Split’s got a big personality
Writer/director M. Night Shyamalan likes to take a simple idea and run with it. Like: What if the protagonist of a story was dead the whole time? Or: What if aliens who were allergic to water invaded a planet that was covered in the stuff? And what if Mel Gibson (himself 60 per cent water), was the only man standing in their way?
Shyamalan’s newest, Split, stars James McAvoy as a man with dissociative identity disorder — what the old folks call multiple personalities. His character has 23 distinct identities, although we only meet about eight of them in the film. The first, Dennis, kidnaps three teenage girls in the opening scene, locking them away in a mysterious underground bunker.
The teens are Marcia (Jessica Sula), Claire (Haley Lu Richardson), and Casey (Anya TaylorJoy). Casey is far and away the most interesting of the three, given that she gets an extended backstory, played out in flashback — something about being taught to handle a rifle as a five-year-old by her father and uncle. Presumably these skills will come in handy at some point, although I was underwhelmed by how little these scenes connected with the rest of the movie.
It’s like shooting red herring in a barrel.
Taylor-Joy is, however, worth watching for her own sake, having starred in two of last year’s best creepy movies: the Puritan horror tale The Witch, and the science-fiction thriller Morgan. Maybe it’s those wide-set eyes; she seems to see more than anyone else in her movies, and in this one she’s the first of the captives to get a handle on what makes Dennis tick.
For those without preternatural vision, Shyamalan helpfully front-loads Split with several overly long scenes of expository psychobabble.
They are delivered sincerely if a bit awkwardly by film/TV/stage actress Betty Buckley, although one senses the voice of the director, and it might have been easier if he’d just come out and delivered a prologue like Rod Serling in the Twilight Zone.
He does have a bizarre, unnecessary cameo, his first since The Last Airbender (2010).
Buckley’s character, Dr. Karen Fletcher, seems a little too pleased with the upsides of the multiple-personalitied.
“They are what they believe they are,” she gushes.
And: “Is this where our sense of the supernatural comes from?”
Never mind reverse psychology; hers is the 23-speed variety.
But the bulk of the film, and the most fun to be found in it, deals with Dennis’s alter egos.
McAvoy, whom one dearly hopes received multiple paycheques for this gig, performs as a giggly nine-year-old with a crush on Casey; a fashion designer; evil Mrs. Doubtfire; the most boring history professor ever; and a few more besides.
It’s a shame the Scottish actor didn’t also give us a mad Glaswegian, or maybe a Sean Connery impersonator.
There are moments of fear and loathing in the story, but at just under two hours the whole production overstays its welcome, and isn’t really as clever as the director would have us believe.