The following review contains spoilers for Glass. It also contains spoilers for Unbreakable and Split, but honestly, you should expect that going into this review.
Glass is the final installment to the surprise Shyamalan trilogy, following Unbreakable and Split. David Dunn (Bruce Willis), a man of impressive physical strength, has been fighting crime with the help of his son since the last film. One case leads him to Kevin, the man of many personas, played by James McAvoy. They are eventually captured and detained into a lab by a woman played by Sarah Paulson They are brought into the ward where they meet up with Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), the man with a great mind but fragile bones, where they must figure out what they are doing there, as well as figure out each other and what they want.
M. Night Shyamalan has become one of the most notorious directors of all time. What started as a promising film career with the Oscar nominated The Sixth Sense and the cult hit Unbreakable turned into a giant laughingstock in the film industry, with Shyamalan directing such cinematic trainwrecks as Lady in the Water, The Happening, After Earth, and The Last Airbender. However, with Split, people started to have a lot more faith in him. Especially considering, spoiler warning, that Split took place in the Unbreakable universe. When that happened, audiences got excited to see what would happen next. Naturally, Shyamalan had to make a movie bringing the two movies together, and three years later, he did just that with Glass.
I enjoyed both Unbreakable and Split. Both are very solid character pieces with great atmospheres, tones, and performances. I too was looking forward to what Shyamalan would do with these two films. And after seeing Glass, I must say that I am pretty disappointed. Is it awful? No. In fact, there's a lot of greatness here. But, for a lack of better words, Shyamalan Shyamalans it by the end, resulting in an overall mixed bag of a film.
The movie starts off quite strong. It gives the viewers a look into the life of David Dunn, and I think it's well done. It's suspenseful and well written with great directing from Shyamalan. Seeing Dunn in his element is fascinating to watch, and the scene overall feels down to earth and genuine. In fact, two-thirds of the movie I find to be quite intriguing. The movie gives us some interesting ideas about the neurology and philosophy of superheroes that I found quite intriguing. Plus, there are scenes where characters simply talk, and I was completely captivated by them. They reminded me of some of the best moments of Unbreakable. It's not perfect, but 75% of the film I found to be pretty compelling.
As a whole, the direction is pretty solid. The shot composition is well realized, the cinematography is very pretty, and the use of color and lights was smart. The production design is beautiful in its simplicity and the editing is pretty good too. I was also quite impressed with certain moments involving camera movements. They made for fascinating visuals and hearkened to some of the best looking shots in Unbreakable. There are some elements of the direction that I am not keen on, but we'll get to that in a bit.
The performances are good as well. James McAvoy absolutely kills it as The Horde, or all of the characters that he plays at once. He switches between characters on a whim, and no matter who he is, he acts with so much conviction and emotion. He puts his all into every single character he plays, and he steals every scene he is in. Samuel L. Jackson, while in the film briefly, is also captivating to watch. He is such a captivating presence on screen, bringing a lot of subtlety and nuance to his performance. And while he is not in the movie all that much, it was great to see him in this role again. And I could definitely tell that Bruce Willis tried. I could definitely see that he cared about the role and that he wanted to do a good job. While his performance wasn't as captivating as it was in Unbreakable, I still enjoyed him here and was glad to see him as David Dunn again.
Unfortunately, this is where I get to some of the negatives. While the three leads I found to be good, as well as Sarah Paulson, most of the supporting cast were pretty bad. I was not impressed with the performance of Bruce Willis's son. His delivery was awkward and it looked like he had the same expression on his face most of the time. There were a few scientists that were pretty bad too, as well as some other smaller characters. The supporting cast is definitely not as strong as the main cast.
I think what disappoints me the most about the supporting cast is how wasted they are. The son has the most purpose of the supporting cast, but he barely makes an impact on the story. Casey, the lead actress from Split, is only in the movie for about 10 minutes and she doesn't do much. Elijah's mom is in the movie too, and her addition is completely unnecessary. She does nothing. Her character was completely wasted, and the only thing she does is worry about Elijah. That's it.
Like all of Shyamalan's films, the dialogue is pretty clumsy. A lot of lines sound completely unnatural, and there's a lot of forced exposition. There are some lines that are downright corny, including an exchange between David Dunn and his son about the Salt Bae meme, and a scene between between a doctor and a security guard where they talk about vitamins. There are moments like that where the dialogue gets pretty bad, but it never gets to The Last Airbender or The Happening levels of bad.
There are quite a few moments where Shyamalan's directing becomes awkward. Mainly, the POV shots. There are some instances where the camera takes the point of view of a certain character, usually in action scenes. These moments look quite silly and often take away from the look and tone of the film. It never got as bad as his worst films, but there are still some notable kinks in his directing.
In truth, the biggest problems of Glass lie in its structure. Glass struggles with finding balance between its characters. Instead of it feeling like a cohesive movie, showcasing the mental battle and power struggle of these three super people, it more feels like three different movies. The first third is the Unbreakable sequel, the second third is the Split sequel, and the final third is Glass. None of these three sections come together to make the movie feel complete. It instead feels like three separate stories of three separate characters that just so happen to be at the same place at the same time. Plus, the focus of the characters is disjointed. The only character to be prominently featured throughout is Kevin. Dunn is absent for almost the entirety of the middle of the film, and his arc is practically nonexistent. Elijah is barely in the first two-thirds, only to do anything surmountable at the very end. Structurally, this film is pretty weak. The one scene where all three of them are in the pink room talking to the main scientist was the best scene in the movie. I was hoping for more of that. But what we get instead is a film that has no clear direction in terms of plot, and the film suffers as a result.
However, the worst part of Glass is, without question, its ending. For the most part, the film is pretty decent, but then it craps itself by the end. First off, the final fight scene is completely ridiculous. It looks fake, and all of the close-up POV shots look stupid. It's one of the most awkward fight scenes I've seen in a while. All of the plot twists that are used (it's a Shyamalan movie, so you know there are going to be some plot twists) are pretty obvious and do not leave any sort of impact. And the final moments pretty much dissolve all of the mystery that three different films were setting up. It gave us answers, but the answers I found to be weak and overall disappointing. Plus, the way that the main characters are killed off I found to be underwhelming and honestly pretty disrespectful considering the trilogy as a whole. In particular, I'm talking about David Dunn's death, which saddened me not because of how sad his death was, but how his character built up to nothing, and his final moments were spent with his face being submerged in a puddle. The ending was overall stupid, disappointing, and sullied a lot of what Glass was setting up.
Overall, Glass was alright. For the most part, I was pretty intrigued. It didn't blow me away, but I was liking where they were taking it. And then the ending happened. I was hoping for more out of this final installment to this three decade long trilogy, but what I got wasn't completely bad. In fact, quite a bit of it was pretty good. Unfortunately, a lot of the flaws, especially the ending, prevent me from fully recommending this film. I say that if you're a fan of Unbreakable and Split, I say check it out to see where the story goes from here. Otherwise, I don't believe that there's much here that will keep your attention. It's not as bad as Shyamalan's worst, but it's nowhere near as good as Shyamalan's best.
Score: 5/10 (Average)
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