SPLIT- a comedy of errors

 I went and saw M. Night Shyamalan's newest comedy 'Split'. While it was unintentionally funny, and full of those overly philosophical Shyamalan trappings and occasional wooden dialogue, this movie was actually thrilling. James McAvoy, from recent X-men fame, is the best part of this film, portraying 'Kevin Crumb' a character suffering from multiple personalities. To keep it simple, I'll use multiple personalities disorder throughout, even though the movie says DID.

 The movie takes place after a party, in which three girls are kidnapped and wake up inside a random basement somewhere. Their kidnapper begins to show the true extent of his psychopathy from little things from being a germaphobe with OCD, to major shifts in his emotional state to entirely different people.

 Not really much I can say without spoiling the movie for people. But, like I said above and in former Shyamalan talks, I treat all his films like comedies. Often times the line delivery is stunted or wooden, frequently having characters spout this weird overly complex pseudoscience nonsense that makes whatever the sceen/film is referencing seem more "important", as well, Shyamalan is in all his movies. This is no different. Not to the absurd extent of 'Lady in the Water', he makes a casual appearance as a friend to a main character. In which the two begin rattling on about Hooter's and their wings, and the reason all men go to Hooter's. In which Shyamalan just says "they're good wings".

 To this movie's credit though, James McAvoy is probably the greatest pick I've ever seen to convey multiple personalities. He switches on a dime, sure with costumes for each character, but a complete and sudden shift in tone of voice and even the way he carries himself. Whenever he is on screen as a "kid" or Dennis, he gives off a sinister vibe. All the time. Even when he shows up to his therapist's office and the two are talking, the subtle facial twitches show that he is ready to snap and whatever she is saying is clearly digging into him. Even at his "home", he is always on edge in which the slightest crumb or speck of dirt causes him to almost lose his cool. I will say though, as the movie progresses and the movie delves into some weird territory about some personalities "changing their host's body", McAvoy still keeps that tenseness. Hell, even in the end of the movie, he is a scary SOB. 



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 My biggest gripe about this movie is how it treats multiple personalities disorder(or DID). Basically, at one point towards the end to serve the plot, they mention cases in which a personality can change a host's body chemistry almost on a dime to fit this developed personality. Which, yes, has happened before. To the extent of which, I'm unsure of. But they begin mentioning people with blindness being able to "see" because a personality forced the body to somehow fix the optic nerves, specifically for that personality, otherwise the person is still blind. Or how one man has the personality of a body builder and is able to lift 3x his own weight or something. Now, I'm again unsure of the exact extent of DID/MPD but I do know that there are cases of people with MPD that aren't diabetic but a personality is. I don't know. If there are cases like above, cool, maybe they have in a way unlocked human potential. I don't know. But this movie decides to take it one step further by not making what is possible within human limitation, but by combining animal powers. So, at the end, there is a new personality called "THE BEAST" in which he is the beast. Somehow just making an identity based on animal traits grants our villain very thick skin, long fingers and the ability to scale walls like a goddamn salamander. Now, I call bullshit immediately. We aren't saying he mutates to have lumpy skin, it's still his normal white skin. His fingers are.... slightly longer? But the most impressive power is to scale walls. Like, any walls. The best showcase of this magic feat is when we see McAvoy and a main character trapped in a room, the dude turns around and just sticks his hand onto the wall and scales it like spiderman. No lie. I fucking lost it watching him do this. Plus, he takes two shells of buckshot to the chest like it ain't shit and we see at the end that whole "mind over matter" thing. Whatever. Also, the female actresses aren't that amazing, but they work. 

 However, despite my hate of Shyamalan and anything he writes/directs/produces, he fucking did it. At the end of the film, we see a diner filled with people and the camera tilt rolls to a tv in which the news described a new person called "The Beast". A woman is shown saying in weird Shyamalan speak "...weird name, what about that guy the put in prison a long time ago? The guy in the wheelchair." She leaves. We see Bruce Willis turn his head, and say to himself "Mr. Glass", then sip his drink. Fuckin' A, he did it. Bruce Willis played a character in Shyamalan's 2000 film, 'Unbreakable' in which at the end he is shown his greatest "adversary(?)" which is Samuel L. Jackson, the man in the wheelchair. I don't know if just Unbreakable and Split are connected, or this means 'Signs', 'Sixth Sense', 'The Village', 'Lady in the Water' and the rest are all connected. God I hope so. That means that aliens pissed off the trees, which pissed off the Narf(?), which pissed off Satan, which pissed off Meema and Pop-pop in 'The Visit'.