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02/01/2017 11:01 PMRated PG-13
Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable), Split is an unsettling psychological thriller that focuses on a young man with multiple personalities and the terror he inflicts on others. Shyamalan creates for viewers a disturbing scenario of abduction and mystery. He also adds in a bit of the supernatural element for which his work is known.
Sullen teenager Casey Cooke (Anya Taylor-Joy of The Witch and Morgan) finds herself living in a nightmare when a stranger climbs into the driver’s seat of the car in which she is a passenger along with two of her art school classmates, Marcia (Jessica Sula of Honeytrap and Skins) and Claire (Haley Lu Richardson of The Edge of Seventeen and The Young Kieslowski). The young man quickly renders the three girls unconscious and when they finally come to, they find themselves trapped in a basement room with no way out.
The girls’ abductor is Dennis (James McAvoy of X-Men: Apocalypse and Wanted), a man who makes them strip down to their underwear as he tells them that they are destined to become “sacred food.” He returns to the room a number of times to enforce his rules of tidiness before eventually returning to the room as Miss Patricia, a proper British woman, and then as Hedwig, a playful nine year-old boy who loves to draw and dance to music by Kanye West. It is Casey who is the quickest of the three girls to realize that Dennis has multiple distinct personalities. She attempts to manipulate the various people that Dennis shows up as in an attempt to gain her freedom, but none of the different personalities ever stick around long enough for her to get away with her efforts effectively.
Viewers learns that Dennis, Miss Patricia, and Hedwig are just three of the 23 known personalities of Kevin Wendell Crumb, a young man who was abused by his mother as a child and has been diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder (DID). He is under the care of psychologist Dr. Karen Fletcher (Betty Buckley of The Happening and Frantic) who specializes in DID. When Dr. Fletcher begins to receive urgent emails from the fashion-obsessed Barry, another of Kevin’s personalities, she starts to dig deeper until she uncovers his Dennis personality, one of whom she has heard before, but who has never before presented himself to her. She is troubled by Dennis’s aggression and she fears that he could do harm to himself, but she is seemingly so wrapped up in her research that she doesn’t quickly enough realize just how harmful he could be to others.
McAvoy is splendid as Kevin...and Dennis...and Miss Patricia...and Hedwig...and all of the other personalities that he portrays in Split. It is truly his film and he commands an eerie and provocative performance from start to finish. Taylor-Joy is also very good as Casey, a young woman who has endured a lot of her own personal pain growing up, as is Buckley, who plays a very strong, work-obsessed psychologist.
Shyamalan manages to make Split a very disturbing story with the use of very little violence. Instead, the psychological thriller creates its thrills through suspense and an intricately delivered storyline. The film suffers from some illogical components. It seems unlikely that a well-known and highly intelligent psychologist could be so clueless for so long with what is happening with one of her patients, for one thing. Plus, the reactions of Casey, Marcia, and Claire to their dire circumstances seem less than what would be the true terror they would typically express. Split, however, largely overcomes its own shortcomings due to the mystery of the plot and the stand-out performance by McAvoy.
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Lion
Gripping true story of lost boy’s search for home. Oscar-worthy.
Guy Marszalek
Guilford