James McAvoy plays a man suffering from dissociative identity disorder in M. Night Shyamalan’s SPLIT
SPLIT (M. Night Shyamalan, 2016)
Opens Friday, January 20
www.splitmovie.com
M. Night Shyamalan’s latest bit of cinematic trickery and deception, Split, can be split itself, right down the middle. The first half of the film is a tense, intriguing psychological thriller. However, the second half devolves into a jaw-droppingly inane horror debacle. For much of the film, James McAvoy is mesmerizing as Kevin, a man with twenty-three personalities who has kidnapped three teenage girls: good friends Claire (Haley Lu Richardson) and Marcia (Jessica Sula) and their strange classmate, Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy). Various personalities take over, in clothing, age, speech, and mannerisms, as Kevin watches over the girls and visits his therapist, Dr. Karen Fletcher (Betty Buckley), an expert in dissociative identity disorder and trauma victims who believes that the many personalities inside people with DID, like Kevin, can be different physically and psychologically; DID sufferers may have the ability to use the brain in ways that the rest of the population can’t, unlocking undreamed-of human potential. Meanwhile, the mysterious Casey has flashbacks of when she was five years old (played by Izzie Coffey) and her father (Sebastian Arcelus) taught her lessons in survival while her uncle (Brad William Henke) taught her other things when his brother wasn’t looking.
Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy), Claire (Haley Lu Richardson), and Marcia (Jessica Sula) await what terror comes next in half-baked psychological thriller
In the first hour, writer-director Shyamalan explores some fascinating scientific issues and treats the female victims, particularly the sensitive, odd Casey, with at least a modicum of respect. But as the plot holes start piling up, the story turns into a cliché-ridden jumble with soft-core exploitation shots of teenage bodies and references to such superior films as Saw, The Shining, Room, 28 Days Later, and, primarily, the more controversial parts of The Silence of the Lambs; mental health providers and those suffering from mental illness are not going to be too happy with Split,, just as the LGBTQ community was angry with Jonathan Demme back in 1991. Even McAvoy (Atonement, The Last King of Scotland) loses his edginess at the absurd climax, followed by a surprise self-referential finale that is downright embarrassing; if Shyamalan, who makes a cameo in the film, really wanted to use that last scene, it should have come during or after the credits. Throughout his career, Shyamalan has proved himself a master of ideas, from The Sixth Sense, Signs, and Unbreakable to The Village, Wayward Pines, and The Visit, but all too often he is unable to bring it all together, leaving only scornful disappointment in his wake, and theaters full of audiences wondering what could have been.