Split (2016)

Three high school girls (Anya Taylor-Joy, Haley Lu Richardson and Jessica Sula) are kidnapped by a mysterious man (James McAvoy). It soon becomes clear that he suffers from dissociative identity disorder – which may or may not exist in real life – and tries to hit the world record with 23 different personalities. Some of them – called “The Horde” by their peers even though a trio does not a horde make – have enough of everybody but their psychiatrist (Betty Buckley) not believing their disorder actually exists, and are trying to bring forth a 24th personality, known as The Beast.

The Beast, it will turn out, is a super-powered cannibal who follows some bizarre pseudo-philosophy positing that people who haven’t suffered severe enough traumata in their life are only good to be eaten because they’ll never be able to acquire super powers. Seriously.

I know, I know, I’m writing about an M. Night Shyamalan movie again, even though it’s clear by now that the man’s sensibilities work like the noise of chalk on board on me. However, Split turns out to be one of his more palatable movies for me. I wouldn’t call it a good film, mind you, but at least this one is just a handful of better directorial decisions, a minor re-write, and losing about twenty minutes of runtime away from being one. It’s what I’d call an interesting effort, and one that’s nearly on to something with its attempt to examine the connection between trauma and superpowers quite a bit of superhero comics do indeed suggest. It’s just too bad the film mostly does said examination through a very slow and even more obvious series of flashbacks concerning Taylor-Joy’s character, incessant insane ranting by McAvoy, and some pseudo-scientific warbling from the psychiatrist.

Visually, this is one of Shyamalan’s successful efforts. His films usually look slick, but here (as at the beginning of his career), the slickness goes hand in hand with an ability to craft at least decent suspense sequences and even the creation of a nice atmosphere of doom. That last one is certainly helpful when it comes to building up to the appearance of The Beast, nearly convincing one that something of apocalyptic important is going to manifest. Unfortunately, The Beast manifest is just James McAvoy mugging into the camera.


Which brings me to the film’s most surprising weakness, an inexplicably terrible performance by a really fine actor, one which becomes even worse in contrast to the measured and thoughtful ones by the always wonderful Taylor-Joy and Betty Buckley. But then, going all Nicolas Cage on us when asked to play a guy with dissociative identity disorder whose main on-screen personalities are going to be a nine-year-old, a gay fashion designer, some mumbly psycho, a woman (sorry, that’s her defining character trait apart from being evil too), and a superpowered cannibal with a messiah (well anti-Christ, because this is a Shyamalan joint) complex, is an understandable acting choice. It’s also the completely wrong one, because it stretches the suspension of disbelief asked of the audience beyond breaking point by showing off how contrived and absurd the whole thing is instead of giving it the humanity a proper acting job instead of a circus show might have provided. Of course, it usually is the director’s job to realize this sort of thing and influence an actor accordingly, last time I checked, so I suppose that’s, alas, how Shyamalan wanted it.