Kevin Wendell Crumb, etc.

Rating: Null/10 (18 May 2017)

The films of M. Night Shyamalan typically exploit the supernatural in order to develop a suspenseful story with well-rounded characters. Unfortunately, "Split" relies primarily on pop psychology to explore a troubled man's multiple personalities in what is called Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). The wildly speculative case study in the film includes one personality type that should be placed in a cage and out of harm of any bystanders.
The bystanders who come in the way of Kevin Wendell Crumb, who has a habit of ending his sentences with the expression "etcetera.," are three young women who are improbably kidnapped and held hostage by Kevin, etc. The one character who is more interesting that all of the characters rolled into Kevin, etc. is the young loner Casey Cooke. As developed in lurid detail through flashbacks, little Casey was an abused child who has learned to cope with her pedophile tormentor, Uncle John. Her survival skills will be put to the test by Kevin, etc.
A kindly psychiatrist (well performed by stage actress Betty Buckley) badly underestimates the capabilities of her patient. She deludes herself into believing that she has some control over the wide-ranging behavior of Kevin, etc. Her fatal mistake is to pay a visit to his home. The alert viewer will surely recognize that her fate is sealed when she arrives at his odd living quarters, which turn out to be the sub-basement of the Philadelphia zoo.
SPOILER ALERT FOLLOWS: M. Night Shyamalan's original ending for the film appears as an outtake in the DVD version of "Split." Curiously, the director changed the ending because he felt the original version was too dark. The deleted scene was to have Kevin seated atop a building decrying how unfortunate it was that most people go about their lives in an un-split manner, as opposed his subjective realities of multiple personalities. But in a film that is so unpleasant from the outset, it was difficult to see how changing the final scene could possibly have made the film any less depressing than it already was.