“Split”

Movie Review

The 2016 American psychological thriller film Split, starring James McAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Betty Buckley, was written, produced, and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. The movie centers on a dissociative identity disorder sufferer who kidnaps three young girls and holds them captive in a remote underground facility.

With the aid of his therapist, Dr. Karen Fletcher, Kevin Wendell Crumb, a man with dissociative identity disorder who suffered abuse and abandonment as a youngster, has successfully managed to coexist with his 23 different identities for a number of years. Kevin's most powerful alter, "Barry," has been responsible for deciding which personas get access to his body. Recently, he has refused to play "Dennis" or "Patricia" because the former often harasses young girls and the latter trusts in a mystical being known as "The Beast" that seeks to purge the world of the "impure," or those who have not endured suffering. Dr. Fletcher becomes concerned when she learns that "Dennis" has been posing as "Barry" throughout their sessions after asking "Dennis" about a time when he became upset when two teenage girls put their hands on their breasts while he was drunk.

Claire, Casey, and Marcia are waiting to be brought home in Claire's father's car after a birthday party just outside of Philadelphia when Dennis kidnaps them. He imprisons the girls in a secret lair beneath the Philadelphia Zoo, where they meet Patricia, who protects them from Dennis in order to keep them safe for "The Beast," and "Hedwig," a 9-year-old boy alter who turns out to be the true dominant alter that Patricia and Dennis are using to keep the other alters out. Going through the vents, controlling Kevin's alters, and using a walkie-talkie to communicate with someone else are all unsuccessful attempts by the girls to leave the room.

When Dennis goes to the zoo to talk to him about "The Beast," which is actually a 24th personality that has not yet manifested, she finds Claire and Dennis knocks her out and locks her in. When he arrives at the railway station, "The Beast" takes over and has him enter an empty train car. Dr. Fletcher is killed when "The Beast," who has increased strength and animalistic traits, comes to his cave. He thanks her for her assistance before crushing her to death. Before approaching Casey, he viciously devours and kills Claire and Marcia, but as she yells out Kevin's full name, his true self emerges. The shocked Kevin begs Casey to shoot him with a shotgun he has hidden after learning about the circumstance and realizing that he has not been in control of his own body for two years. All 24 of the personalities begin to battle for dominance as a result, with Patricia coming out on top. She informs Casey that "Kevin" has been placed in a distant location to sleep and won't wake up even if his name is mentioned right now.

Patricia hands over power to "The Beast," and Casey grabs the shotgun and a box of ammo before running into a tunnel. Before she runs out of ammunition, she manages to fire "The Beast" twice, although he only suffers minor injuries. He gets close to killing her but backs off when he notices the scars covering her abdomen and chest, which are the result of John, her uncle and legal guardian, abusing her both before and after her father passed away. Casey is not killed by "The Beast" since she is "pure," and the cops save her the following morning.

Dennis, Patricia, and Hedwig talk about the capabilities of "The Beast" and their strategies for bringing about global change in another hideout. Several customers at the Silk City Diner are watching a TV program about "The Beast's" misdeeds when the reporter mentions that his various alter egos have given him the moniker "The Horde." A waitress observes the resemblance to a wheelchair-bound criminal who was imprisoned fifteen years ago and given the same nickname. The person sitting next to her responds that it was "Mr. Glass" as she struggles to recall.

When the movie was released in January 2017, reviews were largely favorable. Critics lauded McAvoy's performance and approved of Shyamalan's directing. Certain mental health experts criticized the film for its stigmatization of mental illness. Split was a commercial triumph.

Bruce Willis reprises his Unbreakable character in a moment in Split, which reveals that the movie is a standalone sequel to Shyamalan's 2000 picture Unbreakable despite not being advertised as such. Split was dubbed the first solo supervillain origin movie and the first "stealth sequel" by commentators. The Unbreakable trilogy by M. Night Shyamalan was completed with the 2019 movie Glass, which reunited the casts and characters from two earlier movies.

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