M. Night Shyamalan needs a hit. Establishing himself as the Tsar of the Twist with The Sixth Sense, the director soon traded emotion and intelligence for big-budget effects and schlocky shocks. Shyamalan lost his identity as a director and, ironically, is trying to rediscover it through a horror about Disassociative Identity Disorder (DID).
And therein lies the main flaw of the James McAvoy-starring Split. Featuring a villain whose personality disorder means he has 23 distinct identities inhabiting his body, Shyamalan immediately falls into well-worn and deeply problematic tropes.
A scenery-devouring McAvoy plays Split’s villain, who kidnaps three schoolgirls, including the brooding and troubled Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy). Locked in an underground room, Casey begins to realise their captor’s multiple personalities include a paedophile, a prim but fierce woman, and the unseen Beast – a seemingly monstrous and cannibalistic identity that has terrified the other personalities into submission. Warned that the Beast is soon coming, Casey tries to manipulate some of the personalities into helping the girls escape. As Casey plays the personalities off each other, flashbacks reveal her previous experience with trauma, and how she developed her negotiation-based brand of survival skills.
The villain gets further character development through interactions with his psychiatrist (played by Carrie star Betty Buckley, in a nice nod to DePalma). His frequent sessions with her provide insight into how his condition manifests, but also interrupts the kidnap narrative, allowing tension to build more slowly.
McAvoy excels, making each personality distinct through clever body language. Elsewhere, Shyamalan’s direction is intelligently restrained, and even a few late-plot twists serve to elevate, rather than shock.
However, in 2017, can we really excuse yet another director equating people with mental health issues to murderous paedophiles? Or the transphobia implicit in showing crossdressing as a surefire sign of violent deviancy? Let’s leave the retrogressive elements of Silence Of The Lambs and Psycho where they belong: in the past.
Split trailer: