Next Stop Splitsville

Hilary is a nice middle aged lesbian with multiple personalities. She has a hard time making friends because the “alters” creep them out. Seems a child abusing neighbour messed her up so badly her emotions split into separate personas to avoid the pain.

Now, little Hill, Joanie, Mary, Tim and a few dozen others live inside and take turns driving her life and her car. But things weren’t always this bad. In spite of some missing time slices, Hilary managed a pretty normal existence. She had a husband, kids and a career as a lab technician. Then an incident with her daughter brought everything bubbling to the surface. Her emotions scattered into the alters leaving her empty and unable to feel.

Through ten years of recorded therapy sessions, stand-in actors and interviews we get a front seat into Hilary’s embodied emotions. They fight, tell corny jokes and try to kill themselves. Some even want to push Hilary out completely. “You keep saying that we can’t get rid of Hilary—but we can” one of them tells her therapist. A fascinating look at the cause and effect of Dissociative Identity Disorder and a solid fix between seasons of United States of Tara.

Mike Peredo
Intermedias reviewer at VIFF 2010

When the Devil Knocks
Directed by Helen Slinger
Canada 2010