Split
(2016)
(SPOILERS) M Night Shyamalan went from the toast of twist-based
filmmaking to a one-trick pony to the object of abject ridicule in the space of
only a couple of pictures: quite a feat. Along the way, I’ve managed to miss several
of his pictures, including his last, The
Visit, regarded as something of a re-locating of his footing in the low
budget horror arena. Split continues
that genre readjustment, another Blumhouse production, one that also manages to
bridge the gap with the fare that made him famous. But it’s a thematically
uneasy film, marrying shlock and serious subject matter in ways that don’t
always quite gel.
Shyamalan has seized on a horror staple – nubile teenage
girls in peril, prey to a psychotic antagonist – and, no doubt with the best
intentions, attempted to warp it. But, in so doing, he has dragged in themes
and threads from other, more meritable fare, with the consequence that, in the
end, the conflicting positions rather subvert his attempts at subversion. This
is still, after all, a movie that contrives to objectify these damsels in
distress, stripping them down to their tight undies on the most spurious of
motives. And then offing two of them in offhand and grisly fashion (Haley Lu
Richardson’s Claire and Jessica Sula’s Marcia). Although, in true genre
fashion, they have it coming because they label lead protagonist Casey (Anya
Taylor-Joy, of The Witch) a freak in
the first scene.
Casey is there to be empowered, in as much as she is a
victim of child sexual abuse, just like her abductor Kevin Wendell Crumb (James
McAvoy), although she continues to function from the mind-set of a victim, as
we see through flashbacks and observe in the final scene when her uncle (Brad
William Henke) arrives to collect her. The key to Casey’s survival is not her
resilience, or inner strength. Rather, it is familiarity with a situation of
abuse and captivity. Thus, her initial immobility is not down to the survival
skills of predator and prey taught by her absent father (Sebastian Arcelus),
but recognisable circumstances where she believes nothing she can do will
extricate herself from the situation. So, while she shows smarts when dealing
with a younger split personality (Hedwig), it takes her a long time to be
proactive about her situation – the best she can offer is to suggest her fellow
captives urinate on themselves to deflect the attention of the Dennis
personality – by which time Claire and Marcia have been separated and
neutralised.
One might, reasonably, assume this is all leading to a point
of self-realisation and catharsis. But Split
has, by the point of the climax, irretrievably established itself not as a discerning portrait of
surviving abuse but instead a bat-shit crazy horror with the kind of psychological
acumen that would be right at home in De Palma’s gloriously ridiculous Dressed to Kill, just with added
supernatural monsters. As such, flashbacks to Casey’s childhood, and her uncle
approaching her in the woods, are jarring (Bruce Robinson commented of his
screenplay for In Dreams, which was
far from executed as he intended by Neil Jordan, that “the greatest challenge… was to write a film about a paedophile and not
show a child in jeopardy. That’s the essential thing. It’s a very sensitive
area…”; there’s a similar sense here, watching Shyamalan incorporate such
material for the most calculated of reasons). They feel tonally indiscreet,
inappropriate, and because the picture is almost flippant in its disregard for
genre boundaries one gets the sense that Shyamalan got rather muddled on the
way to his final destination.
Shyamalan does, after all, plan an Unbreakable/Split trilogy
capper. The consequence of this is that Kevin Wendell, whom the director says
was a part of the original Unbreakable screenplay
but who just didn’t fit, must live to fight another day, so divesting Casey of self-actualisation.
Indeed, the final shot fails to even provide a confirmation that she confessed
her uncle’s abuse to the waiting police officer. We can assume she did, but
what’s Shyamalan’s motivation in holding back, since he holds back pretty much nothing in any other area of the
screenplay, culminating in Wendell’s Beast persona feasting on the innards of Casey’s
not-really friends? Such an inconclusive choice would, I’m sure, work for a
different film in a different genre. Here it feels like the punishment of the
type of person who (obviously in reference to the kind of movie he thinks it’s
not) would breezily cameo as Jai, Hooters Lover.
Of course, there’s something rather dubiously schematic –
Hitchockian? – about the director’s thinking in his philosophy of the Beast,
whereby those who have suffered are regarded as more evolved. He considers that here, “You are going to get killed
because you are good” rather than because you had sex. But really, what’s
the difference if you’re still casting actresses who are hot? I mean, that may have been a Blumhouse ruling, but Shyamalan’s
hardly giving them otherwise ground-breaking material in genre terms. And, as
noted, it isn’t as if the picture is shunning tropes. The girls may be chaste
(I don’t know; are they?) but they aren’t brimming with the milk of human
kindness, thus in horror movie terms they deserve their fates for being mean to
Casey. Most of all, though, when it comes down to it, the final act disappoints
because it relies on the antagonist letting the protagonist go; nothing is
required of the latter other than to be acknowledged as self-harming and therefore
“pure”. And, while the shared suffering of heroine and villain makes for an
interesting idea, Shyamalan does nothing of consequence with it.
It’s also slightly bizarre that what criticism there has
been of the picture seems to have focussed on its making villains out of those suffering
from dissociative identity disorder (“DID”) rather than its dubious
approach to child sexual abuse. Particularly since there’s debate over whether
DID exists per se or is an artificially-produced state brought on by the
treatment of the condition (now, there’s
a basis for a movie).
In addition, the finale is something of a disappointment because the
writer-director-consummate cameo-er has made so much of the preceding passages as a
compelling, witty and often funny ride, that a standard-issue monster on the
loose doesn’t really cut it. You can argue that introducing a real supernatural
element is a compelling twist, but it isn’t really,
not when it owes so much to the Tooth Fairy’s self-styling from Red Dragon/Manhunter. And the coda with Bruce, as Unbreakable’s David Dunn, is phenomenally geeky, but how does it
serve Casey’s story? Will she feature in any significant way in the sequel? I
doubt it, which goes to emphasises that the director doesn’t really give his chosen
subject matter any but the most casual weight, encouraging the audience to
forget his lead’s traumas as soon as he dangles a shiny, Brucey bauble before
them.
These reservations are not to take anything away from Shyamalan’s
consummate assuredness as a director. Nor as one with an innate understanding
of structure. He’s an absolute expert at holding back and revealing, and in a movie
such as this, probably the most De Palma/Hitchcock thing he’s done (even the
titles are delightfully stylised) that skillset deserves all the more recognition,
because it’s playing against an established yardstick and still getting props. Betty Buckley’s psychologist is straight out
of “only in movies” clinicians, nursing a crackpot theory (and with only a
skype conference as a nod to modernity – a scene that absolutely succeeds, even
though it’s so hokey it ought to be laughed off the screen) as to its
antagonist’s multiple derangement, while M Night’s visual cues for the
different McAvoy personalities are straight out of his suspense master peers’
text books. Before he decides to steamroller over them for in-situ
transformations.
The lure of much of the picture – no disservice to
Taylor-Joy, who offers a performance of tremendous conviction, probably much more
so than Split deserves – is McAvoy,
and the scenes that truly crackle are those between him and Buckley (also great
in the nuts but underrated The Happening),
as Dr Fletcher attempts to get to the bottom of the personality presenting
itself to her for analysis. McAvoy doesn’t hold back, whether it’s as a
nine-year-old, a roll-necked authoritarian spinster, or sensitive fashion
designer, and his willingness to go for it entirely gives the movie its
must-see edge.
On the one hand, Shyamalan has succeeded in making something
of a throwback homage, a picture hermetically sealed in a veritable movie-verse
of eccentric psychologists and basement-dwelling psychopaths. On the other, he
has come somewhat unstuck in trying to marry this to an attempt at tackling and
addressing abuse survival whilst simultaneously cynically lobbing in a third
ingredient of the wider Shyamala-verse (and how will Bruce fare in a proper
movie, having not given a shit for so long?) If he’d succeeded, Split might have been a minor genre
classic, but as it is, it’s more impressive for its director’s visual sleight
of hand and its lead actor’s free-rein performance(s) than the manner in which
it resorts to his past crutch of twists and revelations.
Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.
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