Split (2016)

I’m not usually one for psychological thrillers as they almost always distort and exaggerate mental conditions that hundreds, thousands, even millions of people struggle with. However, with Split (2016), I found myself genuinely impressed by how the film did not focus on turning people with diagnosed mental illnesses into freaks (as so many movies do these days). Instead, it shed some light on the field of psychology and the deleterious effects that negative public stigmatization can have on those that are plagued with conditions that are beyond their control.

Although the “bad guy” was a mentally unstable patient, the film went above and beyond to show that the villain was a creation of the social pressure to be normal as his condition went unrecognized by those around him. I applaud the attempt at showing that, by constantly refusing to acknowledge that mental conditions exist, society is actually fueling those conditions and making them more severe, as is the case with the patient in Split.

Rather than having the film follow a single protagonist, the screen time is cleverly split between the dissociative identity disorder (DID) patient, Kevin “Wendell” Crumb, and a teenage sexual abuse victim, Casey Cooke. We discover that Kevin’s character developed 23 distinct personalities as a defensive measure against verbal - and possibly physical - abuse from his mother as a child. Casey, on the other hand, can be seen with scars from self-inflicted wounds marring her body after it’s revealed that she’s been sexually abused by her uncle from a very young age.

Both can relate to one another as they were neglected in some shape or form as children by those that were supposed to be their guardians. What’s fascinating is how they coped in vastly different ways - Kevin by developing DID (escaping mentally) and Casey by self-harming (escaping physically).

What’s more interesting (but by no means in a good way) was how Kevin kidnapped three girls with the intent of devouring their pureness. He literally took on a 24th cannibalistic identity and consumed their entrails while they were still living. I don’t think the message could be any clearer - Kevin’s character wanted to destroy these girls from the inside out, just as his psyche had been fractured and torn to pieces. The girls symbolized everything that is revered in our society: beauty, brains, guts (too soon?). They represented all that Kevin would never be. However, when he saw Casey’s self-harm scars, he spared her knowing that they both shared the same feelings of being ostracized in an unforgiving world.

I could go on forever with this movie but, in sum, I appreciate that Shyamalan attempted to show the role that society plays in creating the demons that plague so many people. It’s clear that we still have a long way to go until we no longer feel the need to identify people as “normal” versus “freaks,” but just starting the conversation is already a step in the right direction.