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.
