Split

In the absence of great films, we must do with good, and in the absence of good, we just need to accept the fine. A fine movie is not a bad movie; let us get this perfectly clear. It’s a movie that delivers a genre experience, but just could have done certain things better. M. Night Shyamalan’s newest psychological thriller is one such movie. 

Beginning with a clumsy abduction scene, Split tells the story of three young girls who are kidnapped and held captive for an unknown purpose by Kevin (James McAvoy), a man with multiple personality disorder. As the girls struggle to figure out their fate, they meet three of Kevin’s ‘undesirable’ personalities: an antisocial gentleman with OCD named Dennis, a sinister and uptight lady named Patricia, and a nine-year old boy named Hedwig, all who work to serve a fearsome creature known as The Beast. 

Whatever your thoughts are on the films of M. Night Shyamalan, there are things in this movie to both like and dislike. Whilst multiple personality disorder is a disorder and I don’t really agree with the ways in which it’s depicted here, Shyamalan does touch on some interesting ideas. 

His favourite theme of the power of the human, the brain, and the body is constantly at work here, with multiple personality disorder working as an enabler to carry the idea that “the broken are the evolved”. Regenerative capabilities and biological makeup mutations are a big part of this movie, as though Shyamalan saw Deadpool and Doctor Strange and thought, “yep, that’s it”. You have to suspend your belief, but it’s an interesting idea. 

In the movie we learn that Kevin has 23 different personalities, most of which live in communal harmony with each other all working to protect poor traumatised and weak Kevin. This idea of a community of ‘good’ personalities was a nice idea I thought, it’s just a shame that we don’t really get to meet any of them. 

Although the ideas in this film were solid, where it fell down is in its execution of them. For a thriller, Split is not very thrilling and this can be chalked up to the fact that everything, even the parts set in reality, is isolated. A good thriller of this brand has its clincher in the race against the clock element; be it the cops hot on the trail, or the psychiatrist sensing the danger. There is no race against the clock here, no real sense of urgency, and whilst there is a psychiatrist character and investigation story running parallel to the abduction, it’s still very dislocated from reality and the sense of danger, that we know is there, just isn’t created or felt by other characters. It’s very easy to get bored during scenes outside the basement. 

Unarguably, the best part of this movie is James McAvoy. He carries this film, delivering performances that are chilling, sweet, sassy, sinister, funny, warm, and sometimes horrifying. Whenever McAvoy wasn’t on screen, I just wanted to tune out. Everyone else in this movie is fine I guess, but to be honest there isn’t a lot of diversity of characters: we have three damsels in distress, one of which is weird and antisocial, and then the psychiatrist who focuses more on the good side of her patients rather than the seed of trauma and horribleness from which their distinct personalities blossom. So it’s an eh on the rest of the cast. 

Our central heroine has a clumsy history told through flashbacks that do an ok job of show-don’t-tell, but doesn’t really leave us with much as to how she works as a ‘troubled’ person. There are a lot of questions left floating around her at the end of the movie. And then the ending and the shameless plug is pretty clumsy and laid on thick. 

At the end of the day Split is a fine movie. It does deliver an experience that one more or less expects from a thriller, and there are definitely some good things in it. There are just some clumsy and bad parts in it too. 

Starring: James McAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy, Betty Buckley, Haley Lu Richardson, Jessica Sula, Izzie Coffey, Sebastian Arcelus, and Brad William Henke 

Rated: M