If tour-de-force performances alone made great movies, then “Sixth
Sense” writer & director M. Night Shyamalan’s “Split” (* OUT OF ****) would
be one of the best. Instead, Shyamalan’s
twelfth movie qualifies as an unintentionally hilarious, multiple identity
disorder, abduction chiller about a colorful fruit loop bristling with more
identities than you can count on fingers and toes together. As the traumatized casualty of an abusive mom,
woebegone protagonist Kevin Wendel Crumb (James McAvoy) has forged a ‘Horde’ of
personalities to serve as a bulwark against grim reality. Predictable, derivative, and ultimately preposterous,
“Split” contains McAvoy’s nuanced performance as well as Shyamalan’s usual standard-issue
surprises. Indeed, McAvoy has a field day
chewing the scenery as a wacko with 23 personalities who is gestating number
twenty-four. Basically, this charming
but deranged psycho abducts three pretty young things from a Philadelphia
shopping mall and confines them for his own culinary delight in an underground facility
from which escape is virtually impossible.
Compared with other movies about split-personality psychos, “Split” does
feature a looney tune with a greater number of identities than any other movie. McAvoy’s chameleon-like capacity to shift from
one identity to another in the flick of an eyelash is as fluid as if he were genuinely
conflicted himself. Suffice to say,
McAvoy is brilliant, but perhaps not Oscar brilliant. “Split” boils down to a clever,
self-conscious one-man show despite the quartet of additional characters
involved. Unfortunately, we see only
eight of the twenty-three weirdos that McAvoy portrays, but none is either demonic
or memorable. Meanwhile, two of those four
other characters lack sympathy because they brought this tragedy on themselves
by ridiculing the psycho. Shyamalan’s
surprises occur just where you would expect them, and you won’t feel the overwhelming
urge to shout “WOW!” because you are so flabbergasted. Meantime, Shyamalan struggles desperately to spawn
suspense, but what he achieves remains at best trifling. Sometimes, this half-baked suspense proves aggravating
because you realize how futile it is for these doomed characters. On the other hand, unlike most psychos on killing
spree saga, “Split” doesn’t wallow in gratuitous blood and gore.
Casey Cook (Anya Taylor-Joy of “The Witch”) has been forged in
a crucible of child abuse, too. A heart
attack killed her father (Sebastian Arcelus of “Ted 2”) while she was attending
elementary school. Sadly, her father’s
brother, Uncle John (Brad William Henke of “Fury”), has assumed the duties as a
guardian for Casey. Without divulging
too much, Casey and her stepfather have had an adversial relationship. Now, in
high school, Casey prefers to keep to herself whenever possible. Two of her snobbish classmates, Claire (Haley
Lu Richardson of “The Edge of Seventeen”) and Claire’s African-American friend
Marcia (Jessica of “Honeytrap”), have invited her to their birthday party more
out of mercy rather than friendship. Indeed,
they display cynical attitudes about Casey, but they fear the repercussions on
social media about what they might have faced had they not invited Casey. When her ride doesn’t materialize, Casey
agrees to accompany Claire and Marcia and listen to Claire’s father (Brian
Gildea) who loves to tell terrible jokes.
As the saying goes, Hell is a road asphalted with good intentions, and
Claire and Marcia have provided the paving that puts Casey in harm’s way. Before
they can pull out of the parking lot, a stranger, Kevin Wendel Crumb intervenes,
dispenses with Claire’s dad, and then carjacks them. Slipping on a face mask, he sprays something
into their eyes that plunges them into oblivion. Of course, had they not been paralyzed with
fear, these girls could have bailed out before Kevin incapacitated them. When they awaken, the girls find themselves
locked up in a room with the same tight-lipped stranger staring at them. Eventually, they discover that something is
seriously amiss with their captor. Every
time Crumb appears, he masquerades as an entirely different fellow, sometimes even
as a woman. What the three girls don’t
know is that Kevin is a patient of a world-renowned psychotherapist, Dr. Karen
Fletcher (Betty Buckley of “Frantic”), who has terribly misjudged the threat
that he poses to society. Repeatedly,
Kevin tells her about ‘the beast’ and how this messianic personality will shield
all twenty-three personalities from scorn and ridicule. When ‘the beast’ shows up, “Split” turns into
a warped Marvel Comics movie because the beast possesses supernatural
characteristics. At this point, you want
to laugh out loud at this transition from a dreary abduction potboiler to a
fantasy epic that happens to be a belated sequel to the Bruce Willis &
Samuel L. Jackson thriller “Unbreakable.”
Nothing in this review has been designed to spoil “Split” if
you decide to see it. You may walk into
this superficial saga with greater awareness than you might have, but far be it
for me to sabotage the quirky ending that hinges on purity. Before anybody can complain that I hate all Shyamalan’s
movies, let me say that I admired “The Sixth Sense,” “Unbreakable,” “Signs,”
and “Lady in the Water,” but I abhorred “The Village,” “The Visit,” “After
Earth,” “The Last Airbender,” and “The Happening.” “Split” belongs to the latter category of travesties. Comparably, as deplorable as it was, “The
Visit” surpasses “Split.” Nothing about “Split” is more than timidly
suspenseful, and the action degenerates into a series of episodic encounters between
McAvoy’s various personalities and his victims.
Casey is the only other truly interesting character aside from the loquacious
Dr. Karen Fletcher. The other two girls might
as well have been mannequins. They are
essentially expendable, and they behave like whiny victims in a movie where whiny
victims must perish. The surprise ending
came as neither a relief nor a revelation.
More often than not, I felt like Shyamalan cheated with some of the narrative
twists that contained neither enough credibility nor sufficient spontaneity. Finally, Shyamalan has exploited Dissociative
Identity Disorder as a cheap gimmick to conjure up an uninspired Grimm’s style
fairy tale that stigmatizes the disorder rather than entertains us as a legitimate
horror movie.
