We need to talk about Kevin, and Barry and Dennis and ...
Split (15A) Verdict: Middling psycho-thriller
WRITER-director M Night Shyamalan made his masterpiece, The Sixth Sense, when he was still in his 20s.
He’s made some decent films since, and one or two stinkers, but nothing to compare with the 1999 film that announced him as a major creative talent. Split, a psychological thriller heavier on psychology than thrills, is middling Shyamalan, nothing like as gripping as The Sixth Sense, but a sight better than many of his more recent offerings.
It stars James McAvoy, giving a bravura performance as Kevin Wendell Crumb, a man suffering from dissociative identity disorder, a genuine condition whereby a person can have multiple personalities.s
In Kevin’s case, there are no fewer than 23 alter egos, most of them relatively benign but some of them dangerously psychotic. We first meet him as predatory, deranged Dennis, who abducts three high-school girls and locks them up in a Philadelphia cellar. There, they are visited not just by Dennis but also by several of Kevin’s other personalities.
Meanwhile, mostly in the guise of Barry, a camp fashion designer, Kevin is seeing a psychiatrist, Dr Fletcher (Betty Buckley). She is fascinated by his condition, but comes to realise there is a 24th personality, more threatening than all the others put together.
It’s an intriguing premise and Shyamalan is exceedingly well served by McAvoy, even if at times, through no fault of the actor’s, the flitting between characters slightly smacks of a drama-school exercise. But his film wobbles off its axis when he tries to turn it from thriller to horror. That’s when it stops being creepy and teeters on the brink of silliness.
There are plenty of sound reasons to see it, however, led by McAvoy, plus a strong performance by Anya Taylor-Joy as Casey, one of the imprisoned girls, who has dark secrets of her own. And don’t leave before the end. There’s a star cameo in the last 20 seconds that sent half the audience out abuzz with satisfaction, and the other half bewildered.