey slowly attempts to open the door to get out, but Kevin gets her too.
Kevin brings the girls into a windowless room in an unknown location. He pulls Marcia out and takes her outside. After a brief moment, Marcia runs back into the room after she peed herself. She tells the others that Kevin wanted her to dance for him. Claire says they need to fight back together to get out. Casey is calm and says they need to find out what they are there for before they make any sort of move.
We see a flashback in which a 5-year-old Casey (here played by Izzie Leigh Coffey) is with her father (Sebastian Arcelus) and her Uncle John (Brad William Henke). They are both hunters, and they teach Casey how to hunt. Uncle John talks about hunting a deer but being distracted by the buck.
A therapist, Dr. Karen Fletcher (Betty Buckley), is watching a news report on the three missing girls and how Claire’s father woke up to find the girls and his car gone. Karen then receives an email from someone named Barry, saying they need to speak and it is urgent. Barry is really one of Kevin’s multiple personalities. This “alter” is a sketch artist with a heavy Boston accent. He meets with Karen regularly in this persona.
The girls continue to try to find a way out. They look through a crack in the door and see what appears to be a woman talking to their captor. Claire and Marcia call to the woman for help. She approaches the door, but it is just Kevin wearing a skirt and high heels. This alter is known as Patricia, a polite British woman. Patricia assures the girls that their captor knows why they are there and that he is not allowed to touch them.
Split is a 2016 American psychological horror-thriller film written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan and starring James McAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Betty Buckley. The film follows a man with 23 different personalities who kidnaps and imprisons three teenage girls in an isolated underground facility.
Principal photography began on November 11, 2015, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The film premiered at Fantastic Fest on September 26, 2016, and was released in the United States on January 20, 2017, by Universal Pictures. The film received generally positive reviews, with some critics labeling it a welcome return for Shyamalan, although some criticized the film for its perceived stigmatization of mental illness. The film grossed $278 million worldwide on a budget of $9 million.
The film is a standalone sequel to the 2000 movie Unbreakable, which was also written, produced, and directed by Shyamalan, and is the second part of the so-called Eastrail 177 trilogy. The film was not marketed as a sequel, and the connections with Unbreakable are not revealed until the final scene of the film, in which Bruce Willis reprises his role as David Dunn. The final part of the trilogy, titled Glass will be released in 2019, and will combine the casts of both previous films.
Split (2017)
Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan
Starring: James McAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy, Haley Lu Richardson, Maria Breyman, Betty Buckley, Kim Director, Jessica Sula, Lyne Renee, Jalina Mercado
Screenplay by: M. Night Shyamalan
Production Design by: Mara LePere-Schloop
Cinematography by: Mike Gioulakis
Film Editing by: Luke Franco Ciarrocchi
Costume Design by: Paco Delgado
Set Decoration by: Jennifer Engel, Dennis Madigan
Music by: West Dylan Thordson
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for disturbing thematic content and behavior, violence and some language.
Studio: Universal Pictures
Release Date: January 20, 2017
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