Split (2016)

A man with 23 personalities kidnaps three girls who must find a way out before the 24th is unleashed.

Sixteen years after Unbreakable (2000), and just before the end credits started rolling down, we all discovered this was a (first) sequel. M. Night Shyamalan managed to keep us on the edge of our seats, and once we said the first ‘WOW’, we realised what the marketing had managed to do. Then, the second followed. Not included in the shooting script and omitted from the test screenings, the last scene was kept under wraps and is the tie-in between the two films. Kevin Crumb was written originally for Unbreakable, only to be seen in this one.

Based on a real-life person who actually had 24 personalities, Split‘s Kevin Crumb suffers the same problem even though we get to see 9 of them on screen. Interestingly enough, Unbreakable‘s David Dunn is also based on a real-life person. Hmmm…

Split, as a standalone, is a brilliant psychological horror/thriller. James McAvoy does all the heavy lifting, and the extremely talented Anya Taylor-Joy gives him all the support he needs. Depending on the personality that takes over, you feel for him as much as you hate him.

Experts in the Psychology field could argue how much M. Night Shyamalan knows about dissociative identity disorder and the compartmentalisation and segregation of personalities, but don’t let that distract you. Remember that it’s a psychological horror/thriller, not a documentary or a docudrama. I’ve watched documentaries propagandising inconceivable political and religious nonsense parroting biased and fallacious “facts”. Split is meant to give you the chills, and that’s exactly what it does.

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