Split (2017 film) = Finished

Yes, Split can be seen as yet another movie using mental illness as a plot point--a villainous trait to be feared. However, I think there's something valuable to be taken from its version of a final confrontation.

In classic horror movie fashion, the Final Girl confronts our antagonist. There's just one problem: he's unstoppable.

As The Beast marches down the hallway, tanking shotgun blasts, Casey runs out of bullets. He begins to pry open the bars of the cage she locked herself inside, pupils dilated to the very edge of his irises, and then sees something strange. Something that makes him stop. A moment of realization passes across his face, along with a Grinch-like smile. The Beast's heart grows three sizes larger.

He sees the pattern of scars scattered across Casey's quivering body.

When The Beast scuttled down the hallway towards Casey's cage, he voiced his manifesto. Those who haven't suffered--truly suffered, in that way that changes you forever--are actually impure. We use words like "scarred" or "stained" to refer to these folks, but as a fellow victim of trauma, Kevin Crumb sees things differently. In The Beast's vision of the world, those who have not suffered are not worthy of existence. Ignorant to the true cruelty of reality, they must be erased, or consumed. That's why he originally abducted Casey and her two companions in the opening. To use them as fuel for his coming reign.

However...Casey is different.
Casey was molested.
Casey has suffered violence in almost every form that can be named, including that violence that is self-inflicted.
Casey knows.

Split offers an essential reversal--a questioning--of the purity "required" of the Final Girl. If you make it to the end of a horror movie alive, you're a virgin. A kind person. Someone untouched by the ravages of the world as well as the cruel touch of others. In other words, according to this incredibly skewed, problematic, moralizing perspective, this is what it means to deserve to live.

Not so in Split.

In Split's version of horror, those who have suffered are just as worthy of a continued, even happy life, as those fortunate enough to remain ignorant. Casey's battle with The Beast ends without a single death. Kevin Crumb walks away, acknowledging the value of their shared pain.
Casey lives.

We now know Split is part of Shyamalan's superhero universe and we're going to get an Avengers-style team-up movie and that will be AWESOME, but Unbreakable sequel tease aside, I think this is what's going to stay with me. Even within its grim context, the message rings true. Is true.

The broken aren't just worthy of survival.
They're beautiful.