#split review

Kevin (and the other 23):

The main drive to see this film from the very first trailers and marketing was James McAvoy, who plays Kevin, and 23 other personalities all trapped in his body. Now, what this film does, is it takes the idea of multiple personality disorder, and takes to a whole new level, where not only are all these different personalities completely unrelated to Kevin, but they are entirely different people. When someone ‘takes the light’ (controls Kevin’s body) their appearance doesn’t change, but their physical abilities do; some of them have diabetes, some have OCD, some are female, some are physically very strong, and some have the strength of a child.

This is all explained to us through the character of Dr Fletcher, Kevin’s psychiatrist who specializes in treating patients who have this disorder called DID.

Now, for the film, this is both a virtue, and a flaw. Because this McAvoy was the focus of the marketing, the scene where the girls realize Patricia and Dennis are not two different people, is meant to be terrifying and confusing; it’s shot and presented like a revelation, a shocking twist. But it isn’t; we already know Kevin has multiple personalities because the trailer and the marketing told us so!

Additionally, why does Kevin have 23 personalities? We never see more than 5 max, and even still we only really follow 4: Dennis, Patricia, Hedwig and the Beast. We get a glimpse here and there of  4 other personalities, but that’s about it. The film could have easily been about 5 personalities instead of 23, but I guess 23 sounds more impressive even if we never see the majority of them.

The 4 characters we do see were all interesting and engaging. I give major props to McAvoy; he nails this part. They all have distinct personalities, mannerisms patterns of speech and even move differently based on the character. I was afraid he would overreact a lot of the scenes, but he is surprisingly subdued, and is a major factor into the film’s creepiness and atmosphere.

Dennis is the ring leader and he has OCD, and is a germaphobe. It’s also implied that he may have pedophilic tendencies, though I wasn’t clear on whether those were his or Barry’s or even Kevin’s. He was by far the most proactive of the personalities and the creepiest; I liked that his germophobia and OCD were products of Kevin’s childhood trauma (since his mother used to beat him if he’d make a mess), and I really enjoyed his increasingly unhinged attempts to convince Dr Fletcher that he was Barry.

His interactions with the girls were also creepy, and there was a prevailing sexual threat in all of his scenes with them which was incredibly unsettling.

Patricia was who the film builds as the ringleader of the Horde, while Dennis was the muscle. She reigns Dennis in, and seems to be the one who came up with the story of the Beast. It’s difficult to tell if the Beast’s sick moral code and dogma come from her and Dennis twisting Dr Fletcher’s speeches on DID patients, or if she accepted them from the Beast himself. She too gets a standout scene where she makes sandwiches and it’s pretty effective. 

Hedwig was the character I liked most, and I can’t believe I’m saying that watching James McAvoy pretend he’s a 9 year old with a lisp was the best part of this film. Gain, McAvoy is rather convincing in the part of a 9 year old boy trapped in a grown adult’s body, coloring all the scenes between him and Cassey in a layer of yikes, especially the scene where he asks to kiss her. But he’s also genuinely funny and gets the best dialogue and scenes in the film, and I enjoyed every time he was on screen.

The Beast:

Now, the Beast is somewhat of a twist in the film, in that he’s not one of the 23 personalities, and many of them (including Dr Fletcher) don’t even believe he exists. Turns out he does exist and he was born on the train on which Kevin’s father escaped from Kevin. I found him being an amalgamation of a bunch of the animals from the zoo where Dennis works clever, like his powers being having skin like a rhino’s hide, strength of a lion, and the agility of a monkey. I liked that he goes after the two girls specifically because of an incident that happened to Dennis, where two teenage girls pranked him. I even liked again, how his philosophy about taking over the world and getting it rid of weak people, people who are not ‘broken’ was really a twisted version of Dr Fletcher’s speech about how through trauma DID patients become more than human.

What I didn’t like was, well… look his powers are fucking stupid alright? He eats people. He is a human man who eats raw flesh and hasn’t died yet. Like… maybe I can suspend my disbelief that one of the personalities has diabetes, and maybe even that the Beast can somehow survive getting shot point blank in the chest, but this whole eating people thing was just so dumb! And the whole debate of who is broken and worthy and who is weak and unworthy was also so dumb. He also doesn’t have any character arc or even a conclusion. It’s just the Beast wants to eat people, and in the end he eats people. The end. There is no climax to his story, no revelation or realization, it’s just he can eat more people now. Great.

Useless Characters With 0 Agency:

I will own up to the fact that I’m not a huge fan of kidnapping plots, and 90% of that is because I hate that no matter how many times the person who gets kidnapped tries to escape, they inevitably must fail, so that whoever does the rescuing can save them at the end. I thought this case might be different, since Casey is, at first, presented like a fairly competent character, and I thought, maybe, she could escape. But boy oh boy was Casey a plank of wood.

First, I understand why she would be having trouble at school and connecting to other peers because of he backstory, but why she was so needlessly rude, mean and uncooperative with the other two girls that are captured was beyond me. The girls are perfectly nice and kind to her, they want her to escape with them, and in a way they are right; three of them, vs one of Dennis is still better odds, no matter how ‘strong’ Dennis might be.

Then there is the fact that she does nothing for over 90% of the film. She attempts to escape once, and even then she doesn’t really; she steals Hedwig’s walkie talkie, and I can’t tell if it’s Joy’s acting or Shyamalan's direction, but he reaction at having her last hope of escape snatched away from her was nowhere near appropriate enough. She spends most of the film being extremely subdued and confused, and even in the very last section, where she does actually take the shotgun, nothing she does is even remotely effective against the Beast.

Also who TF decides running into a cage and locking themselves in, with only 2 rounds of a shotgun is A SMART IDEA? ESPECIALLY SOMEONE WHO’S BEEN HUNTING HER WHOLE LIFE?

Her backstory was genuinely upsetting and creepy and I hated all of those scenes, but they were effective and achieved exactly what they needed to to set up her character. What I didn’t like or get, was Cassey’s ending. She never confronts her uncle; we never even see him after the last flashback and I guess maybe you could argue that it’s implied that Cassey would tell the police officer what he’s been doing to her, but that’s such a stretch and unnecessarily vague ending that I don’t know why it was there.

Like Kevin and the Beast, Cassey has no character arc. She wasn’t vain or shallow or ‘had felt no pain’ like the other 2 girls; there was no character flaw she needed to overcome. If anything, her character flaw seemed to be that she was passive, but she doesn’t learn not to be by the end; she is exactly the same at the end as she was at the start, except slightly more traumatized.

The other two girls are non-entities. I don’t understand why the film bothers to introduce them only to have them disappear a third way in, I didn’t like that the film punished their attempts to escape and be proactive for no reason and I didn’t like the message. Neither one of those girls were mean or catty or vain; they were regular teenagers. Claire invites Cassey to the birthday party even though she shows no interest to be there, she tries to get her to join them against Dennis, they are never rude to her? If you wanted the audience to hate them, you need to actually give us reasons to hate them; like this it just seems like the film agrees with the Beast that teenage girls are really horrible, just for existing!

I also really hated the wasted time of showing Marcia trying to open the locker with the hanger. Why linger on that scene for so long if you won’t even show us the outcome? We just see she’s dead in the next scene and that’s it. That part genuinely made me angry, because the film had been so good at representing women up until that point, and it was such a disappointment.

Dr Fletcher was probably the worst part. She spends the movie telling us about Kevin’s condition, and talking to Dennis. She realizes quickly something is wrong, realizes that there is something dangerous about Dennis and the fact that he won’t let her talk to any of the other characters, realizes that the Beast is likewise a dangerous thought and does have the good sense to go to the Zoo and seek Dennis out. BUT she’s also dumb enough not to let anyone know she’s going, she doesn’t immediately call the police after Dennis gives her a speech every serial killer would think is a bit much, and doesn’t take any precautions to make sure she’s not followed when she finds Cassey and STILL TRIES TO REASON WITH DENNIS EVEN AFTER SHE SEES WHAT IS HAPPENING! She was a completely useless character; she’s only there for exposition and that’s entirely it.

Pacing:

The very last thing I want to touch on is the pacing. Shyamalan is known for very slow films; he likes lots of slow tracking shots, he lets the camera linger on scenes that could easily be cut, he likes his long establishing shot, awkward pauses in dialogue, etc. These are all stylistic choices; you can argue about their merit, but at the end of the day, if you’ve seen one of his films and didn’t like how slow it is, you won’t like any of them. My issue is that a lot of this film could have used some editing. I already mentioned how the entire subplot with Marcia and Claire is at once superfluous and doesn’t need to take up that much time considering its conclusion, as well ass Dr Fletcher having a lot of circular dialogue scenes in which she just explains DID over and over again. The pacing was glacial; I genuinely think that some quicker cuts and scenes would have benefited it so much, and maybe another draft of the screenplay, tightening up the story and giving the characters actual arcs and conclusions.

Conclusion: