Split

Rating: 5/10 (5 February 2017)

Director M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Signs) has had a string of failures, including The Village, The Happening and The Last Airbender, I heard the reviews and saw the clips for this new film, it seemed worth a go. Basically three teenagers, Claire (Haley Lu Richardson), Marcia (Jessica Sula) and outsider Casey (Anya Taylor- Joy) are kidnapped by a man, who they later realise has more than one personality, in fact he inhabits twenty-three. The kidnapper, Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy) was a victim of abuse during childhood, he has severe dissociative identity disorder. Kevin's personalities include "Dennis" who is a control freak and has obsessive-compulsive disorder, "Barry" who is an artistic fashion designer and the dominant personality, "Patricia" who is an assuring prissy woman, and "Hedwig" who is a vulnerable nine-year- old boy. While the kidnapped girls try to find a way out, including manipulating the various personalities to escape, Kevin in his other guises often visits his psychiatrist, Dr. Karen Fletcher (Betty Buckley), who believes some of his personalities can manifest unique physical attributes for each personality. As "Dennis" and "Patricia", Kevin warns the girls that they will sacrificed to "The Beast", the twenty-fourth personality waiting to be unleashed, he also talks about the possibility of this "real" personality emerging with Dr. Fletcher, who is trying to understand the reason for his disorder. While this is all going, the film goes into flashback to see five-year-old Casey (Izzie Leigh Coffey) and her own traumatic childhood, who suffered the death of her father (Sebastian Arcelus), and was molested by her uncle John (Brad William Henke), who became her legal guardian, she completed shooting him with a rifle, but hesitated. Eventually Dr. Fletcher slowly realises something is wrong and that Kevin is hiding something, and Kevin meanwhile does bring out the feared personality "The Beast", capable of superhuman levels of strength, speed, mobility and the hunger for human flesh. Marcia and Claire are killed by "The Beast", but Casey manages to escape, it turns out they were trapped underneath Philadelphia Zoo, where Kevin lives and works, "Dennis", "Patricia" and "Hedwig" exert permanent control of Kevin's body. In the end, the news of Kevin's crimes is reported on the news, he is nicknamed "The Horde", someone in a diner watching remarks that it reminds them of a wheelchair-bound terrorist from 15 years ago, an older David Dunn (Bruce Willis) tells them it was "Mr. Glass", this is a twist ending to show that this was a sequel to Unvreakable, "The Horde" is supposed to be another villain of Dunn's story. Also starring James McAvoy "Barry" / "Orwell" / "Jade", Neal Huff as Mr. Benoit and M. Night Shyamalan as Jai, Hooters Lover. McAvoy demonstrates his splendid acting ability as the lunatic kidnapper with the severe personality disorder, he is both chilling and at times amusing, the supporting characters never know which personality they are dealing with, it is creepy almost all the way through, and it is a good twist to the kidnap scenario movie, but the flashbacks are pointless, and the "twist" ending is nothing that memorable, the film as a whole is so- so, an average psychology horror style thriller. Worth watching!