Movie Review: Glass

Glass

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Starring: Bruce Willis, James McAvoy, Samuel L. Jackson, Sarah Paulson, Anya Taylor-Joy, Spencer Treat Clark, Charlayne Woodard

Rating: PG-13

Runtime: 129 minutes

The finale to the Eastrail 177 trilogy is finally here.

Taking place three weeks after the events of Split, Glass brings the three central figures of the series together for their showdown. However, there is also a new threat to all three of the men in the form of Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson).

Right off the bat, I have to say that this film is a huge disappointment. Unbreakable is my favorite film by Shyamalan, and while I have my gripes about Split it’s still overall a decent movie with great performances. But Glass is an inflated mess of a film that drags its predecessors’ legacies through the mud with its failings.

The movie opens with David Dunn (Bruce Willis), now running a security firm while also acting as vigilante “The Overseer”, righting wrongs and searching for the culprit behind a string of brutal murders. Meanwhile, the group of rogue personalities within Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy) dubbed “The Horde” are continuing to kidnap and kill those they deem impure. The two clash early on in the film, which is a shame because from the moment Dunn and “The Beast” engage in battle the movie begins to go downhill.

I should mention the things I liked about this movie before I go too much further. They brought back all the actors from previous movies to reprise their roles here, including Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson)’s mother played by Charlayne Woodard (although that makeup job was GOD awful), Dunn’s son Joseph played by Spencer Treat Clark, and Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy), the one who The Beast let go free in Split. It was a nice touch to the continuity to have the characters look familiar and kept the story feeling connected. I also thought the premise of the movie was an interesting idea; having the superhuman individuals all committed to a psych ward isn’t necessarily the most original concept, but it could have set up an interesting take on superhero films.

…And that’s about where the positives end for me. The action scenes between Dunn and The Beast were shot using weird close-ups constantly and looked really goofy. I assume they did this because of Willis’ age limiting his physicality in roles, but I would have much rather had a stunt double used the entire time than the shots we got. They ruined the flow of the action for me and took me out of the film.

The acting in this movie is pitiful as well. While McAvoy is easily the strongest performance here, I felt like he was leaps and bounds weaker here than he was in Split and I would chalk up a lot of that to him using the Hedwig persona WAY too much in this film. To me, the forever-9-year-old persona was the weakest (and most annoying) part of Split, but in Glass it’s the persona that gets the most screen time without a doubt. Not only this, but my favorite persona Dennis barely gets more than 5 words in the entire movie. On top of that, the gimmick of dissociative identity disorder is used more for laughs than anything real. Samuel L. Jackson is wasted here (can’t say too much without spoilers, but he spends most of the movie doing nothing at all), and while I’m glad to see the other side character return for continuity’s sake they really don’t offer anything to the overall narrative besides a few small moments with Kevin and Casey. I couldn’t take Sarah Paulson seriously in this movie at all, and if I’d never seen her before I would have assumed she was a novice with her ridiculous performance. I think it’s more the script’s fault than hers, but it’s sad to see such talented actors reduced to roles like this. And don’t even get me started on Bruce Willis. I haven’t seen that man act in years, and here is no different. I think the only person who didn’t want to be in the theater more than me was Willis.

There are plenty of things in the script that I took issue with, like Shyamalan giving himself a long and unnecessary cameo, every character’s dialogue, or the pacing and direction of the film in general. But the major problems with the script for me are the overarching themes that Shyamalan was trying to get across. Shyamalan succeeded with Unbreakable and Split because he was trying to create drama and thriller films respectively that also had a twist of superhero/supernatural elements mixed in. With Glass, it’s his straight-up interpretation of a superhero film like Avengers, but Shyamalan thinks that he is much smarter than he is by getting preachy about comic books. While this may have worked 19 years ago when Unbreakable first came out, but with the current state of film the way it is and the fact that comic book and superhero culture is in the mainstream this movie just comes off as pretentious and annoying.

Glass shatters upon impact and leaves nothing but jagged scraps that taint the rest of the trilogy. You’re honestly better off skipping the very end of Split and pretending this movie doesn’t exist. Unbreakable and Split are strong enough to stand on their own.