It’s a testament to my tolerance level that I continue to give M. Night Shyamalan a chance despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I haven’t enjoyed any of his films since Signs in 2002. That was 15 years ago and yet I still keep hoping that one day he’ll exhibit a flicker of his former talent. I wasn’t even going to give his latest a chance after The Visit (2015), a shaky-cam found-footage non-starter of a project. However reviews for Split were positive and it drew a healthy box office so I thought, how bad could it be? Pretty awful as a matter of fact. I didn’t foresee that the big twist of this M. Night Shyamalan film was that such an inferior product would implausibly become a success.
Split starts out interestingly enough. Three girls (Anya Taylor-Joy, Haley Lu Richardson, Jessica Sula) are getting ready to leave a birthday party. The father of the guest of honor is going to drive them home. He is approached in the parking lot by a mysterious figure after the girls are already in the car. The next minute the stranger gets into the car and there’s a chilling moment where he sprays them with a toxin. This probably would have been more effective if it wasn’t already in the trailer, but that’s not the movie’s fault. Regardless, it’s a chilling beginning. The man’s name is Kevin (James McAvoy) and he subsequently locks them up in a basement dungeon. I started getting shades of Silence of the Lambs at this point, but that’s about where the similarities end. This screenplay has none of the depth of that film. It’s also rated PG-13 so it’s less intense, but the subject matter still feels pretty icky. I certainly wouldn’t bring children to this. Honestly, I wouldn’t bring anyone because it’s simply not good.
It turns out that Kevin suffers from dissociative identity disorder (DID) and has 24 individual personalities living inside him. Already I’m not comfortable with that ridiculous number because it’s impossible for an actor to do 24 distinct characters justice. To be fair, he really only attempts like nine, but sadly, McAvoy doesn’t even give us one person that we can truly embrace. They’re a smorgasbord of various people: young/old, male/female. I thought about detailing some of them in my review but they’re really not interesting enough to warrant discussion. I will add though that the 24th entity is called The Beast. Not the same creature as in the biblical book of Revelation but I’m sure the allusion is intended.
Dissociative identity disorder (DID), previously known as multiple personality disorder, is a real mental illness. I suppose we should be thankful that Shyamalan at least knows the difference between schizophrenia and DID, but don’t look to this script for any real factual basis for the way it occurs. The movie does include a therapist, Dr. Karen Fletcher, played by Betty Buckley. She was the nice gym teacher in the Stephen King adaptation Carrie (1976) and starred in the TV series Eight is Enough. I’ve always liked her so it was nice to see she continues to get work. Her character sort of pops up at various points in the narrative. Another actor pops up near the end. I assume it’s another one of Shyamalan’s signature twists. So please enjoy that if you can even figure out what it all means. For the record, I did. Didn’t care.
Garbage is an epithet that’s thrown around so frequently these days that I hesitate to use the word, but here goes: Split is garbage. I don’t use that dismissive label lightly. I’ll explain what took this beyond merely bad to downright offensive. M Night Shyamalan resorts to capitalizing on mental illness for sensational thrills without the care to even convey its complexities. It also exploits child abuse in a cheap attempt to give his weak story more meaning. It does not handle these subjects in a meaningful or sensitive way but rather shamelessly mines the inherent gravity in these issues for superficial kicks. It is artless. Split certainly isn’t the first film to manipulate weighty subjects in a crass manner. Last year’s The Girl on the Train served up a vulgar recipe of alcoholism, depression, and domestic abuse. It was exploitative much in the same way and Split caused me to relive that awfulness. Girl was one of my least favorite pictures of 2016, but it came out so late in the year that it was only among the “worst of 2016” for 3 months. With Split‘s January release, we have a major contender just 20 days into 2017. This production has the potential to go the distance.
1-30-17
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