The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Split Personality, or to give it its technical name Multiple Personality Disorder and more recently Dissociative Identity Disorder, concerns individuals who have a condition where they periodically manifest one or more different personalities. This is a real world phenomenon and there have been a number of non-fiction works about people affected with such a condition.
Split Personality entered the Psycho-Thriller with Norman Bates and Psycho (1960) and there have been numerous other examples of split personality psychos. The Other (1972) created a unique twist where we had two twins, one good and one bad, before a twist ending reveals that one of them only exists in the other’s mind. Similar kinds of Conceptual Reversal Twists where characters are revealed to be inside someone’s head have been popular since.
The most famous fictional Split Personality was Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Dr Jekyll is an upstanding doctor who invents a potion that brings out his evil side that proceeds to rampage forth conducting wanton mayhem. This has been filmed multiple times – for which see Jekyll and Hyde Films. Another example would be the Batman villain Two-Face who is a physically divided personality with one side of his face scarred, one regular and his personality split between good and evil.
Effective and disturbing work about two boys who begin to think that someone else might have taken their mother’s place after she returns in bandages. The film reaches a particularly chill and nasty climax
From Cody Calahan who made Antisocial, a reasonable modernisation of the Jekyll and Hyde story with a girl at war for ownership of her own body with an evil alter ego
Another woman seeks vengeance film, sort of a female version of The Crow where the heroine wears PVC catsuit, fishnets and cat ears. A film made with a cod-grindhouse aesthetic hoping to get by on a certain trash movie sensibility
Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders, an animated homage to the 1960s Batman tv series reuniting Adam West and Burt Ward, was a quirky delight. This is a sequel in the same vein, although more a case of a joke that tires in the retelling
M. Night Shyamalan’s name took a nosedive throughout most of the 2000s (although I am prepared to defend him) but he received some of his best notices in years with his collaborations for Blumhouse, This split personality thriller, anchored by a tour-de-force performance(s) from James McAvoy, continues the upward trend
The reboot of the Mummy series emerges as a wannabe Michael Bay film where even star Tom Cruise plays second banana to the CGI eye candy. Equally, an attempt to jumpstart a shared universe out of Universal’s Famous Monsters with the inclusion of Dr Jekyll seems awkward
Film about children hiding in big old house of secrets following the death of their mother. Filled with all manner of fascinating secrets and twist revelations
A smart and intelligent SF film where two brothers both inhabit the same body and then both fall for the same woman. Great acting from Ansel Elgort in the titles role(s)
Unbreakable was M. Night Shyamalan’s everyday superhero film. Here he merges the characters from Unbreakable and Split to create his own shared universe. This could in effect be the kitchen sink version of The Avengers
Essentially a women’s version of Fight Club, a black comedy about a girl being dragged on a killing spree by a murderous life coach
Fascinating film that conjures something of Primer in which a scientist creates a machine that splits his personality into ten parts
Taiwanese film in which multiple personalities are implanted into a prisoner’s body, one of which is a serial killer, in an effort to find a missing child
An enterprising low-budget adaptation of the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde story, which has been filmed numerous times. This offers the most radical spin on the story of any adaptation to date
The Long Halloween Part One was one of the best DC animated films in some time, now comes the concluding chapter, which alas fails to fulfill the promise that the first film showed
The first sequel to the passable Venom. Next to Batman & Robin, this could be a strong contender for the worst big-budget superhero film ever made
This is a superbly written and directed work of Southern Gothic that consists of three interwoven tales that gradually expose dark family secrets
After overseeing a growing list of worthless sequels and spinoffs, James Wan is back in the director’s chair and goes batshit crazy with this film where Annabelle Wallis is taken over by an evil twin
A very strange surrealist film about the strange characters that populate a rundown hotel. Includes reincarnation, alien bug people and John Malkovich as a psychiatrist with red hair in a bow
The revived Hammer Films takes on adapting Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde with Eddie Izzard playing the role as a trans woman. This offers some amusing modernisations of the familiar, oft-filmed story
Quite a good film about a space expedition where the crew members on a mission to Saturn fall into an increasing paranoia and inability to tell what is real due to the drugs used in the hypersleep process