Split (MA15+)
Starring: James McAvoy, Haley Lu Richardson, Anya Taylor-Joy
Writer/director/producer M. Night Shyamalan made a name for himself with the gripping 1999 supernatural thriller The Sixth Sense – but over the past decade he’s been more miss than hit.
So what do you do to get yourself back on track? Well in Shyamalan’s case go back to the future. Like The Sixth Sense, at the heart of Split is the relationship between a psychiatrist Dr Fletcher (Betty Buckley) and patient Kevin (James McAvoy). Both are tense and twisting movies however that’s probably where the similarities end. Split is a sequel, of sorts, to Shyamalan’s other Bruce Willis vehicle Unbreakable (Willis makes a blink and you miss him cameo in this one).
In this McAvoy plays a man with dissociative identity disorder – with 23 known personalities – who has abducted three teenage girls and is fighting a battle within himself not to unleash a 24th mutated personality while the girls he captured struggle for freedom.
Two of the girls are all-American cheerleader types, the third, observant and watchful Casey (Anya Taylor Joy) always seems more on Kevin’s wavelength than her fellow captors and you’re left wondering if he’s met his match.
There has been some criticism that this movie is ableist and distorts what dissociative identity disorder or having multiple personalities is – and it probably does. Ironically Xmen Alumni McAvoy seems to play a character more mutant than DID patient. There are funny moments as McAvoy plays some of the personalities – a nine-year-old boy and a “church” lady – but for the most part this is one of those movies that sees you digging your fingers deeper into the chair rest or you nearest companion the longer it goes and the more it twists.
– Tania Phillips
