Could have been good!

Rating: 3/10 (8 February 2017)

What if at the end of the movie, when camera was closing in on Casey holding a gun in a cage, all torn out and looking horrified, we found out that the whole movie was nothing but a figment of her imagination, a trip to her psyche, to make for and come to terms with her childhood abuse? I was holding my breath and wishing for this ending, when I found out that the movie was actually for real. The loopholes in the plot and in theories of consciousness and identity startled me so much that I couldn't stop asking thinking Shyamalan, the director, did not ask for professional advice on such sensitive subjects. If the ending showed a twisted dark person as Casey was, then the movie could have been PERFECT, literally perfect. But it wasn't. it was an average movie trying to push its way to its desired ending through impossibilities and an imperfect logical reasoning. My question during the whole movie, was how such a plot could be based on "what if there is something more to people with multi-dimensional personality that direct us to understanding what supernatural is", what the psychologist, Ms. Dr. Fletcher told her colleague. Multi-dimensional personality is a possible psychological phenomenon but digesting the fact that 23 different people lived in one person, who was also conscious of this mental state which makes it more impossible to believe, was difficult personally. Another question was why did not the psychologist order the hospitalization of Kevin? Shouldn't such people be in mental hospitals taken care of? Other questions could be raised as to How could he live in a zoo without anyone noticing him commuting? Or Can a childhood issue, the one with Kevin and his mother, create such a 'beast'? or Can you be conscious of your multiple personality disorder and shift among characters once you decide? All these questions are left for the viewers to answer on their own. Instead, what Shyamalan could leave for the viewers to find out on the own could be a subtler, implied personality problems and mental fixations such as OCD; the latter one was so obvious in Kevin's behavior that the color yellow and his fixation on cleaning lost its sense. Another disappointing point was the director's desperate act for increasing the movie box office by showing "unessential" nudity and "unjustified" violence. On the contrary, James McAvoy, Kevin among 22 other names, performed greatly which causes you not to leave the movie hall in the middle of the movie. The supernatural aspect of movie can be interpreted as Freudian. McAvoy, I believe, has gone through three important Freudian phases; the supernatural part, as he turned into a beast was the 'id' part which I believed he has always been trying to go back to; his superego part was present in his meetings with Dr. Fletcher and due to his incompetency to keep with reality, his ego was represented into 23 different characters. This aspect can be further investigated by those interested in Freudian psychology; yet, I still hope that the beast at the end of the movie had been metaphorical.