By Shanna Mathews-Mendez
| Published
If you haven’t watched the Unbreakable trilogy, you are missing out. The second film of the three, Split, is arguably one of the best horror films of all time, and it’s streaming on Netflix now. Go watch it.
Everyone Wanted More Shyamalan after The Release Of The Sixth Sense
M. Night Shyamalan saw huge success with his breakout film, The Sixth Sense. It is a psychological thriller about a little boy, played by Haley Joel Osment, who can “see dead people,” and the psychiatrist, played by Bruce Willis, who tries to help him. The movie was a hit, and we all craved more from Shyamalan.
Split Is A Sequel To Unbreakable
His next film, however, was more of a sleeper. The first in the Unbreakable trilogy, Unbreakable (released in 2000), was a film about a man, David Dunn (Bruce Willis), who survives a tragic train wreck where everyone else dies, without a scratch on him.
Dunn soon realizes he has never been sick a day in his life, but he doesn’t know why. A man in a wheelchair named Elijah Price, played by Samuel L. Jackson, shows up to reveal that Dunn is a superhero and that he, Price, is his villain.
While Unbreakable did well at the box office and even better over time as more people realized what a good film it really is, Split, the sequel, was a breakout success.
Why Split Is So Great
I honestly had no idea what I was watching when I watched Split. I knew I liked Shyamalan’s films. By this time, he had made The Village, Signs, Lady in the Water, and The Happening, all films I loved.
Split was released in 2016, almost two decades after Unbreakable, and I had no idea the two were even related. I sat and watched this horror film with a mixture of awe and physical revulsion (that’s a good thing in a horror film). Viewers watch on in terror, hoping for the victim’s survival but also deeply sympathetic with the villain.
The Plot
In Split, we meet Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy), a man with 23 personalities, all with their strengths and weaknesses. And 22 of those personalities are afraid of one of them, the monster within. As we watch Crumb try to work through his issues with his therapist, played by Betty Buckley, we are also watching one of Crumb’s personalities kidnap three teenage girls, one of whom is played by the brilliant Anya Taylor-Joy. He proceeds to lock them in a dark room in a dark basement. We have no idea why.
From this point in Split, everything goes sideways in the most delicious ways. We discover that the “monster” personality inside Crumb believes that trauma (the leading cause of multiple, or split, personalities) leads to genuine superpower abilities. Indeed, the scene in which Crumb transforms into a legitimate monster is riveting. He also believes that everyone who has not undergone trauma should, and he’s here to facilitate that.
Split Receives Massive Praise
This movie was an enormous success. It made $278 million at the box office on a $9 million budget. It has received a 77 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and a 62 on Metacritic.
Since then, Unbreakable has also become a must-see film, with Time Magazine calling it one of the top 25 best superhero films and Quentin Tarantino calling it one of the 10 best films released since 1992.
Glass, the third film in the trilogy, wraps up the connection among Crumb, Dunn, and Price, and while it didn’t receive near the acclaim the first two films did, you need to watch it to complete the saga.
Can You Watch Split Before Unbreakable?
If you haven’t seen Split yet, stream it on HBO Max or rent it on Amazon Prime Video immediately. Ideally, watch Unbreakable first, just for the sake of chronology, but you can absolutely watch Split without any knowledge whatsoever of Unbreakable.
