Dissociative Identity Disorder (also known as Multiple Personality Disorder) is a rare disorder in which a person has two or more personalities with distinct memories and behavior patterns that exist in their brain. The movie Split, directed by M. Night Shyamalan, is about three teenage girls who are kidnapped by Kevin Wendell Crumb, a victim of child abuse with severe Dissociative Identity Disorder. Kevin takes the girls, Claire, Marcia and Casey, hostage while they are waiting in the car to be driven home by their father.
The viewer follows Kevin and tries to get inside his mind as he transforms into his 24 (yes, 24) identities. Throughout the film, the audience seemed to be rooting for Kevin’s psychiatrist Dr. Fletcher, who has followed Kevin’s antics for years and has begun to notice a change in his characters. For example, his personality named “Barry” keeps sending Fletcher strange emails and showing up unannounced to her office. What she doesn’t know is the two dominant personalities in Kevin’s head, “Dennis” and “Patricia” have taken over and are planning evil things to come.
James McAvoy, who plays Kevin, is remarkably talented in keeping a straight face as he fluctuates between identities. It blew my mind to see how one actor could pretend to be 24 people almost simultaneously and make it believable. My favorite character out of all of them was “Hedwig,” who claims to be a nine-year-old kid who helps the girls, especially Casey, escape (or at least attempt to). “Hedwig” kept the humor in a relatively dark film and the audience got quite a laugh watching Casey manipulate the kid into helping her.
Casey, played by Anya Taylor-Joy, impressed me with the amount of strength the character possessed through her terrifying situation. Casey is the only girl who is given a backstory; she suffered from child abuse from her uncle and learned how to hunt from her father. She defies social standards as she fights her way out of Kevin’s (or “Dennis’s”) strong grasp.
The ending was the biggest twist of all, not unusual for director Shyamalan to do. Fletcher predicts this twist (aka strange phenomenon) when she says, “An individual with multiple personalities can change their body chemistry with their thoughts.” Kevin certainly does that. Overall, the movie include issues like mental disorders, self-harm, sexual abuse and more. I strongly suggest everyone see it, not only for the mind-blowing acting by McAvoy, but also for the scary truth of the things that can happen to any of us.