“Split” movie review

“Split” movie review

“Split” is a psychological horror-thriller movie created in America. The film has been written and directed by Night M. Shyamalan in the year 2016. The story is about three girls at their teen. These three girls are kidnapped by an individual known as Kevin Wendel Crumb, real name, James McAvoy. Kevin abducted the three girls after a party and locked them up in an unidentified location. Kevin Wendell Crumb suffers from a condition known as Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). Kevin has 23 diverse personalities due to the disorder. Twenty-three of the personalities that Kevin has are always on the surface, in a room just sitting down waiting for their turn to dominate. The 24th personality is the monster itself. The monster is the personality that reveals itself towards the end of the film. To personalities among the remaining personalities have a plan. They plan to make a sacrifice of the girls kidnapped so that they can make a revolutionary amongst the personalities that Kevin has. Two of the girls kidnapped are popular and normal girls, their names are Claire, whose real name is Haley Lu Richardson, and Marcia, whose real name is Jessica Sula. The third girl is an unpopular girl, who is weird, and an introvert at the same time, her name is Case, whose real name is Anya Taylor-Joy. Case realizes the different personalities that Kevin has and tries to review his psychology in the process of trying to get him to release them, on the foundation that Kevin himself decides to let them go, without any violence. Kevin holds the teenage girls in the underground of an industrial area as his different personalities approach him in diverse ways, with different intentions.

Kevin has a therapist by the name Dr Karen Fletcher whose real name is Betty Buckley. Karen holds a conference through skype, where she discusses her patient’s health conditions. She has obtained all this information by studying Kevin’s personality, a trait theory that she has put into practice. She mostly discusses those that suffer from Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID); this includes Kevin. Dr Karen discusses the abilities that the different personalities may possess and how the other personalities may not possess the abilities. She also talks about the ability on how she can be able to sense and tell which of the 23 personalities have taken control, that is come “to light.” She goes ahead to state that individuals with DID can alter the chemistry of their body with the help of their thoughts alone. One of Kevin’s personalities is Barry. The personality Barry has a broad Boston accent. Barry is the persona that Karen engages with most of the time. This personality realizes what is going on and discuss it with his therapist, Dr Karen. This is humanistic psychology. In one session, Kevin comes as Barry. Karen notices specific features that are displayed normally with other personalities, for example, Dennis, for instance, OCD. Barry insists to Karen that he has gotten well and is doing fine. Karen then goes ahead to mention that Kevin possesses 23 diverse personalities. Afterwards, Kevin becomes Dennis just as Karen is mentioning Kevin’s 24 identities, “The Beast.” Dennis says that the persona, “The beast,” is real. To get to know the different personalities of Kevin, Dr Karen has tried to use the psychoanalytic theory, to know how all these traits came to be.

Kevin’s major identities depict themselves all at once. Through this behaviour, the psychological disorder of Kevin can be witnessed. It is obvious that Kevin is not a normal person, and his traits are taking over his human nature. His human nature is no more since “the beast” is in him. “The Beast” character crawls all over the ceiling, destroying all the lights to distract Casey’s vision. This is after Casey finds the rifle and shoots at Kevin. The idea of shooting Kevin came from himself (Kevin) when Casey called his name by full, that is, Kevin Wendell Crumb. Dr Karen is the one who realized that by calling his name out, his normal personality, Kevin, comes back. Back in the underground where Kevin had placed his victims, he had abducted, while in a different personality, he managed to kill Dr Karen. Before she died, she wrote something on a piece of paper. Casey found the paper and read it aloud when “The Beast” personality came to kill her. This is when Kevin comes around and convinces Casey to kill her after he finds out what he had done, that is, killing his therapist, Dr Karen Fletcher. As “The Beast” approaches Casey, it rips her shirt and bites her leg, but she manages to getaway. This shows the indication of criterion A in DSM-V: identity disruption categorized by many different personality situations, that may be labelled in different cultures as a possession experience. The identity disruption includes the discontinuity wisdom of oneself and the wisdom of agency, and also by altercations that are related in effect, awareness, conduct, perception, reminiscence, insight, and/or sensory-motor functioning.

Kevin has strong feelings, instincts, and also dialogue or other actions that abruptly appear, without personal control or ownership control sense, that is, sense of agency. These kinds of feelings and instincts are usually described as puzzling and ego-dystonic. The outlook of an individual, the person’s attitude, and the preference of the individual, for example, the mode of dressing is known to change and then change back within a blink of an eye. When the girls have been captures, the peep through the crack of the door and see an individual who seems to be a woman talking to the person who has abducted them, they are contented to see this as they think that they can call out and get help from the woman. The girls go-ahead to call out the woman for help. To their surprise, it was just Kevin wearing high heels and a skirt. This personality depicts a polite British woman. The personality is known as Patricia. A few hours later, after meeting Patricia, the girls also met another personality by the name Hedwig. Hedwig is a 9-year-old boy. Hedwig breaks it out to the three girls that Dennis and Patricia will be mad at him and that he is in trouble. From here, it can be noticed that Kevin’s stages of identity disturbance happen when there is any form of psychological pressure, and when they are lengthy and severe to Kelvin. Amnesia in people with DID is not partial to traumatic or upsetting events; these people often cannot remember daily proceedings as well. As Kevin comes back, he has no clue of what he has committed when Casey informs him that he just killed his therapist Dr Karen Fletcher, Marcia, and Claire. In DSM-V, this depicts criterion B: gaps that are recurrent in the remembering of daily proceedings, essential individual information, and upsetting proceedings that are unreliable with normal disremembering.

Casey goes to find the other girls she was abducted with. She finds out that Marcia is dead as her intestinal has been torn open but Claire alive. But, “The Beast” drags her (Claire). Casey then finds a piece of paper that Dr Karen Fletcher had written on before she got killed by “The Beast.” The paper had been written, “Say his name-Kevin, Wendell Crumb.” “The beast” tries to find Casey, but she calls out Kevin Wendell Crumb repeatedly, causing him to relapse to normal. A brief flashback of Kevin’s childhood trauma: Kevin has an abusive mother. She keeps shouting at him as a youngster by calling out his names while informing him that he has made a mistake. Periodically, she threatened Kevin using a coat hanger. In the process of Kevin being abused, she started to develop diverse personalities as a defence mechanism, finally coming up with 23 different personalities, all of which impulsively took over Kevin’s body and conquered the original owner of the body, Kevin. From this perspective, it can be noted that the start of Kevin’s mental illness is because of Kevin’s family background.

In conclusion, “Split” is an accurate portrayal of the psychological theme. From abnormality psychology, DID refers to a condition that specific individuals possess two or more than one personalities. The individual has a strong imagination; it means that they perceive the world is different from normal people. For example, people with DID might have unconscious thoughts to become another person from their origin without self-awareness. The film is an accurate portrayal of treatment. We can take a review of the character of the therapist, Dr Fletcher. She shows that a therapist must be patient and trustworthy to the patients. She shows a profound understanding of Kevin’s condition, and she talks to him as a normal person. She tries to help Kevin out. Dr Fletcher said: “an individual with different personalities can alter their body interaction with their feelings” and “there must be limits to what a human being can become”. From here, we can see that a therapist must try best to express the magnitude of the danger of patients and well explains how those with multiple personalities can change with their thoughts.