Split Image

Woods is particularly good as the deprogrammer, conveying an air of moral tackiness that suggests the "cure" may be worse than the perceived disorder.

The solution is a bit pat and anticlimactic, but it is heartening to find a movie that concerns itself with real and present social issues. [21 Oct 1982]

Part satire, part love story and, in its lurid deprogramming scenes, pure horror story. Not everything jells, and one never fully believes the hero's transformation from skepticism to subservience. Yet Kotcheff has again delivered a compelling entertainment and one savvy enough to raise more questions than it answers. [25 Oct 1982, p.119]

The shrill, melodramatic quality of the film's final sections, so unlike its calmly controlled beginning, suggests that no one connected with Split Image really knew which way this story was heading.