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Does Suffering Make You Super? | Split (2016)
This article contains spoilers for Split (2016) and deals with delicate issues, if you are easily offended or find such topics unsettling, please do not read further and have a nice day.
In 2016 M. Night Shyamalan released a film that restored his Hollywood credit: Split. A psychological horror film that follows Kevin (James McAvoy), a man with 23 split personalities (see where they get the clever name?), as he kidnaps three girls and holds them in a basement as a sacrifice to the 24th cannibalistic personality only known as “The Beast.”
Two of the girls kidnapped are conventionally attractive and popular, with the third, Casey (Anna Taylor-Joy), who is aloof and considered weird by the others. It’s Casey who survives the movie and has shotgun and showdown with the Beast. She only lives because The Beast sees the scars on her body and determines that she is “Pure,” sparing her life.
The film boasts an incredible performance from James McAvoy, and Anna Taylor-Joy. While the performances bring the film to life, it is the ideology of the film that is visceral when presented on screen. Horror, as a genre, has the ability to make manifest our hidden insecurities and fears and make them written large on the screen, Split (2016) does the same, but with a different kind of idea than normal.
