“I think, therefore I am.” M. Night Shyamalan certainly meditated on this statement while conceiving his latest project, Split. The film immediately jumps into the story: three teens, friends Claire (Haley Lu Richardson) and Marcia (Jessica Sula), and troubled outsider Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy) are kidnapped after Claire’s birthday party. Their captor (James McAvoy), takes the girls back to his secret lair, a windowless room with an unusually tidy bathroom. 

Later, we learn through psychiatrist appointments that the girls’ captor is Kevin, a young man with a past filled with childhood trauma that is the root for his Dissociative Identity Disorder (previously known as multiple personality disorder). Kevin has 23 different identities, with the dominant identity being Barry; however, recently other “repressed” identities have been taking him over. The girls meet these repressed identities, including Dennis, Miss Patricia, and 9-year-old Hedwig, all of whom tell the girls that they are special food for “The Beast,” a mysterious previously unknown 24th identity.

Overall, the film is ripe with instances of style for style’s sake, and its story feels very clunky: Casey has several intermittent flashbacks, revealing her to also have sustained serious childhood trauma and have learned how to hunt wild game, a skill that comes in handy in her current situation. Meanwhile, the other two girls attempt a few harried escapes only to be quickly foiled, while Casey takes a more cautious approach. The captive/escape plot is unsurprising and familiar. Cliché and heavy reliance on unnecessary exposition undermine any real sense of suspense. The ‘mental illness as horrific’ trope is initially uninteresting and uncomfortable, and the story is heavy-handed and prescriptive, hinging upon Kevin’s psychiatrist’s, Dr. Fletcher’s (Betty Buckley), belief that people with DID can, somewhat supernaturally, change completely in physicality with each different identity- a literal manifestation of mind over matter. Moreover, most of the characters are superficial and boring. The captives, aside from Casey, are given no depth, acting purely as means of raising the stakes for Casey’s escape. 

McAvoy’s performance, however, lifted the entire film. He was excellent, truly selling the character and making each identity special and believable, even occasionally transforming between identities from line to line, his entire face seeming to shift in structure. The audience spends quite a bit of time with Kevin, getting a tiny window into his perspective and world. Each of his personas are more interesting than any other character; in fact, I was somewhat disappointed that we don’t meet more of the 23.

There are a couple of good twists in the film (Shyamalan does have a reputation to uphold, after all). The first one is good and truly surprising, while the last major twist serves as just another schlocky way to further hammer in the aforementioned message and mask an otherwise dull ending. All of this leaves Split having the ingredients for a thought-provoking horror flick or psychological thriller, but never quite gelling into something great. 

Rating: C+/B-

I feel like there are a lot of movies with stories like this coming out: where audiences are shown the darker side of the founding of a major corporation. Maybe I am just remembering Jobs, the movie about Apple founder Steve Jobs and how he screwed over his partner, Steve Wozniak. But I do feel like this is a story we hear about a lot: the small-time people who have a genius idea getting over-taken by someone with ruthless ambition and determination. The Founder’s story is just like that, which would usually have me spouting off about how the story seems to lack originality and feels like every other movie with this premise. And while the movie is at times quite heavy-handed and cliché, its excellent performances manage to make the ride entertaining.

The story mainly focuses on Raymond Kroc (Michael Keaton), a salesman in the mid-1950s trying to sell his inventions that no one wants. He is convinced that with enough determination he can rise to the top and be rich, and he finally finds his path to fame when he stumbles across a small restaurant called McDonalds. He introduces himself to Dick and Mac McDonald (Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch), the owners of the place who pride themselves on their speed and efficiency. Convinced that this is where he will make his millions, Kroc convinces the brothers that he can turn their restaurant into a huge franchise. They agree, under the condition that they have complete creative control over everything he does. At first, things look like they are going well, until Kroc’s ambition overtakes his morals and goes behind the McDonalds’ backs.

Though the movie has what I would consider to be a fairly standard and generic story, the situation that it presents is interesting enough to hold its own among other ‘based on a true story’ dramas. Hearing the story of how such a major company like McDonalds was created is interesting in its own right, especially when you consider the circumstances that its popularization was created under. Everybody knows McDonalds, but many (myself included) might not know the shady methods that Kroc used to become a billionaire. This makes the movie interesting enough to break through the monotony of the story’s plot, especially considering its great performances.

Keaton does an excellent job at playing the conniving and over-confident Kroc, reminding me that it is characters like this that he really shines at playing. He has an opening monologue that I found myself critiquing for its clichés yet still captivated by because Keaton’s performance. Kroc’s combined awkwardness and persistence makes him an interesting character and Keaton nails it. The rest of the cast, including Laura Dern, B.J. Novak, Patrick Wilson and Linda Cardellini, do a great job as well, weaving the story of McDonald’s creation effortlessly.

The only real problem I have with the film is that its formulaic nature has a tendency to bleed into the movie’s dialogue, especially Keaton’s. The scene where Keaton looks at the plot of land he wants to turn into a McDonalds and repeats “Let me be right, just the once” three times seems incredibly forced. There are many lines of dialogue just as cliché as that, and without the movie’s excellent performances, this would have made the film a slog to sit through. Luckily, Keaton, Offerman, Lynch and the supporting cast are so charismatic and flow so well off each other that it became a non-issue. In total, The Founder is a good telling of an extremely interesting story. It won’t win any awards, but it’s definitely worth checking out. 

Grade: B+