Everyone remembersM. Night Shyamalan’scontroversial 2016 supernatural thrillerSplit. The film was praised by plenty of horror fans for its suspenseful plot, complex themes, and impressive performances, particularly from James McAvoy, who effortlessly embodied 24 separate personalities as Kevin Wendell Crumb, an antagonist diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). On the other hand, Shyamalan’s depiction of DID results in a monstrous personality called The Beast, leaving a bad taste with some moviegoers, who worried that it would further exacerbate misconceptions about the disorder and people with mental illnesses.
The filmmaker has confirmed thatSplitwas heavily inspired by the real-life case of Billy Milligan, the first person to plead insanity from DID as a defense and win. Comparing Milligan and Kevin, Shyamalan’s contentious narrative choices make a lot more sense. The movie begins with Kevin kidnapping three teenage girls from a parking lot before following the character’s unsettling experience with DID, switching between disparate personalities, without control, up until a genre-bending final act.
Considering the widespread stigma behind mental health, it’s important to look at exactly what’s real and what isn’t with this kind of story. Here’s everything we know about Milligan’s actual crime and trial that inspiredSplit, as well as how much this loose retelling of true events sticks to reality.
The True Story That Inspired ‘Split’
Even though Kevin is a fictional character, his creation was prompted by Billy Milligan’s real courtroom milestone. Milligan was brought into custody in 1977 for robbing, kidnapping, and raping three women. During a psychiatric evaluation, he said that he had DID and that one of his 24 alters was responsible for the crimes. Milligan underwent a year’s worth of careful assessments conducted by nine separate mental health professionals, including the infamous Dr. Cornelia Wilbur.The psychiatrist appeared in Flora Reta Schreiber’s non-fiction novelSybil,which details Wilbur’s treatment of DID in a patient who later confessed to having faked the diagnosis(so it’s no wonder that Shyamalan’s additional, flawed portrayal of the real disorder angered so many viewers).
By 1978, Milligan was found not guilty by reason of insanity and institutionalized, becoming the first person with such a verdict onthe basis of DID.Plenty of factors contributed to Milligan’s diagnosis and subsequent court ruling. There was consistent witness testimony regarding his shifting personalities, a history of trauma and alleged sexual abuse from his step-father, and prior psychiatric hospitalization for his dissociative symptoms when he was younger. Milligan served eight years of hospitalization after the verdict before escaping. Within a few months, he was found and brought back, butby 1988, his doctors deemed that he was no longer a threat to society, and he was released.
Although Milligan passed away in 2014 of cancer, even to this day, his life and case are still highly publicized, spawning several documentaries, books, films, and TV shows that have captivated the public for nearly 50 years.
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How Does ‘Split’ Compare to the True Story?
Shyamalan used some details of Milligan’s case in his characterization of Kevin inSplit. However,the filmmaker more so used it as a jumping off point, evident in the many creative liberties he took. It’s true that Kevin kidnapped three teenage girls just like Milligan did, but he didn’t sexually assault them in the film. Likewise,Milligan didn’t kill any of his victims while Kevin killed two of them, leavingthe film’s final girl, Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy), as its lone survivor.
Additionally, through Casey’s tragic backstory about her uncle sexually assaulting her, audiences learn aboutKevin’s similarly trauma-filled upbringing. A flashback reveals that his mother was a cruel disciplinarian who would strike him when he wouldn’t behave, ultimately leading to his DID and The Beast’s superhuman powers. While Milligan’s childhood abuse also contributed to developing DID (the condition often emerges as a coping mechanism for trauma),he didn’t end up with a 24th alter of extraordinary physical strength as a result(although both Milligan and Kevin share the same number of personalities). That being said, one of Milligan’s alters was violent, like The Beast, butthe latter possessed unreal physical abilities, making DID, overall, seem equally unreal by the timeSplit’scredits roll.
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DID Has Always Inspired M. Night Shyamalan
Shyamalan has been fascinated by DID since he read Daniel Keyes' award-winning biography,The Minds of Billy Milligan, in the ’90s. WhileTitanicdirector James Cameronwas initially set to adapt the novel, the project didn’t go anywhere, and Shyamalan made a promise to himself that he would be the one to do it someday. He wrote the first script in 2001, and after 15 years of research, editing, and careful casting, he produced his lifelong passion project,Split.
DespiteSplit’sunorthodox and exploitative final act,its mid-film exploration of DID through individual focus on Kevin’s life with each alter takes the diagnosis seriously with the help of McAvoy’s fearless performances. Considering there’s a portion of the public that doesn’t even believe it’s a real disorder (or thatany mental illnessesexist), that alone is a big deal.
Similar to how some of Kevin’s alters have medical conditions while others don’t, people with DID can really experience a similar bodily phenomenon.Shyamalan’sSplitwas just his way of pushing the boundaries of what an altered state of mind can do, with DID as a very real medium of exploration. Of course, that doesn’t mean the director’s divergence from Milligan’s true story was the best way to do it, and the film’s harmful portrayal of mental illness outweighs Shyamalan’s good intentions.
Splitis available to stream now for free onTubi.
