split movie review essay

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Within the process of watching an M. Night Shyamalan film, there exists a parallel and simultaneous process of searching for its inevitable twist. This has been true of every film the writer-director has made since his surprise smash debut, “ The Sixth Sense ,” nearly two decades ago. We wonder: How will he dazzle us? What clues should we be searching for? Will it actually work this time?

Increasingly, with middling efforts like “ The Village ” and “ Lady in the Water ”—and dreary aberrations like “ The Last Airbender ” and “ After Earth ,” which bore none of his signature style—the answer to that last question has been: Not really. Which makes his latest, “Split,” such an exciting return to form. A rare, straight-up horror film from Shyamalan, “Split” is a thrilling reminder of what a technical master he can be. All his virtuoso camerawork is on display: his lifelong, loving homage to Alfred Hitchcock , which includes, as always, inserting himself in a cameo. And the twist—that there is no Big Twist—is one of the most refreshing parts of all.

“Split” is more lean and taut in its narrative and pace than we’ve seen from Shyamalan lately. Despite its nearly two-hour running time, it feels like it’s in constant forward motion, even when it flashes backward to provide perspective.

It’s as if there’s a spring in his step, even as he wallows in grunge. And a lot of that has to do with the tour-de-force performance from James McAvoy as a kidnapper named Kevin juggling two-dozen distinct personalities.

From obsessive-compulsive maintenance man Dennis to playful, 9-year-old Hedwig to prim, British Patricia to flamboyant, New York fashionista Barry, McAvoy brings all these characters to life in undeniably hammy yet entertaining ways. There’s a lot of scenery chewing going on here, but it’s a performance that also showcases McAvoy’s great agility and precision. He has to make changes both big and small, sometimes in the same breath, and it’s a hugely engaging spectacle to behold.

His portrayal of this troubled soul is darkly funny but also unexpectedly sad. Kevin is menacing no matter which personality in control, but the underlying childhood trauma that caused him to create these alter egos as a means of defense clearly still haunts him as a grown man. Flashes of vulnerability and fragility reveal themselves in the film’s third act, providing an entirely different kind of disturbing tone.

First, though, there is the abduction, which Shyamalan stages in efficient, gripping fashion. Three high school girls get in a car after a birthday party at the mall: pretty, chatty Claire ( Haley Lu Richardson of “ The Edge of Seventeen ”) and Marcia ( Jessica Sula ) and shy, quiet Casey ( Anya Taylor-Joy ), who was invited along out of pity. But they quickly realize the man behind the wheel isn’t Claire’s dad—it’s Kevin, who wastes no time in knocking them out and dragging them back to his makeshift, underground lair.

Repeated visits from Kevin, with his varying voices and personae, gradually make it clear that their kidnapper harbors multiple personalities. Only Casey, who emerges as the trio’s clever leader, has the audacity to engage with him. As she showed in her breakout role in “ The Witch ” as well as in “ Morgan ,” Taylor-Joy can be chilling in absolute stillness with her wide, almond eyes—as much as McAvoy is in his showiness. She makes Casey more than your typical horror heroine to root for, particularly with the help of quietly suspenseful flashbacks that indicate how she acquired her survival instincts. Her co-stars aren’t afforded nearly as much characterization or clothing, for that matter.

But we also get a greater understanding of Kevin’s mental state through the daily sessions he (or, rather, a version of him) schedules with his psychologist, Dr. Fletcher (an elegant and soulful Betty Buckley ). A leading researcher in the field, she believes having dissociative identity disorder is actually a reflection of the brain’s vast potential rather than a disability. Their conversations, while exquisitely tense, also provide a welcome source of kindness amid the brutality.

And they help us put together the pieces of this puzzle—which is actually a few different puzzles at once. There’s the question of what Kevin wants with these girls. There’s the question of how they’ll escape. But the fundamentally frightening element of this whole scenario is how the various personalities interact with each other—how they manipulate and intimidate each other—and whether there’s an even more fearsome force gaining strength.

West Dylan Thordson ’s score and an expertly creepy sound design help make “Split” an unsettling experience from the very start. But the movie staggers a bit toward the end with some contrivances and coincidences, and it goes in directions that feel a bit exploitative—as if it’s wringing childhood abuse for cheap thrills. I’m still wrestling with how I feel about it, but I know I walked out with a slightly icky sense, even as I found the film engrossing both technically and dramatically.

Still, it’s exciting to see Shyamalan on such confident footing once more, all these years later. Make sure you stay in your seat until the absolute end to see what other tricks he may have up his sleeve.

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Film Credits

Split (2017)

Rated PG-13 for disturbing thematic content and behavior, violence and some language.

116 minutes

James McAvoy as Kevin

Anya Taylor-Joy as Casey

Haley Lu Richardson as Claire

Jessica Sula as Marcia

Betty Buckley as Dr. Fletcher

Kim Director as Hannah

Brad William Henke as Uncle John

• M. Night Shyamalan

Cinematographer

• Mike Gioulakis
• Luke Franco Ciarrocchi
• West Dylan Thordson

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The Movie “Split” Analysis Essay

The movie “Split” is a psychological horror-thriller filmed by M. Night Shyamalan, starring James McAvoy, who plays about a person who has 23 prominent personalities due to sexual abuse happened in his childhood (Fischer, 2017). Each character of the person has a name and story, but the first man portrayed is Kevin Wendell Crumb. He kidnaps and imprisons three teenage girls in an isolated facility. The main character has a dissociative identity disorder (DID): one day, he may be a little boy, and tomorrow he is a strict teacher. When one of his 23 personalities kidnaps three schoolgirls, some of the characters approve of this act, and some want to fix the situation.

In the movie, Crumb shows typical symptoms of the disorder, such as the transition from one personality to another occurs spontaneously. Sometimes the change takes a few seconds; other times, it lasts for hours and days, while a person has a memory loss for some time. Each personality has its name, habits, intonation, facial expressions; for instance, “Dennis” imprisons girls, “Hedwig” has a childlike nature and wants to play with them, “The Beast” aims to kill girls and take ownership of the world.

The character tried to “fix” the problem by having visits to a psychotherapist. In the movie, we see the scenes of Kevin’s appointment with a psychotherapist. The doctor asks the main character, who is in front of him by building hypotheses, and Kevin confirms or rejects the guesses. When a dissociative identity disorder hits a person severely, the only recommendation for the main character to resolve the psychological issue is contacting a psychotherapist and conducting comprehensive treatment. I would suggest using cognitive-behavioral and dialectical behavioral therapy approaches to treat the person with the DID because it helps to decrease negative responses to stressors, which cause the appearance of other personalities (Dryden-Edwards & Stöppler, n.d.). Furthermore, these approaches are recommended to help a person unite all characters and control them to avoid adverse consequences (Fischer, 2017).

Dryden-Edwards, R. & Stöppler, M. (n.d.). Dissociative identity disorder. MedicineNet. Web.

Fischer, K. (2017). Movie ‘Split’ does harm to people with dissociative identity disorder, experts say. Healthline. Web.

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IvyPanda. (2023, October 31). The Movie “Split” Analysis. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-movie-split-analysis/

"The Movie “Split” Analysis." IvyPanda , 31 Oct. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/the-movie-split-analysis/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'The Movie “Split” Analysis'. 31 October.

IvyPanda . 2023. "The Movie “Split” Analysis." October 31, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-movie-split-analysis/.

1. IvyPanda . "The Movie “Split” Analysis." October 31, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-movie-split-analysis/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "The Movie “Split” Analysis." October 31, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-movie-split-analysis/.

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Review: M. Night Shyamalan’s ‘Split’ Has Personality. O.K., Personalities. Lots.

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By A.O. Scott

• Jan. 19, 2017

At once solemn and preposterous, sinister and sentimental, efficient and overwrought, “Split” represents something of a return to form for its writer and director, M. Night Shyamalan. Or maybe I should say a return to formula. The movie, shot in and around Philadelphia, Mr. Shyamalan’s hometown, proceeds nimbly and with suave misdirection toward a pair of rug-pulling final twists that an attentive viewer will probably be able to anticipate. It’s not exactly a Choose Your Own Adventure, but you can opt either for the pleasure of surprise at the end or for the satisfaction of working out the puzzle as you go along.

Thanks to “ The Sixth Sense ” and “ Unbreakable ” back around the turn of the century, Mr. Shyamalan stands as a pioneer of spoiler-centric cinema. Like those movies, and like his later, lesser entertainments (“The Village”; “The Happening”), “Split” is all plot, an ingenious (and also ridiculous) conceit spun into an elegant ribbon of suspense. The less said about that plot, therefore, the better.

Movie Review: ‘Split’

The times critic a. o. scott reviews “split.”.

In “Split,” three teenage girls are kidnapped by a man with multiple personality disorder. In his review A.O. Scott writes: At once solemn and preposterous, sinister and sentimental, efficient and overwrought, “Split” represents something of a return to form for its writer and director, M. Night Shyamalan. The movie proceeds nimbly and with suave misdirection toward a pair of rug-pulling final twists that an attentive viewer will probably be able to anticipate. The film is lurid and ludicrous, and sometimes more than a little icky in its prurient, maudlin interest in the abuse of children. It’s also absorbing and sometimes slyly funny.

What I can safely divulge is that three teenage girls are kidnapped after a birthday party by a close-cropped guy named Dennis in a buttoned-up shirt. He is obsessed with cleanliness, and he sounds weirdly like John Turturro for a guy supposedly from Philly. In fact, Dennis is played by the soft-eyed, shape-shifting British actor James McAvoy, as are the other 23 personalities residing in the body of a guy who shares the surname of a famous (and famously odd) Philadelphia-born artist .

These “alters” — a word familiar to fans of the Showtime series “United States of Tara” and other pop-cultural treatments of a controversial and often poorly understood psychological disorder — are a diverse bunch. Some are male, some female, at least one is a child (named Hedwig) and another (named Barry) is a gay stereotype. What they want with their captives is not immediately clear. What Mr. Shyamalan wants is to strip them down to their underwear and to explore, exploit and occasionally subvert the basic tropes of the female-victim psycho-slasher movie.

One of the young women — a gothy, spooky misfit named Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy) — is singled out for special attention from the camera (though not, at least initially, from Dennis and his colleagues). Her fellow abductees, Claire (Haley Lu Richardson) and Marcia (Jessica Sula), alternate between panic and defiance, but Casey counsels patience and watchfulness. Flashbacks to a hunting trip she took as a 5-year-old (Izzie Leigh Coffey) in the company of her father (Sebastian Arcelus) and uncle (Brad William Henke) seem to explain the source of her survival skills, though it turns out that those memories have another, darker meaning as well.

Dennis and company, meanwhile — it’s mostly Barry, actually — consult with a therapist, Dr. Fletcher, who lives alone in a gracious, book-stuffed rowhouse and who is played by the wonderful Betty Buckley. Dr. Fletcher’s primary function is to explain the movie to the audience, foreshadowing the climax with her heterodox pseudo-scholarly theories about her many-sided patient, but Ms. Buckley also provides a dimension of warmth and wit that “Split” would be much duller and uglier without.

Mr. McAvoy, for his part, revels in the chance to use his sensitivity for evil, and to showboat his way through a series of appropriately overwrought characterizations. This breathlessly melodramatic thriller shouldn’t be taken as a psychological case study, any more than Mr. Shyamalan’s laughable “Lady in the Water” should be mined for clues about the habits of film critics.

“Split” is lurid and ludicrous, and sometimes more than a little icky in its prurient, maudlin interest in the abuse of children. It’s also absorbing and sometimes slyly funny. Some years back — it’s startling to contemplate just how long ago it was — Mr. Shyamalan was puffed up into a cinematic visionary, hailed on the cover of Newsweek as “The Next Spielberg.” That hype (and his own self-aggrandizing tendencies) placed a disproportionate burden of significance on a filmmaker who has always been, at heart, a superior genre hack.

“Split” is being released by Universal under the Blumhouse label, a brand associated with unpretentious, clever, neo-traditionalist scare-pictures like “Insidious,” “Paranormal Activity” and “The Purge.” That seems like the right company for Mr. Shyamalan, and the January pre-Oscar doldrums may be the perfect moment to appreciate his skills. He is a master of mood, pace and limited perspective, moving the camera so that the thing you most desperately want to see — and are most afraid of seeing — remains teasingly out of sight.

He uses Ms. Taylor-Joy’s enormous dark eyes as a mirror and a lure for the audience’s attention. He delays the inevitable, inevitably deflationary revelations for as long as possible, minimizing the obligatory third-act flurry of chasing, fighting and bloodletting. And he sneaks in a few self-referential winks, including an allusion to his last really good movie that feels at once like a promise of better mischief to come and an implicit apology for all the disappointment in between.

A film review on Friday about “Split” misstated the movie’s rating status. It is rated PG-13, not R.

How we handle corrections

Split Rated PG-13. Not superbloody, but supercreepy. Running time: 1 hour 57 minutes.

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Split is twisty, weird, and a great guide to writer-director M. Night Shyamalan's obsessions

Everything Shyamalan loves to explore is in this film, which stars James McAvoy as man with dissociative identity disorder.

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Share All sharing options for: Split is twisty, weird, and a great guide to writer-director M. Night Shyamalan's obsessions

There’s a clever hint in Split — I won’t give it away — that the latest thriller by famously twisty director M. Night Shyamalan exists in the same universe as at least one of his other movies.

That hint feels calculated to blow our collective minds. Are all of Shyamalan’s films in the same universe? Most of them are set in and around Shyamalan’s hometown of Philadelphia, as is Split . Could Cleveland Heep from Lady in the Water , out on a stroll sometime, accidentally wander into the Village ? Could Graham Hess find himself administering the Eucharist at church one day to David Dunn ?

Whether or not Split represents the birth of the Shyamalan Unified Cinematic Universe remains to be seen. But Split does unify Shyamalan’s films in other ways, specifically through its three biggest themes, which thread throughout most of the other movies he’s written and directed, from The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable to The Village and The Visit . Even less critically praised entries like The Happening and Lady in the Water echo these themes.

Split might be Shyamalan’s most straightforward exploration to date of these three big themes, but they’re present, in some form or another, in most everything he makes.

1) People are motivated by death and dark secrets

Split pits a trio of teenage girls ( Anya Taylor-Joy , Haley Lu Richardson , and Jessica Sula ) against their kidnapper ( James McAvoy ), a man with dissociative identity disorder (DID). He has 23 identities, and, it seems, a 24th may be readying itself to emerge. His therapist ( Betty Buckley ) is convinced he and others like him hold the key to some discovery that science does not yet understand.

Casey (Taylor-Joy, who was last seen in The Witch ) is introduced to us as a sullen teenager and a clear outsider who’s only at a birthday party for the other girls because Claire (Richardson) felt compelled to invite her out of kindness. When Claire, Casey, and Marcia (Sula) are kidnapped, Casey’s first instinct isn’t to fight back. She despairs. Why even try?

In flashbacks, we come to realize that this instinct comes from both Casey’s loss of her beloved father and a secret she’s been hiding since she was a child. Casey’s been helpless for a long time, and it’s part of why she keeps to herself.

In this way, Casey is just one in a long string of Shyamalan characters who’ve isolated themselves in response to the loss of someone close to them. In Signs , Graham Hess is haunted by the loss of his wife; in Lady in the Water , Cleveland Heep has lost his entire family. David Dunn in Unbreakable is haunted by the near-loss of his wife, which has caused him to suppress an important memory. The village of The Village is created by people seeking to escape their tragedy and loss. Most of the action in The Happening comes from the same place. The Visit turns out to be about losing parents, too. And the whole concept of The Sixth Sense famously hinges on death and loss.

The fact that loss is a trigger for most of Shyamalan’s films is intriguing: There’s no clear biographical motivation for this, although Shyamalan went so far as to produce a fake documentary in 2014 about his own brief death as a child , in order to promote The Village .

Of course, death is hardly an obscure inspiration for movies. But it seems to occupy a special place in Shyamalan’s psyche. He’s interested in how people react to losing someone or something close to them, and his canon reflects that. That feeling of absence where once there was a person, for him, is the ultimate way to explain why people act how they do. Split joins that long line with yet another loss-haunted character.

2) The world contains more than we can see (sometimes)

Shyamalan’s psychological horror/thrillers often suggest that our senses can deceive us, and that what we think we know about the world is often wrong. This is how the famous “Shyamalan twist” usually operates: The characters — and the audience — make a set of assumptions about the world that turn out to be untrue. Surprise!

The Village is the most clearly allegorical of these twists: For most of the film, Ivy and Lucius (and the audience) assume that frightening creatures are keeping the villagers from entering the woods. The truth, of course, is much more complicated. A similar narrative move, in which a basic assumption about the movie’s setup turns out to be false, is what twists The Visit . (Shyamalan also served as a producer on Wayward Pines and directed one episode, which draws on the same uncertainty.)

In some films, like Lady in the Water , The Sixth Sense, and Unbreakable, it’s what the characters believe about themselves that turns out to be totally false. Can we even be sure our minds are accurately feeding us information about our own nature? Or — as in Signs and The Happening — has science really sorted out the natural and supernatural world as neatly as we think?

Split capitalizes on similar moments of pulling the rug out from under the audience. While the characters quickly figure out that their kidnapper has DID and is manifesting multiple personalities, how that condition actually works in this instance is the mystery. (McAvoy’s extraordinarily committed performance — in the credits, he’s listed as playing nine different characters — is a feat of remarkable shape-shifting.)

Shyamalan’s propensity to turn the tables on his characters and the audience works to his advantage in Split, which is actually less twisty than some of his other movies. But because we know it’s a Shyamalan movie, we spend the whole time second-guessing whether what we think we’re seeing onscreen is actually what we’re seeing, and whether the assumptions we’ve made are true. That means even when there’s nothing to second-guess, we’re still second-guessing — and so seemingly simple plot elements (some candy on a table, for instance, or the way someone dances) feel like they could be clues about some unknown mystery. That could be annoying, but in Split it feels like it’s all part of the game Shyamalan is playing with us.

But the self-deception common to Shyamalan’s characters is here, too; Casey has to find the truth about herself and discover her own agency through the fog of trauma in order to stay alive. This self-deception is also refracted in the kidnapper, who has so many personalities warring within him that it’s basically impossible for him to know himself.

As for science, the therapist, Dr. Fletcher, is sure she’s found something remarkable in this patient, something that may unlock mysteries of the human brain and belief in the divine. And she has. It’s just not what she thinks it is.

3) Your trauma is your superpower

This is the main theme of Split , and to be honest, it’s a troubling one. It’s voiced most clearly at the end, by a (literal) predator, who tells Casey that she is pure because of what she’s endured at the hands of others.

Naturally, the words of a predator and a villain should be taken with a hearty dash of salt — but it seems like the movie doesn’t discount this suggestion at all. Split’s whole bent is toward saying that only those who’ve endured extreme anguish or abuse are really capable of surviving in the world, and that they ought, in some manner, to be grateful for it. The kidnapper’s disorder came about as a way to cope with an abusive mother, while Dr. Fletcher is certain that the results of that abuse will give the human race new insight into its own condition, maybe even unlock its own potential.

This is a common trope in superhero stories from Batman to Captain America: Trauma is what gives heroes their powers. And it’s a continued theme throughout Shyamalan’s work as well. In Unbreakable , the superhero connection is made explicit, and trauma is what surfaces David’s potential. In Lady in the Water , Heep’s repressed grief is what makes him powerful. In The Sixth Sense , it’s what gives Cole the ability to see ghosts.

Given how common this trope is, there’s probably some truth buried in it, and some utility to it as well: Trauma is horrible to endure, but those who get through it can develop reactive instincts that can be an advantage in future troubling circumstances.

But the coupling of this suggestion with DID feels off in Split . Of course, people with DID do at times display extraordinary abilities that don’t seem to fit into what we know about human biology and psychology. There’s an argument to be made, and the movie seems to want to make it, that DID can and even ought be treated as more of a feature than a bug — that the kidnapper’s disorder gives him superpowers, which he developed to survive his childhood abuse. And Casey, too, received a sort of gift from her own trauma.

However, Split isn’t deeply reflective on this point. And by mirroring the trauma-as-superpower trope in both the kidnapper and Casey, the movie runs the risk of exploiting something that lots of people struggle with — both the effects of abuse and disorders like DID — and saying that they’re more special than other people, which could be taken as just another way of saying that they’re weird.

That almost certainly wasn’t Shyamalan’s aim. He tends to like a positive ending, and he seems to be going after something interesting with Split. But while this idea of trauma-induced ability could be taken as empowering, it also feels a little fetishistic here. And Split ’s ultimate outcome is a little troubling for those who actually do struggle with DID. A bit more attention to the implications of the screenplay would have not just avoided some of these pitfalls but also picked up the pace in some spots where the film lags unnecessarily.

Still, even with its drawbacks, Split is a solid encapsulation of what Shyamalan is all about, propelled by all his favorite topics, goosed by the audience’s expectations of a Shyamalan film, and topped off with the signature Shyamalan twist. And if it turns out to launch the Shyamalan Unified Cinematic Universe, too, I doubt fans will complain.

Split opens in theaters on January 20.

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Film “Split” Psychotherapy Analysis

Introduction.

For the topic of the final assignment, the movie Split was chosen, upon which an in-depth analysis of a character’s disorder will be conducted. The film is centered around the main character Kevin, who struggles with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) also known as multiple personality disorder. There are twenty-three alternative personalities, which define the character’s severe condition. All identities, with whom Kevin lives, are distinct from each other with separate emotional and mental states, styles, and voices. Moreover, some of these personalities have violent tendencies and are considered dangerous to society. It is almost impossible to see Kevin’s primary identity, as the alternative characters take up most of his life; however, when he is in control, the viewers see him as a fragile man, who has a baggage of personal struggles. Throughout the film, the audience learns that Kevin frequently visits a psychotherapist, who tries to help the man control his alternative personality. The movie did a fascinating job of displaying a character with such a complex illness as dissociative identity disorder.

The Character’s Diagnosis in Terms of the DSM-V

The main character of the movie Split Kevin suffers from a severe form of dissociative identity disorder, where twenty-three alternative selves are living inside of one person. American Psychiatric Association (2018) defines the cause of multiple personality disorder as “overwhelming experiences, traumatic events and/or abuse that occurred in childhood (para. 7). It was indeed discovered that disturbing youth became the reason for Kevin to develop such a mental condition.

The latest guide of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders released in 2013 provides numerous diagnostic criteria for dissociative identity disorder. The main symptom identified by DSM-5 among people with multiple personality syndrome is the disruption of identity. It is demonstrated by the existence of two or more noticeable states of personality (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). People with such illnesses show a vivid discontinuity in the sense of self, in addition to a significant shift in behavior. Another evident symptom is the loss of memory, difficulty recalling daily events, and especially traumatic experiences that are unusual for a healthy individual (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Among other signs that a person has dissociative identity disorder is that these expressions cause severe disruption in communicative interactions or other vital socializing areas.

Moreover, if a person is unusually disturbed and acts against cultural or religious beliefs, it may be a possible manifestation of an alternative personality. Lastly, if a patient takes medication and their behavior does not conform with current medication or medical condition, it may be an evident sign of multiple personality disorder (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Therefore, there are some apparent symptoms portrayed by a patient, according to the DSM-5, that help diagnose a dissociative identity disorder.

Main Character’s Etiology of the Dissociative Identity Disorder

Multiple personality disorder is known to have several primary causes that trigger a person to develop alternative identities. In most cases, DID is established in early childhood as a protection mechanism from the ongoing trauma a kid I experiencing. Researchers define dissociative identity disorder as a “chronic complex post-traumatic developmental disorder,” signs of which begin to manifest in the early years of life (Sar et al., 2017 p. 138). The emerging illness is a result of children’s inability to develop a full image of self-awareness amidst disruptive states of stress and trauma.

Identity alterations may also be related to some post-traumatic stress. Multiple personality disorder may be an elaborated version of a protective avoidance mechanism of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Sar et al., 2017). However, the distinct difference of DID from PTSD is that in this disease, acquired identities have their distinguishing personalities, which is supported by evident breaks in consciousness between them, which does not apply to PTSD. Kevin demonstrates multiple personalities that all were developed on the background of some childhood trauma. Each identity is responsible for protecting the character from some actions, with one being primary, in this case – Barry.

The cause of Kevin’s mental dysfunction adheres to all the guidelines of the illness’s etiology. From the movie, the audience discovers that the dissociative identity disorder is a result of Kevin’s childhood suffering, caused by his mother. When he was a kid, the boy’s mother would physically abuse him for the smallest mistakes he would do; therefore, Kevin started developing multiple personalities in that background. Some of Kevin’s alternative identities would be responsible for protecting him from the specific traumatic experience. For instance, Dennis, who is a neat freak, appeared after numerous beatings for the most discreet untidiness.

An In-Depth Analysis of the Treatment Prescribed for The Character

Dissociative identity disorder has no official, evidence-based treatment plans or guidelines, due to the complexity of the disease, and the lack of research on the topic. The ultimate goal for the doctors in terms of treating DID is to ensure the full safety of the individual and the people around them. Moreover, psychotherapists need to connect all the alternative identities of a person into one personality who can function normally (Cleveland Clinic, 2016). The most widely used technique of multiple personality disorder treatment is individual psychodynamic psychotherapy. The medical care for patients with such a complicated disorder is commonly conducted in 3 stages. The first phase is associated with the stabilization of symptoms, and the second phase confronts all the traumatic memories, followed by the last stage of identity rehabilitation (Huntjens et al., 2019). Such treatment of DID is the common practice used by doctors who have shown exceptionally effective outcomes.

Among other possible methods for stabilizing the state of a person with multiple personality disorder is cognitive-behavioral therapy, which focuses on altering thinking patterns. Family therapy is designed to teach relatives about the disease and may show positive results. Medication is found helpful for people with DID who have evident signs of anxiety or depression. The research on efficient treatment for people with dissociative identity disorder is progressing slowly, as patients with the disease are rarely included in studies, and not many scientists believe in the actuality of such illness (Huntjens et al., 2019). Nevertheless, many patients with DID are successfully treated and taught to live with such a complex disorder.

In the movie Split, the main character Kevin has weekly appointments with his psychiatrist Dr. Karen Fletcher, who he has attended for many years. The sessions help the man keep his identities in check and share any troubles or anxieties he experiences. For a long time, Dr. Fletcher has been studying Kevin and learning everything about all the twenty-three personalities he has. Such a long-term treatment has not only evoked trust between the patient and the doctor but also continually aided in managing the alternates, keeping the man’s life under control.

The advantage of the long-term multiple-stage treatment is that it gives time for a psychologist to find the most suitable approach to their patient with DID, which may significantly reduce levels of dissociative symptoms. The chronic struggles a person with this disease has may decrease or disappear completely, which can consequently better the control over the alternative identities (Huntjens et al., 2019). Though, sometimes such therapy may be a cause of worsening the state of a patient, increasing amnesia and anxiety. It is associated with the uncareful or too quick development of the treatment, for which a person with multiple personality disorder may not be ready (Huntjens et al., 2019). Therefore, a multi-phase approach to dissociative identity disorder treatment shows significant results if a doctor is qualified and credible to conduct complex therapy with the patient. A correct approach may significantly decrease the dangerous symptoms of a multiple personality disorder and lead a person to live and function as an ordinary individual in society.

A few novel alternative approaches of DID treatment exist that proved to have some effect on patients. Clinical hypnosis is one of the possible choices for therapy, which involves ultimate relaxation to achieve a certain state of consciousness, allowing a physician to discover particular memories or traumatic actions that may be hidden in the brain (Cleveland Clinic, 2016). Such a program may aid explore some of the triggers for the dissociative disorder, based on which the individual therapy can be better adapted

Dissociative identity disorder is a severe mental state, associated with the existence of multiple personalities, caused by severe childhood traumas. The movie Split and its main character Kevin are a prominent depiction of a person’s life with multiple personality disorder and the course of its treatment. Due to the lack of evidence-based research on the possible treatments, however, individual psychodynamic psychotherapy is typically used since it shows the most efficient result, a representation of what the viewers saw in the movie.

American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Desk Reference to the diagnostic criteria from DSM-5 . American Psychiatric Publishing.

American Psychiatric Association. (2018). What Are dissociative disorders? Psychiatry.Org.

Cleveland Clinic. (2016). Dissociative identity disorder (Multiple Personality Disorder) Management and treatment | Cleveland Clinic . Web.

Huntjens, R. J. C., Rijkeboer, M. M., & Arntz, A. (2019). Schema therapy for dissociative identity disorder (DID): Rationale and study protocol. European Journal of Psychotraumatology , 10 (1), 1571377.

Sar, V., Dorahy, M., & Krüger, C. (2017). Revisiting the etiological aspects of dissociative identity disorder: A biopsychosocial perspective. Psychology Research and Behavior Management , vol. 10 , 137–146.

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‘Split’ review — James McAvoy gives the performance of his career

Split  is an incredibly tense and well-made thriller that features fantastic performances by james mcavoy and anya taylor joy..

M. Night Shyamalan is back, for better or worst. The last Shyamalan movie I watched was 2008’s  The Happening , so you could understand my hesitance going into this movie. Although I heard mostly good things about his last movie  The Visit,  dissociative identity disorder or multiple personalities is a hard subject to pull off well. Of course, you get into the dilemma of portraying mental illness as a danger to society. However, Shyamalan toes the line gently with  Split . 

And it’s not just the opening scene that is filled with tension. All of Split  has this impressive slow-burning dread that underlies every scene. It makes you want to turn away from the screen. It’s a combination of the creative elements that Shyamalan was able to pull together that pulls it off. Specifically, the simple production design of the bunker, which feels like an endless maze of tunnels, the heavy bass of the score, the cinematography, and the performances come together to create an ominous mood. When we start getting into the meat of the story some of that goes away, but generally, the movie keeps tightening and tightening until the last 20 minutes.

The girls’ captor is revealed to have Dissociative Identity Disorder, which means 23 different personalities control this one body — a spirited nine-year-old, an obsessive-compulsive brute, a disciplined and proper English woman. The main alter, Barry is a fashion designer with a generally happy attitude and motivation to get past his condition. His scenes with his therapist Dr. Karen Fletcher ( Betty Buckley ) have nearly as much tension as the scenes with the three girls as they attempt to escape from the bunker he brought them to. It’s difficult to talk about why the use of DID as a plot device is justified without edging into spoilers. However, this is a movie that is recontextualized by its ending — for the better.

James McAvoy is remarkable. Not only because he has to play a menagerie characters, but because the way he distinguishes between each is so specific. When he walks into a room you can tell just by his posture which alter he is. And when he becomes each alter, he inhabits them wholly in his speech, facial expressions, and even the way he moves his jaw. Though he’s certainly playing to the back of the theater, it works because of the recontextualization of the movie.

That’s not to take away from the other performances. Betty Buckley is marvelous and sure-footed as Dr. Fletcher and Anya Taylor-Joy gives a complex, yet nuanced performance as Casey. But you just can’t help but be both drawn in and terrified by McAvoy.

Split  is built like a mystery that allows the audience to piece together the clues without tipping its ultimate hand.

Up until the last 20 or so minutes,  Split   is a tense, tightly directed thriller that would probably have ended up among my favorite movies at the end of the year. It is still a really great movie, but the ending nearly takes all the momentum it had going. Does it make it a bad movie? No. It’s still a good movie. While Shyamalan is known for his self-indulgence – some low brow humor and of course an appearance in the movie – he shows restraint for most of the movie. However, nearly all of its success has to be put on James McAvoy who should hopefully finally get the roles and respect he deserves. If anything, watch  Split  for the masterclass in acting happening on the screen.

★★★ out of 5

Karl Delossantos

Hey, I'm Karl, founder and film critic at Smash Cut. I started Smash Cut in 2014 to share my love of movies and give a perspective I haven't yet seen represented. I'm also an editor at The New York Times, a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, and a member of the Online Film Critics Society.

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Split review – James McAvoy is 23 shades of creepy in M Night Shyamalan chiller

Surprise! The Sixth Sense director’s shock-twist kidnap thriller premiered in a secret screening at Austin’s Fantastic Fest – a masterful blend of Hitchcock, horror and therapy session

M Night Shyamalan achieved his final form this week at Fantastic Fest , the annual genre film bonanza in Austin, Texas. The king of twists and surprises brought next January’s release, Split, as a “secret screening” early premiere. We in the audience had no clue what we’d be seeing until the opening credits, which didn’t arrive until after a prologue. It was the first in a series of “aha!” moments.

Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy) is left without a ride after a pity invite to a classmate’s party. A helpful dad is willing to give her a lift home, but the two giggly friends in the back (Haley Lu Richardson and Jessica Sula) are too busy looking at their phones to realise that the man who just slipped into the driver’s seat is actually someone else. A few shots of aerosol chloroform later and the three teenagers wake up in a locked room in a creepy dude’s basement.

But maybe it isn’t a creepy dude; maybe it’s multiple people. In a way it’s both. James McAvoy plays Barry, or maybe it’s Dennis, or Hedwig or Patricia. He suffers from dissociative identity disorder and, thanks to some of the more troubled personalities within him, he’s concocted a plan to kidnap the two popular girls for some sort of ritual. Casey’s presence wasn’t expected, but surely she can’t pose a threat to his scheme, can she?

The storyline in Split is split in three ways. There’s the fairly typical (but tense) struggle of the young women trying to escape their captor, then there are Casey’s flashbacks, in which her father and uncle teach her buck hunting, which teases out the origins of her steely demeanour. Then there’s McAvoy, in multiple guises, interacting with his therapist Dr Fletcher (Betty Buckley), who is slowly realising her normally contained patient is heading towards a breakdown.

Usually when a character talks to a shrink it’s because the screenwriter couldn’t find a more elegant way to weave in exposition. However, with Split, despite being a horror-thriller, the most fascinating moments are the ones McAvoy spends on Dr Fletcher’s couch. Split goes all-in on McAvoy slipping from persona to persona, and luckily he’s got the acting chops to sell it. With only minor costuming changes he morphs from an angry clean freak to a flamboyant fashion designer to a precocious kid. The character suffers from such an acute form of dissociation that, so Fletcher argues to a conference of colleagues who just don’t get it, his mind changes his actual anatomy.

Part of me would like to have that last bit vetted by psychiatrists and physicians, but not the part of me that enjoys Hitchcock’s Spellbound. Or Psycho, for that matter, which, late in the game, Split resembles when the screenplay decides to make some riskier moves. Here’s where I mention that, yes, Shyamalan’s love of tricks is very much alive and well. You would have to have only one personality – that of a rotten jerk – to spoil the ending, especially in an early review of the film.

It’s important to say that Split doesn’t hinge on a twist ending. It is a full and satisfying film that, if you stopped watching 18 seconds before the conclusion, would still suit as a juicy bit of smart horror. It nicely rides the line between exploitation and serious commentary about the strength gained from overcoming adversity. Casey’s final tank top, one of the skimpier pieces of wardrobe in cinema history, is actually integral to both of these points.

But there is a neutron bomb dropped in the final scene that essentially reframes everything you just saw. It isn’t a whopping reveal like the one in The Sixth Sense ; it’s more like the snap of a puzzle piece on a wider game board you didn’t know you were playing. For many film fans, it will be extremely gratifying. For others, it’ll fly right over their heads, and they’ll wonder why others in the audience are shouting, “Oh my God!” Split really is a movie for all sorts of personalities.

• First look review
• M Night Shyamalan
• James McAvoy
• Horror films

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2016, Mystery & thriller/Horror, 1h 57m

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Critics Consensus

Split serves as a dramatic tour de force for James McAvoy in multiple roles -- and finds writer-director M. Night Shyamalan returning resoundingly to thrilling form. Read critic reviews

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Split videos, split   photos.

Though Kevin (James McAvoy) has evidenced 23 personalities to his trusted psychiatrist, Dr. Fletcher (Betty Buckley), there remains one still submerged who is set to materialize and dominate all of the others. Compelled to abduct three teenage girls led by the willful, observant Casey, Kevin reaches a war for survival among all of those contained within him -- as well as everyone around him -- as the walls between his compartments shatter.

Rating: PG-13 (Disturbing Thematic Content|Disturbing Behavior|Some Language|Violence)

Genre: Mystery & thriller, Horror

Original Language: English

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Producer: M. Night Shyamalan , Jason Blum , Marc Bienstock

Writer: M. Night Shyamalan

Release Date (Theaters): Jan 20, 2017  wide

Release Date (Streaming): Apr 5, 2017

Box Office (Gross USA): $138.1M

Runtime: 1h 57m

Distributor: Universal Pictures

Production Co: Lightning Entertainment, Blinding Edge Pictures, Universal Pictures, Blumhouse Productions

Sound Mix: Dolby Digital

Cast & Crew

James McAvoy

Kevin Wendell Crumb

Anya Taylor-Joy

Casey Cooke

Betty Buckley

Dr. Karen Fletcher

Haley Lu Richardson

Claire Benoit

Jessica Sula

Izzie Coffey

Five-Year-Old Casey

Brad William Henke

Sebastian Arcelus

Casey's Father

M. Night Shyamalan

Screenwriter

Marc Bienstock

Steven Schneider

Executive Producer

Ashwin Rajan

Kevin Scott Frakes

Buddy Patrick

Mike Gioulakis

Cinematographer

Luke Franco Ciarrocchi

Film Editing

West Dylan Thordson

Original Music

Mara LePere-Schloop

Production Design

Jesse Rosenthal

Art Director

Jennifer Engel

Set Decoration

Paco Delgado

Costume Design

Douglas Aibel

News & Interviews for Split

Major Awards Need to Stop Ignoring Incredible Horror Performances

Glass First Reviews: Jackson and McAvoy Shine in What Critics Are Calling a Disappointing Trilogy Conclusion

An Oral History of Split with M. Night Shyamalan and James McAvoy

Critic Reviews for Split

Audience reviews for split.

This is mostly McAvoy's show, giving a stellar performance as a dozen split personalities, but the rest of the characters and actresses have their moments to shine too. Shyamalan has never been this sincere and focused, not even in his brilliant first few films. And then there is the final moment, starting with the musical reference, that connects this brutal, exciting and fascinating tour de force with a former hit. That's such a massive goosebump inducing moment, you're still shaking while the end credits are rolling.

M. Night Shyamalan's journey since 1999 when The Sixth Sense was released on theaters. After that movie's massive success, you could make the argument that he was (probably) the most sought-after filmmaker for a while. To this day, some people still consider The Sixth Sense to be his best film. And others would say Unbreakable, which I did see in theaters, is his best film. I remember very little about Unbreakable, but I do want to see it again. Having said that, given Shyamalan's career trajectory until 2015, you can't blame people for gravitating more to those first two movies as opposed to his output post-Unbreakable but pre-The Visit. Shyamalan's reputation took a nosedive, at least in my opinion with The Village. Though I would make the argument that Signs was the first well, umm, sign that the quality of his movies might dip a little. I wasn't a big fan of that movie, but you could have said that it's just a weak movie. Every filmmaker has a weak movie, no one has a perfect filmography, so there's nothing to worry about. The Village, however, was positively awful, lacking in suspense and its nonsensical twist insulted the audience's intelligence. The Village was so bad that, for a while, I actually refused to watch any of his movies. Seriously. I haven't seen The Happening, The Last Airbender or After Earth and I doubt I'll ever watch them because, quite frankly, they offer nothing of interest to me. I believe I even mentioned this in my review of The Visit, but I was really hesitant going into that movie because of the low expectations Shyamalan's own previous offerings had instilled in me. I don't wanna say I was worried, but I wasn't gonna allow myself to get excited about it just because it had received fairly positive reviews from critics and audiences. But, much to my surprise, I really did like The Visit. The problem with a lot of Shyamalan's movies post-Sixth Sense was that he was always trying to find a way to top himself with what he accomplished in the movie that made him famous. You could see that Unbreakable, despite being his follow-up to the Sixth Sense, didn't have that self-imposed pressure to live up to some sort of hype. Shyamalan made the movie that he wanted to make and, again, it worked out in the end because, as I already said, a lot of people believe Unbreakable to be his best movie. The problems come in when Unbreakable's disappointing box office performance. I think this is when his self-imposed pressure manifested itself. Because, while Signs wasn't a copy of The Sixth Sense, it was more along the lines of what people wanted from him. And, sadly, Signs was successful, so now he had a formula he could work with. Signs didn't work, for me, and The Village was even worse. Despite how bad his movies got, he just kept trying harder and harder. The harder he tried, the more his subsequent movies sucked. Which is why The Visit was such a refreshing change of pace. The Visit is such an effective movie. You know why it was effective? Because of its simplicity. Shyamalan didn't try to craft a complex horror movie with a bunch of clues, red herrings and subtext before, ultimately, utilizing a twist that made no sense given everything you saw. No, he made a simple movies about two siblings spending sometime with their grandparents, who start to show some really strange and creepy behavior. The twist itself is also, again and this is something that Shyamalan should stick with, was very simple and made complete and utter sense given everything that you had seen play out. And, of course, given the fact that it was Shyamalan's return to his roots, you could say, the movie was massively successful, making almost TWENTY times its budget. $98 million gross on a $5 million budget. This is the part that worried me, however. Because now that Shyamalan was on the winning side again, it inspired a fear in me that he'd give in to the tendencies that led to him, basically, becoming a joke with his insistence on nonsensical twists. Robot Chicken even did a sketch parodying this. The jokes and memes throughout the years have been plenty. This brings us to Split, however. I've written this 'essay' on Shyamalan and, by this point in the review, I'd almost be done with it. Not in this case, however, now is when we're actually gonna talk about the movie. So sit down and prepare your body for a long one. As I mentioned, I was worried that this movie was gonna see him back to his old tricks that, obviously, fell out of favor ages ago. I mean, honestly, prior to The Visit, if anyone had told me that Shyamalan's next movie was gonna be about a man with 23 different personalities (and a 24th more powerful one that the film builds up to, honestly, quite expertly) who kidnaps three teen girls, I would have lost my mind. But, upon having watched the movie, I can safely say that Mr. Shyamalan is not up to his old tricks. In fact, in my opinion, Split is the next logical step for Shyamalan as a filmmaker after The Visit. The Visit shined because of its simplicity. Split is definitely a little more complex, obviously, since, again, it deals with a man with dissociative identity disorder. Despite Kevin (the man whose body the personalities are inhabiting) having 23 and, again, later a 24th, different personalities, you only really get to spend time with three of them. You get to see some more of them in these short video journals later on in the film and as part of a chaotic exchange, where several other personalities take control of Kevin's body to attempt to understand what's going on. Those three main personalities, though, are Patricia, Dennis and Hedwig (who's a nine-year-old boy). These three have, essentially, shut all the other personalities out of the light (as they call it) and have taken over Kevin's body. These three personalities that are controlling Kevin's body are doing so as a result that they've had enough of people making fun of them and not believing in their existence. Their answer to this is to, seemingly, create a 24th personality, one that is super powerful, can scale walls and withstand insane amounts of punishment, making him near invulnerable. They do this to show the world what they are truly capable of. And that is one of the topics that I found most interesting about this movie. Because Barry, one of Kevin's personalities, who seems to be the most 'stable' one, goes to this psychiatrist, even though it's later revealed that Dennis has been pretending to be Barry all along. This psychiatrist brings up some very interesting ideas in how these people are viewed as less than other people. She brings up the idea that, what if, these people are more than. The reasoning behind this, she says, is that maybe they've unlocked the next step of human evolution. She cites examples where a person who was blind developed different three personalities, all of which had the ability to see. She also cites an example of how a dog reacted differently to a person's multiple personalities, in spite of them being in the same body. I don't know if any of this is based in reality, though Billy Milligan was arrested three rapes in Ohio in the 70s. At his trial, he claimed two of his other personalities committed the crimes without his knowing. He was the first person, diagnosed with D.I.D, to plea insanity. He also had 24 personalities, so there's obvious inspiration drawn from his case. What I'm referring to is the cases of, say, the core person have a physical disability and an alternate personality not having it, like, say, blindness. And, again, if there is a basis in reality, then who are we to say that people with multiple personality disorders are any less than us. This is something I have, and will, never claim. Like what if this was possible, to where we would access some 'secret' part of our brain that would allow us to But the topic that is brought up is definitely an interesting one and one that, honestly, I should probably do more research on because, quite frankly, I was utterly fascinated by its inclusion in this film. And, realistically speaking, they sort of have to go that route considering that Dennis, Hedwig and Patricia constantly talk about the arrival of the Beast, as the 24th personality is known. Once the Beast is revealed, his intentions seem to be to eradicate the world of the impure young. What he means by impure young, however, is young people that have not suffered once in their lives. They don't know true pain and, as a result, they have no value in the Beast's version of what this world should be. Oh yea, he also has three teen girls as hostage. Casey, of course, is the one who's the most developed. You get to see flashbacks to when she was a little girl, revealing a pretty horrifying and dark past where ***SPOILERS*** she was sexually molested by her uncle. An uncle that, later, became her legal guardian as a result of Casey's father's death. I'll be honest, while I certainly sympathized with Casey and, definitely, wanted to see her get out of this situation, she's not nearly as interesting a character as Dennis, Hedwig and Patricia are. I mean that's almost an unfair comparison, really, but every time James McAvoy was on-screen, it was like nothing else mattered because I was completely enthralled by him. And it's not like the movie failed to get me invested in Casey, because they did a good job at building her as a character. One who tries to assess the situation before she commits to anything. She uses certain of the personalities' traits against them, hopeful that she'll be able to get one step closer to escaping. Again, she's, actually, a well-written character. But it's like none of that matters once the triumvirate of personalities show up. I suppose it should be obvious that no review of this movie is complete without mentioning how fucking fantastic James McAvoy was in the lead role. No, seriously. He was out of this world in this movie. Joaquin Phoenix was cast before McAvoy and, honestly, I think Joaquin would have also done a great job, but it's hard to imagine anyone BUT McAvoy playing this role. The thing about McAvoy, that maybe Joaquin doesn't have, is that McAvoy can properly play a character like Hedwig, who's meant to be more innocent and, obviously because he's a child, childish. I say this because McAvoy, for the most part, has spent his career playing likable, very charming men. But he's also great at playing a detestable asshole, as Filth. I don't wanna say he's a detestable asshole here, but it requires him to flex his dramatic muscles a bit. Patricia is always cool, calm and in control. Dennis is meticulous and a neat freak, this personality manifested itself as a result of Kevin's mother's incessant need for everything to be spotless. And Hedwig, well, of course he's a child and he acts very much like a child. And the way McAvoy handles all of these characters is, honestly, something to behold. There's this one scene just before the movie ends, where Patricia, Hedwig and Dennis are having a conversation with themselves and the way McAvoy jumps from character to character, assuming their personality if even for just a few seconds, is quite lovely to see. This is a movie that people aspiring to be actors should see. I'm serious about that. Just study McAvoy's performance, his body language, his inflections and facial expressions. Something as small as body language can tell you just what character he's meant to be. Honestly, most actors don't get roles this meaty and, I'm assuming, that it's gonna be challenging for most of them to tackle. But, honestly, McAvoy hits a grand slam with his performance here. As far as the climax is concerned, it's really fucking good honestly. Because they do a great job at building to the eventual arrival of the Beast and, when he does, they also succeed at making him seem like a terrifying and menacing individual. No complaints about that, in the slightest. Let's see, as far as twists are concerned. Honestly, there really aren't any. If The Beast being revealed as an actual being with superpower counts, then yes, but I really don't see that as a twist. But, in all honesty, a Shyamalan movie without a twist is a twist in and of itself in a meta kind of way. I've already mentioned Casey's past, so I'm certain you could put two and two together about the Beast's mission. This brings us to the portrayal of mental illnesses. And, perhaps rightfully so, this film was controversial by people suffering from D.I.D as, yet another, stigmatization of their illness. I don't suffer from D.I.D, so I'm not gonna claim what is or isn't offensive to that group. I could claim that intelligent people could understand the difference between art and reality, but there's no denying the fact that there are some people that can't tell the two apart and will use this as a way to keep ostracizing those with mental illnesses. I am sorry that that is the case, but that's the way life is sometimes, sadly. I'm not making excuses for this movie, but I have to judge by what I see on-screen, as I am someone who is able to tell the difference between fact and fiction. Having said that, the biggest negative I have has to do with how they tie this to Unbreakable. After everything happens and there are people at this diner watching this news report about the Beast's action, one lady mentions (in a forced manner) that this case reminds her about that guy in the wheelchair from 15 years ago. Obviously referencing Samuel Jackson's character from Unbreakable. The lady slowly moves back to reveal the person sitting next to her to Bruce Willis' character from Unbreakable. He provides the name of the man she meant, Mr. Glass, and then the movie ends. This was probably the worst way to tie it back to Unbreakable, honestly. It just came across as so forced and unnatural that it didn't work in the slightest for me. It was Shyamalan's attempt at connecting his own universe together, a la Marvel, and it just didn't work. It is, to me, the worst part of the movie, by far. And, even then, it's not that big of an issue given that the movie ends immediately afterwards. I don't know what else to say, this review has gone on long enough. This is Shyamalan's best film in almost over two decades. The writing is smart, the atmosphere is tense and James McAvoy gives an Oscar-caliber performance. So, yea, I guess you could say I thought that this was a great movie. Here's to hoping Shyamalan's career renaissance continues with Glass, the last of his Unbreakable trilogy and, obviously, a continuation of this one with Bruce Willis and Samuel Jackson returning. I would gladly recommend this movie to anyone.

A very welcome return to form from the filmmaker who gave audiences one of the greatest supernatural thrillers of all time, M. Night Shyamalan's twisty scary-good latest Splits its aces beautifully between psychological and supernatural horror...and both of them play a winning hand thanks to staggeringly brilliant multi-multi-faceted performance by James McAvoy. In this PG-13-rated thriller, three girls (Anya Taylor-Joy, Haley Lu Richardson, Jessica Sula) get kidnapped by a man with a diagnosed 23 distinct personalities (McAvoy) and try to escape before the apparent emergence of a more sinister 24th. The writer-director's previous film, The Visit, boasted decent thrills and a solid twist but hardly made up for the Trifecta of awfulness comprised of The Last Airbender, The Happening, and After Earth (okay, so only the second of these can be called out-and-out 'awful,' but it's so patently bad that it brings down anything else in its blast radius). Split, however, finds Shyamalan in top form, on par with his second best, Signs, and approaching the level of expert craftsmanship of genre evidenced by his - and one of the horror's - best, The Sixth Sense. It would be hard to reach the mantle of that particular gem, but it tries its damnedest and viewers are the better for it. Serving up a crackling good story that amazingly doesn't demonize mental illness, it gives the troubled kidnapper at its core, Kevin Wendell Crumb, personalities both good, bad, and downright ugly. Plus, it shows him seeking treatment and what happens when he doesn't follow doctor's orders. And yes, just like that old chestnut filmic amnesia, it stretches credulity beyond recognition but the suspension of disbelief is worth it for the twisted and thrilling character study that it provides. Believe it or not, however, his is not the main character. That honor falls on Casey Cooke who makes a great foil to the many faces of Crumb. She comes with a heart-breaking backstory but manages to get the heart pumping thanks to her never-say-die heroism in the face of unspeakable terror. Without the actors to pull this all off, Shyamalan's complicated captivity narrative would be for naught. Taylor-Joy, who honed her horror chops with Witch, a very different but nonetheless killer thriller, makes for a very convincing heroine, earning every tear and mad tear. McAvoy, however, sells through 23 different personalities, each with different inflections, tics, and looks. It's a veritable masterclass in acting and it's beyond head-scratching that he didn't nab an Oscar or Golden Globe nomination. This particular genre has never been highly regarded by the H'Wood elite (The Exorcist getting bested by The Sting at the 1973 Academy Awards--'nuff said), but such a slight is really downright scary. To Sum It All Up: The Best of the Beast

Started off okay but wasn’t worth sitting through.

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Split Review

20 Jan 2017

117 minutes

Split (2017)

Around the turn of the century, writer-director M. Night Shyamalan essentially created his own genre with The Sixth Sense , Unbreakable and Signs : suspenseful character studies with a paranormal vibe, a reverse spoof approach whereby subjects (ghosts, superheroes, alien invaders) usually played tongue-in-cheek are presented in high seriousness, through intense, anguished central performances from established male movie stars, and the sort of last-reel twists associated with The Twilight Zone (all Shyamalan’s other traits can be found in Rod Serling, as it happens). One sign of Shyamalan’s success is that other people started making M. Night Shyamalan-type movies: Joel Schumacher with The Number 23 , Alex Proyas with Knowing .

Perhaps as a response to becoming an imitable brand and perhaps down to the muted (and sometimes peculiarly hostile) response to The Village , Lady In The Water and The Happening (all interesting films), Shyamalan moved away from his personal cinema to take shots at fantasy ( The Last Airbender ), sci-fi ( After Earth ) and found-footage shocker ( The Visit ). With Split , he returns to ‘Night Classic’ mode. We’re back in sombre Philadelphia where soft-spoken, well-heeled folks go quietly mad and a psycho thriller plot evolves into something weirder on the boiling-a-frog principle of slowly adding bizarre, freakish elements to an extreme case study. This time, perhaps frustrated by the attention paid to his most easily parodied habit, Shyamalan holds off on a twist in favour of a measured development of a far-out premise, though an intensely fan- satisfying development pops up near the end.

All actors want to play Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and McAvoy seizes with obvious relish on the role of one man with 23 personalities due to be usurped by a 24th who is more animal than man. Head finely stubbled as his Professor X cut grows out, he uses a few props (glasses, a woolly hat) but mostly conveys Kevin’s alters — who range from a gay fashion designer through an OCD caretaker and a sinister British matriarch to a tittering child — with changes of expression and voice. It’s a show-off tour de force, and McAvoy is dazzling throughout — funny, creepy, threatening, pathetic and monstrous by turns. Note especially set-pieces like his perfectly uncoordinated demonstration of what a nine-year-old might think are radical dance moves, and the unsettling moments where one of Kevin’s more controlled, sinister personalities impersonates a more open, appealing one to reassure his analyst (Betty Buckley) that things aren’t going south in his skull.

As often with Shyamalan, the actual plot is less important than the character business. Even Kevin loses interest in two of his young captives, who get shoved into storerooms as misfit Casey (Taylor-Joy) emerges as the heroine, realising she’s most likely to survive by engaging with her captor than by crawling through ventilation ducts or relying on teen-princess karate lessons. That Casey’s life experience has prepared her for the ordeal is established in tactful, unsettling micro-flashbacks which feature standout work from Izzie Coffey, whose wide eyes perfectly match Taylor-Joy’s. After The Witch and Morgan , Taylor-Joy is shaping up as the weird chick of her generation — but she has to work as hard as her character to find her screen-space here when her co-star is busily upstaging himself, let alone her.

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Split movie review: M Night Shyamalan, James McAvoy deliver a class act

Split movie review: the movie marks a return to firmer ground for writer-director m night shyamalan and his supernatural/psychological thrillers, and the credit for it goes to james mcavoy..

Split movie director: M Night Shyamalan Split movie cast: James McAvoy, Betty Buckley, Anya Taylor-Joy, Haley Lu Richardson, Jessica Sula Split movie rating: 2.5

M Night Shyamalan’s trademark twist here is more of a tool, and his treatment of three kidnapped teenage girls who are made to remove their clothes, not too much but not too little either, is only just short of exploitative. However, if Split marks a return to firmer ground for writer-director Shyamalan and his supernatural/psychological thrillers, the credit goes to McAvoy. He is Dennis/Patricia/Hedwig/Barry/Jade etc etc, going up to 23 personalities, as the film repeatedly tells us. Split never gets anywhere close to a glimpse of all 23, but McAvoy at least seems capable of holding them — and, yes, one more; the film’s big reveal — all in.

We meet Dennis first, as Split opens to a creepy beginning where a birthday party finds a strange girl called Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy) sitting alone and silent. The father of the birthday girl, Claire (Haley Lu Richardson), offers to drop Casey home. As he is putting the gifts into the trunk of his car, inside which wait Claire, Casey and a third girl, Marcia (Jessica Sula), a man approaches him and there is a sound. Unseen by the girls, Dennis enters and takes the wheel.

Dennis is just one of the many personalities of Kevin Wendell Crumb, as we and the girls soon discover, adding to their and our horror and uncertainty. However, rather than focus on what is a nightmare in itself, of three girls locked in the basement by a deranged man with an obsession for cleanliness — the recent 10 Cloverfield Lane comes to mind — Split keeps turning to long sessions of Kevin, now as the gay fashionista Barry, with his counsellor, Dr Fletcher (Betty Buckley).

Dr. Fletcher is the outside observer in this story, and good and wise as Buckley is and looks, she appears to be around just so to spell out Kevin’s condition for us. And to nudge us towards thinking of his dissociative identity disorder (or DID) in terms of “unleashing the mind’s true potential”, and “an ultimate doorway to things unknown… the supernatural”.

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There is a story to how Kevin got here, and it leads back to childhood abuse. There is a story to how Casey got here, and it leads back to childhood abuse too. Both are hinted, never explored, and in Casey’s case recounted in an almost dreamy extended sequence of a hunting expedition, and seem too much of a plot contrivance. The talk of “sacred food”, “evolution”, “sentient beings”, “suffering making one more complete”, and “being banned from light”, may be too much highfalutin after all.

That is also because Casey’s unnatural stillness, a fact the film is seeking to draw our eyes to, seems as much a result of Taylor-Joy’s incompetence in portraying the many horrors she is facing. The other two girls are almost as inert, but have lesser to do.

As long as McAvoy is on screen though, in different voices, clothes, stature, posture, smiles, and even gaze, Split needs little else. He evokes menace, desire, love, respect, pity, and fear. And not necessarily in that order.

The twist in the end, if one can call it that, is ultimately worthwhile for acknowledging this class act.

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Home — Essay Samples — Nursing & Health — Dissociative Identity Disorder — Dissociative Identity Disorder in the “Split” Movie: A Psychological Analysis

Dissociative Identity Disorder in The "Split" Movie: a Psychological Analysis

• Categories: Childhood Dissociative Identity Disorder Trauma

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Updated: 29 March, 2024

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Should follow an “upside down” triangle format, meaning, the writer should start off broad and introduce the text and author or topic being discussed, and then get more specific to the thesis statement.

Provides a foundational overview, outlining the historical context and introducing key information that will be further explored in the essay, setting the stage for the argument to follow.

Cornerstone of the essay, presenting the central argument that will be elaborated upon and supported with evidence and analysis throughout the rest of the paper.

The topic sentence serves as the main point or focus of a paragraph in an essay, summarizing the key idea that will be discussed in that paragraph.

The body of each paragraph builds an argument in support of the topic sentence, citing information from sources as evidence.

After each piece of evidence is provided, the author should explain HOW and WHY the evidence supports the claim.

Should follow a right side up triangle format, meaning, specifics should be mentioned first such as restating the thesis, and then get more broad about the topic at hand. Lastly, leave the reader with something to think about and ponder once they are done reading.

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Review of Personalities in Split: Film Analysis

• Category Entertainment , Life
• Subcategory Movies , Myself
• Topic Film Analysis , Personality

Film analysis

Split is a 2016 thriller / psychological horror film starring James McAvoy, Anya Taylor Joy, and Betty Buckler. The director and producer is M. Night Shyamalan. In this film, James McAvoy plays Kevin Wendell Crumb, a dissociative identity disorder, Anya Taylor-Joy plays Casey Cooke, a kidnapped girl, and Betty Buckley plays Karen Fletcher, Kevin’s psychiatrist. Finally, Haley Lu Richardson (Claire Benoit) and Jessica Sula (Marcia) play the kidnapped girl.

The short of summary of the film Kevin, who has 23 + 1 different characters, is suffering from dissociative identity disorders. He is being treated by Psychiatrist Fletcher. Psychiatrist Fletcher thinks that people with this disease have more than normal people do, rather than missing it from normal people.

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She claims that a personality can change one’s chemistry. Furthermore, according to Psychiatrist Fletcher, two persons can be found in one body at a time.

Kevin’s most powerful characters are Dennis and Patricia, who often take over his mind and body. These characters outweigh the others, and the purpose of these two characters is to reveal the superhuman personality they call the Beast. To find out, Dennis kidnaps three girls one day and closes them under the animal care department where he works. One of these girls, Casey, is smarter than others and has suffered in the past. The girls both look for a way to get themselves out of the cellar and try to unravel Kevin’s different characters.

One of these personalities is Hedwig, who is 9 years old, the most docile than the others, and the girls use as a constant way out of there. For girls, however, this is not easy because personalities change constantly and Patricia and Dennis, the most dominant, do not allow it. Under Casey’s leadership, the girls must escape before Kevin can fully submit to the evil power within him.

Detailed description of the dissociative identity disorder character Kevin Wendell Crumb There are 23 different voices in his mind, in his movements, in his dreams of 23 people. These personalities have different images, different sexes, different professions, and ages. There are even differences in gestures and mimics from the sound tones. Moving from one personality to another is called ‘getting the light’. Four of Kevin’s 23 characters often receive light. The first is Barry’s personality. It represents its creative aspect. This character is an extrovert, self-confident, fashion lover intellectual gay. He often takes on this personality when he goes to psychiatrist Fletcher because he avoids showing his other dangerous personalities to his doctor. Barry’s character feels worthless and helpless when he talks about childhood traumas.

One of Kevin’s most dominant personalities is Dennis. Dennis is Kevin’s most dangerous personality, always dressed up and wearing glasses, which tends to harass girls. Dennis also suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder at an early age because of his mother’s pressure and attitudes. Dennis is obsessed with cleanliness and symmetry, constantly correcting the chocolate bowl, opening the door with the help of handkerchiefs is an indication that he has this disease. This personality is authoritarian, disciplined, and has strict rules. Psychiatrist Fletcher considers the emergence of this personality dangerous because he likes girls to dance naked. In contrast to his fragile personalities, Dennis is a personality that does not accept the oppression and social trauma that he has suffered so far and that he has emerged to prove himself.

Hedwig is a 9th-year-old child character in Kevin. It represents Kevin’s innocence. Unlike other personalities, Hedwig’s way of speaking is fun. He likes to dance. This character also works well with the girls and tries to help them. Girls try to collect clues by asking Hedwig questions. Girls can easily direct this character, but Hedwig is aware of the power of other personalities.

Patricia, another personality, is a character that reflects Kevin’s controlling and angry mother. She is a protective figure and a representation of care and affection he did not see when he was little. Patricia thinks more logically and takes the ropes with Dennis. In fact, on the one hand, these two characters govern other personalities. Dennis and Patricia’s main goal is to uncover Kevin’s 24th personality, Beast. Patricia, like Dennis, is forbidden by Fletcher.

The last personality that is thought to be revealed is called a Beast. Dennis and Patricia think of this personality as a creature with emotions and intuitions representing the end point of human evolution. The Beast personality thinks the end of normal humanity’s time. Beast is a tool to show how powerful Kevin’s other personalities can be. Beast has far superior properties than normal people. There is also a purpose for the kidnapping of the three girls so that they never suffer and are always safe. So according to the Beast personality, one exists as much as he suffers, they are developed and deserve to live. Beast sees Kevin’s other 23 personalities as potential, not as a mistake.

Kevin’s having dissociative identity disorders has been influenced by his witnessing experiences of childhood neglect and abuse which causing trauma to him. Dennis’s personality is a result of Kevin’s mother punishing him very violently when Kevin was only three years old. The station where the Beast personality first emerged and strengthened is a railway station. This is in fact a reason why Kevin’s father never took a train in his childhood. Sometimes there is the idea that another abuse case can lead to the emergence of suppressed personalities. After all the abuse she had when she was a little girl, two young girls came and took Kevin’s hand and touched her breast, then smiled and left her. Thus, Kevin’s abuse, harassment, ridicule, and being the child of an oppressive mother also play an important role in creating this disorder.

In addition, Kevin’s personalities act with the logic of ‘We are what we believe’. Psychiatrist Fletcher advocates that individuals with dissociative identity disorders change their brain chemistry with thoughts.

Diagnosis of Kevin using DSM IV system

The DSM-IV gives the following diagnostic criteria for Dissociative Identity Disorder:

Disruption of identity characterized by two or more distinct personality states, which may be described in some cultures as an experience of possession. The disruption of marked discontinuity in sense of self and sense of agency, accompanied by related alterations in affect, behaviour, consciousness, memory, perception, cognition, and/or sensory-motor functioning. These signs and symptoms may be observed by others or reported by the individual. Recurrent gaps in the recall of everyday events, important personal information, and/or traumatic events that are inconsistent with ordinary forgetting. The symptoms cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning. The disturbance is not a normal part of a broadly accepted cultural or religious practice. The symptoms are not attributable to the physiological effects of a substance or another medical condition.

Kevin has 23 + 1 separate personality, which meets Criterion A. None of these personalities are alike, all of them have separate behaviours, gestures, genders, knowledge, and even chemistry, as mentioned above. Sometimes these changes in Kevin cause a disruption to a job that he will do. In addition, since Kevin’s Hedwig personality represents his innocence, he is helping the girls to be rescued, while a dominant figure like Dennis has tried to keep the girls there because the purpose is different, all of these situations meet Criteria A in DSM IV. Kevin’s traumatic events in childhood, such as the harassment incident, do not appear to be fully remembered by his psychiatrist when he tells him about this again in order to resolve things. Because, when told, he did not reflect his current feelings and he listened to the event as if it were mentioned about a normal event, ie the fact that he did not give the desired reactions and that gaps formed when he remembered the events he used to meet Criterion B. The girls initially thought of Kevin as having a normal personality, but later realized that when he wore a skirt and disguised as a Patricia, he said he was a 9-year-old boy in Hedwig’s personality, and when he saw Dennis as a full-bodied person, he noticed that he had more than one personality. In addition, although he always goes to his psychiatrist in the character of Barry, when he takes on another character, his psychiatrist’s direct understanding of this personality change indicates that these personality changes can be observed from outside, which meets Criterion A. Not all Kevin’s different personalities are innocent fragile. Some harm both society and itself. Criterion C meets the kidnapping of three girls to reveal the superhuman Beast personality and sometimes having problems that cannot survive. In addition, one of his personalities, the psychiatrist ‘We need you’ e-mail, and then did not remember this message. The killing of his psychiatrist by his own Beast personality, when he changes to another personality, not remembering that he killed him, and feeling extremely sad when he learns that he killed Fletcher himself. It meets Criterion B in both cases.

Tools used in the assessment of Dissociative Identity Disorder

Physical/neurological and mental examination, EEG should be performed. First, it is important to distinguish it from schizophrenia. The diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder is not an easy diagnosis. The patient must undergo a very detailed examination and be observed for a long time. If symptoms are present, a full medical history and physical examination can be performed. There are no laboratory tests to diagnose dissociative disorders medically. First of all, there should be nothing else that causes dissociative identity disorders, such as a medication or a condition that triggers this disorder. If no physical illness is found, the person may be referred to a psychiatrist, psychologist trained for diagnosis and treatment. Clinical interviews are conducted to fully understand one’s past experiences and current functioning. Some of the tests requested within the scope of these interviews are:

• Dissociative Experiences Scale: The Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES) based on self-report is fast and detailed. When the average is over 30 points, it suggests the possibility of a visible dissociative disorder. In patients with dissociative identity disorders, this is on average between 40-50.
• Structured Clinical Interview for Dissociative Disorders: The semi-structured SCID-D serves as a guideline for experienced interviewers and facilitates a definitive diagnosis, usually within 1 hour.
• Somatoform Dissociation Questionnaire (SDQ-20): Which looks mainly at physical symptoms or body experiences. The 20 item SDQ-20 evaluates the severity of somatoform dissociation.
• Diagnostic criteria in the DSM-5: Patients with dissociative identity disorders must meet the criteria in DSM 5.

These are self-reports. However, as these tools do not make a definite diagnosis.

Planning a Treatment Programme

The aim of the treatment is to relieve the symptoms and to provide a good basis for the relationship between the individual and the people around him. The treatment also aims to help the person express painful memories safely, to develop new coping and life skills, to repair the best functioning, and to develop relationships.

Different treatment methods can be used in the treatment of dissociative identity disorder. After the diagnosis is made, treatment methods are determined according to the type of disease and the condition of the patient. Treatment methods for dissociative identity personality disorders are as follows;

• The integrity of the alter personalities must be ensured and the integrity of the identity must be achieved again. In this film, psychiatrist Fletcher does not distinguish between Kevin’s 23 + 1 personality and looks after them as a whole.
• Psychotherapy: This is the main treatment of dissociative disorders. In fact, this is the way Kevin uses treatment. He is under observation by psychiatrist Fletcher and the therapy continues in a kind of mutual conversation. This treatment is a long process and is one of the most effective.
• Cognitive-behavioural therapy: This form of therapy is intended to prevent impulsive thoughts. According to Cognitive-behavioural therapy, these thoughts should be replaced with a more appropriate thought pattern.
• Meditation: It is a scientific mind-resting technique that has positive effects on body and mental health. This technique causes the person to overcome the dissociative symptoms and increases the awareness of the person.
• Clinical Hypnosis: A treatment that allows people to discover thoughts, emotions, and memories that they may have hidden from their conscious minds.
• Drugs: There is no drug treatment for dissociative disorders. However, people with dissociative disorders, especially those associated with depression or anxiety, may benefit from treatment with antidepressant or anti-anxiety drugs.

Also in the film, psychiatrist Fletcher specializes in this field, this is very important. The treatment process should be provided not by any therapist but by a person authorized by this field.

Comment and Recommendation

I think that this film is a good film even if it has some deficiencies to introduce what kind of personality disorder is. One of these shortcomings is that normally when a person changes from one personality to another, he or she will not be aware of his previous personality and actions. But in this film, with the exception of a few examples, Kevin is aware of what his personalities are doing and tries to uncover the Beast, which he thinks of as a superhuman personality for a common purpose. Other than that, the film is beautiful and immersive for those interested in this disorder.

• http://traumadissociation.com/questionnaires
• http://www.enijenhuis.nl/sdq
• http://traumadissociation.com/dissociativeidentitydisorder.html
• https://www.healthyplace.com/abuse/dissociative-identity-disorder/dissociative-identity-disorder-did-dsm-5-criteria
• https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/split_2017
• https://www.medicinenet.com/dissociative_identity_disorder/article.htm#what_are_dissociative_identity_disorder_symptoms_and_signs

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Calvin University Chimes

“Split” and Shyamalan: A case study

As we move past the holiday movie season and into the New Year, there are a couple of movies to look out for early on and into the spring. “Split” is one movie that had critics and audiences talking alike due to the now notorious M. Night Shyamalan as a director. Known for his unanticipated twists and arbitrary cameos, Shyamalan created a niche following as a director after surprising audiences with his mysterious stories following compelling characters.

A certain bunch of his earlier films such as “The Sixth Sense,” “Unbreakable” and “Signs” were critically acclaimed and helped Shyamalan acquire a significant following, building anticipation for his then promising career in the director’s chair.  Unfortunately, some false confidence may have followed, or pure bad luck as Shyamalan struck a few low notes as he released six new films, all striking out among viewers and critics. Due to an expectation of a “classic Shyamalan twist”, or maybe too much interference from production companies, people began to give up hope as they walked out of theaters seeing some of his later films such as “The Happening,” “ The Last Airbender” or “After Earth.”

As Shyamalan took some time to think about his directorial vision and work on a new project, the general population was not in high hopes when his name flashed across the screen for a new film, “The Visit,” as the director. Alas! People and critics showed an overall positivity to the film, and liked it! So, he began the grueling task of climbing back up the mountain, and trying to reclaim his title as a praised director and storyteller going back to his roots.

“Split” tells the story of three girls being kidnapped by a man, Kevin (James McAvoy), who suffers from dissociative identity disorder carrying along 23 personalities in his psyche. The movie has a coherent and suspenseful story, accompanied by a darker earth toned palette and well composed shots; thanks to the director of photography, Mike Gioulakis, who inspired Shyamalan from his work in “It Follows.” James McAvoy also deserves an honorable mention with his convincing performance playing 23 different characters all of which have very unique voices and behaviors. His idiosyncratic mannerisms and well-acted voices help sell the story and character in a way that I have rarely seen in movies covering dissociative identity disorder, and helps showcase his prowess aside from playing Charles Xavier.

I am going to take a look at the accuracy of the film’s portrayal (excluding the last 15 minutes) of dissociative identity disorder, which was a disorder popularized by certain films such as “Psycho,” “Fight Club” or “Identity” generally under the name of multiple personality disorder.

Using the 5 th edition Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders (DSM 5) for reference, I was impressed by the movie’s presentation of the disorder, and its awareness to certain issues with a diagnosis. The disorder itself is characterized by disruptions of consciousness in the subject, which may affect memories, his or her identity, body representations, and behavior.

Our main character, Kevin, shows many of the diagnostic features, such as the presence of two or more identities, dissociative amnesia, and different perceptions of his own physicality when changing identities. I also appreciated how his therapist, Karen (Betty Buckley), accurately mentions the disorder being on a spectrum, instead of the dichotomous nature many people think mental illness consists of.

Another place the movie hit the nail on the head was its inclusion of Kevin’s identities suffering from other pathology, such as anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, or impulsivity which is typical in those suffering from dissociative disorder. We see flashbacks of Kevin experiencing traumatic situations as a child, which is correlated with an increased risk of the disorder, again showing accuracy to the DSM 5. One characteristic frequently found in those diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder is the need to hide the symptoms, or embarrassment and confusion about the symptoms which was also displayed by McAvoy during his spontaneous therapy sessions.

Overall, I was impressed with the research and accuracy of the films portrayal, and definitely recommend it if you want some insight into the disorder, or are a long-time Shyamalan fan. Though there are some minor shortfalls in the portrayal of the disorder, it gives insight into the suffering of those who are given the diagnosis, and help us gain a small amount of comprehension and compassion of what is being experienced.

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‘Split’ Injects Psychology Into The Modern Thriller | Film Review

Amanda M. Sink January 20, 2017

In what some would say has been over a decade since M. Night Shyamalan has put an intriguing and worthy piece of work on screen, he is back at it again with the twists, turns, and trickery in Split . This time, real-life circumstances are surfaced in a very terrifying way. Shyamalan takes a fascinating look into the world of psychological disorders and the laughable attention they receive.

James McAvoy brilliantly portrays Kevin, a man diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID); also known as having multiple personalities. Kevin has a total of 23 personalities known to his doctor (Betty Buckley), and one more that has yet to surface. In a matter of two hours, we meet about one-third of these personalities, and each one is carefully and diligently transitioned from one to the next by McAvoy. There isn’t an ounce of disappointment in any of his characters. One second, he’s a serious and aggressive man, and – with the precision timing of a clock – the next he’s a 9 year old boy. His changeovers are thoroughly impressive, especially when they’re happening in a SPLIT second.

In the midst of meetings between Kevin’s personalities and Buckley’s Dr. Fletcher, three teenage girls have been kidnapped and are attempting every possibility including peeing on themselves to find an escape. These girls, Casey Cooke (Anya Taylor- Joy), Claire Benoit (Haley Lu Richardson), and Marcia (Jessica Sula) must fight their own fears and pry into the psyche of Kevin and all of his counterparts to find their way out alive. Whether they can accomplish this before Kevin achieves his ominous end goal becomes the journey that propels us towards the film’s conclusion.

We’re given an unsettling backstory on Casey, unlike the others, which give insight into who she is now. That’s one of the largest meanings in the film, it feels like. How trauma can affect one’s mind and life, and how those considered broken are keener to surviving traumatic situations than those who aren’t. The acting is nothing subpar here, with a full cast of outstanding performers. Anya Taylor-Joy, gives feeling to every “pure” heart out there, while Betty Buckley is playing the part of a well-versed psychiatrist in only the best of ways.

You’ll find yourself betrothed in the combination of reality and supernatural, impatiently waiting to meet the next personality. M. Night attempts to give his audience a puzzle so that by the end, we’re fully engaged in putting together the pieces. However, he falls shy in some of his subtleties, so portions of the plot are figured out fairly early on. With that comes a bit of misdirection. The first two acts lead in one very certain path, while the third doesn’t play along as well. It feels in the beginning as though this may be a film that finally takes mental health seriously and breaks the stigma, but the last act somewhat eats away at the idea with a very dramatic turn in direction.

The most fascinating aspect of Split truthfully is the portrayal of Dissociative Identity Disorder. Giving insight to an uneducated audience on the topic is crucial and exceptionally done. It surely gives the reassurance that they are people just like the rest of us, except their minds are so incredibly advanced, our own can only try to comprehend. A beautiful piece in the story reminds us all how truly mesmerizing the broken are; the broken are the ones who have endured trauma in exasperating ways and they’re the same ones to survive. It’s astounding what the human brain can do. Also – what trauma can do to the brain and psyche… And etcetera.

Hollywood Outsider Review Score

Acting - 8.5, production - 7.5.

Tags anya taylor-joy betty buckley m. night Shyamalan split

About Amanda M. Sink

The Psychology Times

Independent voice for psychology in louisiana, mind over matter: a review of split.

The theme of several personalities fighting for control of the body they share has a long history in imaginative fiction as well as in psychological theory. In October 1919, The Journal of  Abnormal Psychology carried reports by Morton Prince and Charles Corey of cases of multiple personality. It is worth noting that Robert Louis Stevenson had published The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde some twenty-five years earlier, a work of fiction that has taken the form of novels, plays and movies in the ensuing years. M. Night Shyamalan, writer/director of the current movie Split, centers his film on this intriguing theme.

Both cases in the scientific journal are those of women and  are presented in the context of Freud’s early writings; Stevenson’s story is that of a man whose contesting selves emerge as a result of drug use. The quasi-clinical account of The Three Faces of Eve in 1957 was followed by a spate of similar accounts of women with multiple personalities, with steadily increasing numbers of contesting selves. The literary multiplication was matched by increasing attention in the therapeutic community, eventuating in official recognition by the American Psychiatric Association of Dissociative Identity Disorder. Clinical accounts continue to be almost exclusively of women, and are most often seen as the result of earlier child abuse.

Shyamalan’s movie reflects some of these trends and bucks others. Kevin Crumb is a young man with twenty-three personalities, the result of abuse by his mother. He is in treatment with Dr. Karen Fletcher, and the therapist believes that Kevin’s individual minds produce dramatic physical changes in the body that they share. She takes this to be a new frontier in the understanding of body/mind relationships justifying ground breaking, controversial presentations to the scientific community.

In the course of her treatment Kevin appears to become more stable, but Dr. Fletcher learns that Barry, the personality that determines which of the twenty-three controls the body at any one time, is losing control. He is under attack by another self, Dennis, who is violent and likes to watch naked girls dance.

Dennis seizes control—it is called being in the light—and kidnaps three teen-aged girls. Held hostage, the terrified girls meet other personalities and learn about a twenty-fourth personality, The Beast, who will kill them. The movie portrays the girl’s struggles with the various selves and their panicked attempts to escape.

The doctor uncovers Dennis’s displacement of Barry and the kidnapping, but becomes herself his victim. The Beast emerges, superhuman in strength and totally vicious. His mission is to rid the world of those who are impure because they lack the experience of being abused. The Beast kills the doctor and two of the girls, devouring parts of them, but he spares the third girl, Casey, when he learns that she was the victim of sexual abuse by her guardian uncle.

The police arrive on the scene, but The Beast and his hoard escape and Casey is rescued. The tale seems to wind down as Casey is told she is free to return to her uncle, news she receives with a long cryptic stare. There is an addendum. It takes the form of a diner scene. Customers are listening to the news about the kidnapping and killings. One of them remarks that it reminds them of a case years ago of a madman murderer in a wheelchair. As the group leaves another person at the counter reminds them that the maniac’s name was Glass. That person is Bruce Willis, reprising his role as David Dunn in The Unbreakable, in which he bested the mad killer.

Can we look forward to The Horde vs. The Unbreakable?

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Split is the latest horror film to misunderstand why mental illness is terrifying

Horror that understands its antagonists isn’t just more sensitive, it’s scarier.

By Charles Bramesco

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Spoilers ahead for M. Night Shyamalan’s Split .

“The only idea more overused than serial killers is multiple personality.” That scripting advice from one screenwriter to another (both played by Nicolas Cage in 2002’s Adaptation ), could practically be a diss aimed directly at Split. The latest effort from suspense maestro M. Night Shyamalan casts James McAvoy as mentally ill serial killer Kevin, and more specifically, as Jade, Hedwig, Patricia, Barry, and upward of a dozen more personalities splintering from Kevin’s unstable psyche. The personae wrestle for control of a single body as they carry out the dark work of kidnapping and preparing three teenage girls for sacrifice to something inhuman. This makes for one doozy of a trailer, but in mining terror from dissociative identity disorder (DID), Shyamalan travels one of horror cinema’s most well-trod paths, and faceplants into the same pitfalls that have tarnished scary movies for decades.

In short, we need to talk about Kevin. Or rather, Shyamalan does. The character’s original identity briefly surfaces late in the film, but most of the run time goes to the array of caricatures cooped up in the dysfunctional boarding house of his brain. The original personality is mostly an afterthought, a brief interlude in a hammy performance from McAvoy, clearly having the time of his life. The end of the film makes Kevin out to be a literal supervillain and dubs him “the Horde” — an appropriate fate, considering how intent Shyamalan seems on divorcing the character from the vulnerability that makes him compelling. He loses sight of Kevin’s fundamental humanity, and in doing so, misunderstands what can really make mental illness a terrifying ordeal. Loads of horror flicks have used mental abnormalities to create fearsome antagonists, but the best of them relate how these conditions also torment the afflicted, who can be as frightened by their own nagging thoughts as the audience is.

Where else could the phenomenon begin but with Psycho , Alfred Hitchcock’s Rosetta Stone for translating a huge chunk of modern horror cinema? The mind’s capabilities to misfire have frightened the public imagination since Jack the Ripper’s sociopathy cleared the streets of Whitechapel after dark, but Hitchcock was the first to put it into pop-psych layman’s terms. He vilified the brain itself, and its ability to turn on its owner and whisper troubling orders into the subconscious. Norman Bates’ mommy complex is torn straight from Freud 101, but Hitchcock lent the character more nuance than the analyst’s profile in the concluding scene suggests. Norman is the truest casualty of his tyrannical mother, and Hitchcock has a clear compassion for the character’s tragic dimension. Sympathizing with him and making him human makes him a richer character overall, and lends the murder scenes a stronger emotional and psychological undercurrent. Viewers are torn, sympathizing both with Norman’s victims and with Norman himself, and that ambiguity is what sticks long after the credits roll.

The ideal horror film makes its audience care about a mentally ill character, not just acknowledge their sickness and move right along. Sympathy doesn’t just make for more finely shaded characters — it combats the toxic real-world stigma that’s come from reprehensible depictions of mental illness. Plenty of works of fiction have used disorders to make their rogues’ gallery more distinctive and striking. But obscuring the underlying personhood of mentally struggling characters reinforces the harmful notion that people with mental disorders are somehow beyond human.

The Friday the 13th franchise began with another psychological case study, as grieving mother Pamela Voorhees descended into post-traumatic madness and took revenge on the camp counselors her fractured mind believed were responsible for the death of her son, Jason. The original film extended a minimum of sympathy to her, and offered the audience a disturbing look at how mental stressors can distort a mother’s love for her son into homicidal urges. The films that followed sacrificed whatever slight nuance they had by shifting the focus to Jason, an indestructible killing machine whose famed hockey mask deliberately rendered him a blank slate. It’s a lucrative but wrongheaded approach — a lack of basic relatability makes Jason larger (and more fearsome) than life, but it also rapidly reduced him to a caricature.

Split tops the Friday the 13th franchise in a walk, however. To its credit, Shyamalan’s script uses the more up-to-date term of dissociative identity disorder rather than “multiple-personality” to refer to Kevin’s condition. Not to its credit is the rest of the film, which repeatedly fixates on the brain’s potential to psychosomatically change a body’s physiology. Kevin’s analyst, Dr. Karen Fletcher, repeatedly spells out her controversial theory that DID grants sufferers extraordinary control of their bodies, citing such examples as a blind woman with a personality capable of vision, or a strongman personality spontaneously developing extraordinary strength. Shyamalan extends the concept to a cartoonish extreme when he introduces Kevin’s personality “the Beast,” which has superhuman abilities and a monstrous appearance. By the end of the film, Kevin is exhibiting abilities that amount to superpowers, somehow derived from what professional consensus indicates is his brain’s extreme coping mechanism to a fleetingly shown childhood of abuse. ( Medical orthodoxy favors the notion that personalities fracture as an attempt to quarantine and compartmentalize harmful mental stressors.) The act of other-ing Kevin as a patient of DID isn’t even incidental; it’s the whole point. It’s hard to imagine a more squarely on-the-nose example of demonizing mental illness than portraying a mentally ill man as a literal demon.

Even when not deliberately toxic, many on-screen depictions of mental illness have been factually and flatly wrong. Plenty of myths have already been debunked; cases of alternate personalities turning violent are incredibly scarce, and cases of archly evil behavior are nonexistent. Sybil , starring Sally Field, is widely considered the definitive portrait of a dissociating psyche, but it’s a work of pure fiction. Shirley Mason , the real-life model for the theatrically disturbed character, has confessed that she was faking, and did not actually house multiple identities. The act of “flipping” from one mind to another has more dramatic heft than the reality of the situation, where patients slip between mental spaces.

Maybe a demand for baseline factual accuracy seems like nitpicking when it comes to scary movies. For the sake of argument, let’s assume the lone service of a horror picture is to scare the bejesus out of its audience. That’s fine — the problem isn’t just that Shyamalan’s approach compounds public distrust for the mentally unwell, it’s the way it ignores the rich potential for more complex storytelling and raw, visceral frights. Split works in quick jabs of terror, spooking the trembling teen captives with the occasional burst of violence or terror. Films that provide a window into an unwell mentality , however, can color every scene with free-floating fear. Black Swan had the good sense to take its visual and stylistic cues from the mental interior of Natalie Portman’s paranoid ballerina as she cracks under the pressure of the gig of a lifetime. Likewise, for Tim Robbins’ PTSD-stricken veteran in Jacob’s Ladder, chilling hallucinations can pop out of anywhere, keeping the viewer permanently on guard.

Mental illness does have its place in the horror genre, and it is scary. The feeling that your brain no longer follows the commands you give it, that your senses can’t be trusted, that you’re at the mercy of internal forces you can’t comprehend or control — it can be a nightmare sprung to life. It’s a filmmaker’s responsibility to keep it all in perspective, and extend a grain of sympathy to affected characters, even as they slide further into their delusion. The world remembers Hannibal Lecter and his refinement coexisting with savagery, not Buffalo Bill, whose body dysmorphia transforms him into a snarling, feral animal. One is a character, the other’s a ghoul.

It’s possible that Shyamalan realizes this, too. When Kevin briefly appears, he’s a friendly figure, compared to his alternate personalities. But Shyamalan’s creaky dialogue and McAvoy’s detached stoicism in the moment make that moment ring false, more lip service than a character beat. The real Kevin seems to be a relatively normal guy, only faintly affected by his own psychosis. In that moment, all the tension and internal conflict evaporates, and any connection the audience may have had with him is instantly severed. That moment encapsulates the trouble with Split, and with the countless films that have made the same error: before we can feel her pain, we’ve got to feel his.

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New movie ‘Split’ explores real psychological disorder

For a person dealing with dissociative identity disorder, the mind and body can resemble a 9-year-old boy coloring photos of the house he lives in at one moment and a 24-year-old British female with obsessive compulsive disorder the next.

New movie “Split” describes the life of a person dealing with dissociative identity disorder — a battle between multiple personalities.

The movie was released on Jan. 20 and depicts the story of a man diagnosed with the disorder. Kevin, the main character, has 23 different personalities. The storyline of the movie involves a battle between those personalities, his therapist and the three teenage girls whom he abducts at the beginning of the movie, according to IMDb .

Psychology Today defines dissociative identity disorder as a “severe condition in which two or more distinct identities, or personality states, are present in — and alternately take control of — an individual.”

BYU film student Jordan Brown said “Split” showed how real the disorder is to individuals who struggle with it. He said he thought the movie did a good job of portraying the change of personalities in a person.

“It really showed how personalities can develop in people with this disorder, and the movie was great at showing the transition into different personalities,” Brown said. “The character’s personalities changed throughout the movie, and it was so fascinating to watch.”

BYU psychologist and Comprehensive Clinic director Dean Barley said there are many people who struggle with this disorder.

“It’s hard for clinicians and the general public to believe this disorder actually exists,” Barley said. “Unfortunately, it does exist and people deal with this. It’s virtually always the result of a repeated trauma. If I’m a loved one, knowing the history of the person might be something to watch for — someone with an alleged trauma does have a higher probability of experiencing this condition.”

Barley said 23 personalities are reasonable in real life for those who struggle with this disorder, and there is usually a purpose for each of those personalities.

“People develop as many ‘alters’ as necessary to survive their situation with whatever characteristics they need,” Barley said. “Often, the different personalities will include different genders, ages, voices and characteristics that all have a meaning. These characteristics often are triggered by certain things and they show up and perform their function and then they’re gone.”

BYU Latin American studies alumnus Seth Hoyt said the character’s transition of personalities was interesting to see as the character completely changed everything about his persona. He said the character went from one severe personality to another personality, such as from a 9-year-old boy to a middle-aged woman.

According to Barley, the transition of personalities can be abrupt. But because these people have learned to survive in the public, these changes can be so subtle that other people don’t even notice the shift.

“If I’m talking to someone while they change ‘alters,’ I will often say to them, ‘I spent the last 15 minutes speaking to a child,’ and they may not remember, or they may say, ‘Yeah I was watching and I know (that alter).’ They often don’t remember, though,” Barley said.

Hoyt praised James McAvoy’s acting and said he did a phenomenal job at showcasing each individual personality the character embodied.

“My favorite part of it was the actual character of Kevin that James McAvoy played,” Hoyt said. “Seeing him switch between the different characters is interesting. I thought it was interesting when the doctor would talk about the personalities and how the character really believed that he was each of those different persons.”

Barley said although there are different opinions of the entertainment this movie brings, this is still a real disorder that many people deal with today. He said these people can function normally in society, and many of these people are often misdiagnosed with a variety of conditions like schizophrenia or bipolar disorders, according to Barley.

“When I talk to these people about what they want the public to know, they will often tell me that if there is one thing they want the public to know is that ‘We exist and we want to be treated respectfully,'” Barley said.

Brown said he thought even though some of the parts of the movie were exaggerated, it showed real struggles of the disorder.

“It really showed the audience the internal struggles that people with that disorder deal with,” Brown said. “It also showed how out of hand that disorder could get if it’s not recognized by the therapist or anyone else.”

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"Split" has very problematic views on psychological disorders — but to explain why, I need to spoil the film's brilliant twist

M. night shyamalan has a doozy of a twist at the end of "split," but does it make mental disorders a punchline, by matthew rozsa.

As the title of this article indicates, everything that follows is a spoiler for "Split."

It looks like "Split" is going to be M. Night Shyamalan's big comeback  and deservedly so. The surprise sequel to the 2000 cult classic "Unbreakable" has the cleverest twist from Shyamalan's entire oeuvre — yes, even better than "The Sixth Sense." That's not only because the plot of "Split" is a perfect fit for the universe of "Unbreakable" but because Shyamalan was able to release a secret sequel in the first place without the general public's discovery until it hit theaters. If you're a fan of "Unbreakable" like me, then it is definitely worth seeing.

At the same time, understanding "Split" in the context of "Unbreakable" helps illustrate exactly what is so problematic about the movie. Whereas "Unbreakable" used comic books as the source material for its supernatural conceits and monsters, "Split" grounds its mythology in the science of psychology — except that mental illnesses, unlike comic books, aren't fictional. There are real people out there who have to live with the countless burdens, seen and unseen, of feeling like a psychological "other," and "Split" further perpetuates harmful stereotypes instead of combating them.

The premise alone is troubling enough: James McAvoy plays Kevin Wendell Crumb, a zookeeper with dissociative identity disorder who kidnaps three teenage girls and later his therapist in order to sacrifice them to one of his multiple personalities, known simply as "The Beast." Right there you have a horror movie that has been sold to the public based on a pernicious prejudice — namely, that of the evil, violent, and otherworldly "crazy person."

Those who have this disorder  are not any more likely than the rest of us to be violent , of course, but viewers will be left with the opposite impression as they watch McAvoy show off his prodigious skills by portraying one creepy "crazy" character after another, after another. (And yes, as almost every critic has agreed, he is highly skillful at doing this.) It doesn't help that another one of Kevin's personalities is a pedophile who forces the girls to dance in various stages of undress, which plays up the prejudice that mentally ill people are more likely than others to be sexual predators.

Indeed, the use of sexual abuse as a plot device speaks to the deeper problematic element in "Split." In "Unbreakable," Samuel L. Jackson's character, Elijah Price, argues that comic book superheroes are simply based on real-life people who happen to have remarkable abilities, such as Bruce Willis' character, David Dunn, being the sole survivor of a train crash that killed every other passenger. In order to fit the "Split" story into the universe of "Unbreakable" Shyamalan presents people who are "broken" from severe psychological trauma as being able to physically enter the next stage of human evolution.

This is why during the film's climax Kevin is transformed into a murderous, cannibalistic beast, complete with a mane of wild hair, super strength, the ability to climb walls and unbreakable skin. Not only does he have dissociative identity disorder but his early childhood traumas have also left him with post-traumatic stress disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder, which, according to the film's logic, add to his "brokenness" and thus his likelihood of entering the next stage of evolution.

This isn't merely a quirk in a convoluted narrative; it's the movie's main contribution to the mythology first established in "Unbreakable." And like so many of Shyamalan's films, it is clear in retrospect that he had been setting this up to happen throughout the film's running time. One of the teenage girls, Casey Cooke (played by Anya Taylor-Joy), is gradually revealed in flashbacks throughout the movie as a sexual assault victim and a cutter so that The Beast ends up sparing her in the end after realizing she is also "broken" and "pure."

Just as the twist in "Unbreakable" hinges on the notion that heroes and villains in comic books usually exist along different points of a spectrum, so, too, does the surprise plot twist in "Split" use psychological atypicality to posit that the good guys and bad guys are really not so different from one another.

Where Shyamalan stumbles is the ham-handed use of mental abnormality as a stand-in for the superpowers of heroes and villains. Juxtaposing real hardships with fictional tropes lends itself to gross oversimplifications. This isn't the first time that Shyamalan has exploited mental illness in this way, as major plot points in films from "The Sixth Sense" and "The Village" to "The Visit" all depend on acts of violence being perpetrated by individuals with psychological disorders. Shyamalan's films reduce the meaning of having any kind of mental health condition to merely having potential for disruptiveness and violence. People with emotional issues are "others" while those who are unaffected are considered "normal" and must figure out a way to deal with them.

The shame of it is that there is a kernel of a progressive idea in "Split." As an autistic person myself, I have repeatedly written that spectrum disorders should be viewed as simply a different way of mental functioning rather than an inherently "unhealthy" or "inferior" one. I would argue that the same thing is true about many other mental health conditions. Although our culture tends to view non-neurotypical behavior as inherently "bad," we need to be culturally retrained to recognize that the only "bad" behavior is that which causes people to harm one another.

If someone is psychologically atypical but can socially function without posing a risk to himself or herself or anyone else, then the burden should fall on members of society to shed any prejudices that might cause them to stigmatize or otherwise wrong that individual. "Split" takes a step in this direction by positing that  "mental sickness" might not always be an actual illness — but then takes two steps back by exploiting moviegoers' fears that people with unusual mental conditions can be unpredictably violent.

I've been a huge fan of "Unbreakable" from the moment Samuel L. Jackson uttered the immortal line, "They called me Mr. Glass." Shyamalan sets up "Split" brilliantly as both a freestanding film and a sequel to "Unbreakable." If the overwhelmingly positive audience response in my theater is any indication, there will likely be a third film in the series and I look forward to seeing how Shyamalan can expand on the themes of the cinematic universe he has created.

I just hope he won't forget about the problems of the real universe as he sets about completing his own.

Matthew Rozsa is a staff writer at Salon. He received a Master's Degree in History from Rutgers-Newark in 2012 and was awarded a science journalism fellowship from the Metcalf Institute in 2022.

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Multiple Personality Disorder (Split Movie Review)

For my final project about mental illness, I chose to write about the movie Split. I chose Split because the main character's diagnosis is dissociative identity disorder commonly referred to as DID (previously known as multiple personality disorder). DID is something I have always been fascinated with even before this course so I am excited to have the opportunity to research this disorder further and share my thoughts on the subject.

The movie Split is an American psychological thriller film by M. Night Shyamalan. In Split James McAvoy plays Kevin Crumb, a troubled man diagnosed with DID due to childhood trauma that followed him into adulthood. Throughout the movie, Kevin is shown often in the office of his psychiatrist Dr. Karen Fletcher where we get more of an insight on his disorder, how it came about, and the identities or "alters" and more about their backgrounds. Kevin is diagnosed with twenty-three different personalities in this film and it is not until later we find out about the final and twenty-fourth personality referred to only as "the beast". At the beginning of the film, Kevin abducts three teenage girls and holds them captive in an underground dungeon he had built. The girls spend the entire movie planning and attempting their escape while encountering some of Kevin's prominent personalities along the way. Barry is one of the main alters we encounter; he seems to be the ringleader controlling which personalities get to surface as well as the one who interacts with Dr. Fletcher frequently before she realizes Barry is only a personality and Kevin is the patient. Dennis is another important alter because he is the one who initially abducts the three girls at the beginning of the movie. Dennis is interesting because even though he is a part of the mental illness of the main character, he possesses his issues and is portrayed to have OCD. Throughout the film, we also meet Patricia, a female motherly role, and Hedwig, a nine-year-old boy who befriends the captives along with a couple of others that make brief appearances. Since Split is a series, we do not meet all the personalities in this film however, the final and most important alter is "the beast". The Beast is portrayed as a frightening murderous superhuman who can run quickly, climb walls and bend steel bars. The Beast is the most important alter because throughout the film the girls are in a race against time to escape their captor before the beast surfaces.

During the film, we see Kevin in Dr. Fletcher's office quite a bit. Although they spend a reasonable time discussing his disorder and touching on his different personalities as well as how he is coping and managing, we do not see the treatment aspect of his condition. Upon researching DID and comparing it to what we have learned throughout our course, I would have to say the best type of treatment for DID would be cognitive-behavioral therapy or CBT. CBT focuses on changing negative thinking and behavior and emphasizes learning new ways of thinking and behaving to help us face difficulties and achieve our goals. There are several stages of CBT: establishing safety, stability working through and integrating traumatic memories, integration, and rehabilitation. CBT is a hands-on approach and a widely used form of therapy to treat a vast variety of disorders because there is no one solid treatment plan. There are many tools and techniques involved with CBT making it a customizable treatment plan to fit an individual's specific needs. During CBT individuals can learn important skills to improve their mental health and way of coping such as identifying problems more clearly, distinguishing between facts and irrational thoughts, stop fearing the worst, understanding how past experiences can affect present feelings and beliefs, facing fears rather than avoiding them, establish attainable goals, and becoming aware of your mood. These skills are important to learn especially in someone suffering from DID because DID is commonly brought on by a traumatic event such as abuse and often these alters, or personalities come to light to help an individual hide from what they have experienced almost like their way of being protected. By shifting the individual's way of thinking and presenting them with new ways to cope they can learn to change their behavior more healthily.

I have seen the film Split a couple of times now and this is the first time I sat down and dissected it. I have always thought it was a powerful film and accurately portrayed mental illness. M. Night Shyamalan did an amazing job showing what someone with DID goes through and James McAvoy gave an incredibly realistic performance on what struggling with mental illness is like. The film was meant to be a thriller and somewhat on the horror side so there were a few aspects that were unrealistic in the realm of portraying DID as an illness, for instance, the beast. The Beast was superhuman; he was shot and stabbed and came out unharmed. He scaled the walls and bent steel bars to get to his victims. As a personality or altar of Kevin, the beast in real life would not have acquired superhuman powers, although it has been reported that people with DID do take on personalities that resemble animals or fictional characters, their physical form does not change. Other than that minor detail made for shock value the film was extremely accurate in showing what DID is like as an illness. Individuals suffering from DID often have more than three personalities and twenty-four is not an outrageous stretch, they do change their appearances to fit as well as minor things like needing glasses or having an accent. Often people with multiple personalities do interact with all their alters and lose bits of memory or time which McAvoy convincingly showed us. Another thing I learned about DID was that a lot of times the personalities they take on serve a purpose. In Kevin's case, he had Barry who took initiative to attend therapy and seek help, Patricia was the motherly figure he never had, and Hedwig was the innocent child he could revert to and hide behind. Overall, I genuinely believe the film had many strengths versus weaknesses. I know DID is rare, however, I would love to read either a professional breakdown from someone who has worked with DID patients or a comparison on how someone who suffers from the condition can relate to this character just to learn how accurate the portrayal was compared to my opinion.

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