"Glass" review

The M. Night Shyam-hammer is back in full effect. For Better or worse.



Sequel to the nigh twenty year old “Unbreakable,” and follow up to 2017’s “Split,” “Glass” may be something of a moment of hubris for the current career resurgence of directorial mastermind turned bad movie trailer punch line M. Night Shyamalan, firmly encapsulating the best of his capabilities in his craft along with the lessons he’s learned over the course of his nearly decade and a half long humiliation only to be potentially sabotaged by his ever creeping ego that’s subsided but not disappeared.

Following the manifestation of “The Beast,” a powerful and animalistic personality within the head of the severe split personality disorder suffering Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy), “Unbreakable’s” David Dunn (Bruce Willis) crosses paths with the man amidst his murder spree and the two find themselves arrested and institutionalized within the same facility as Dunn’s former associate, the criminal mastermind Elijah Price (Sam Jackson), now referring to himself as Mr. Glass.

Being treated by Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson), a clinical psychiatrist specializing in delusions of grandeur similar to those of storytelling tropes at play in comic book superhero tales, the three men must struggle to survive the threat that they pose to one another along with the threat that they pose to themselves as they grapple with the question of whether or not they really are superhuman or psychotic.

The uphill battle that “Glass” was always going to have to face aside from the critical legacy of its preceding films was what exactly the movie was going to be about.

“Unbreakable” was a drama about a man going through a midlife crisis of sorts, finding reinvigoration out of life as he begins to discover his true purpose while working through PTSD through applications of noble intention that punctuated its thesis with parallels to comic book storytelling and the nature of superhero archetypes. Split was a bottle horror movie about surviving abuse and how coming away from it without proper treatment can make us stronger human beings or degrade us into monsters, again playing into the duality of superhero identity tropes.

“Glass’” approach ostensibly unites and builds off of those character studies by asking about and exploring the very nature of art as a reflection of our reality, exaggerated or otherwise.

Crumb’s victim Casey (reprised by Anya Taylor-Joy) is inspired by her ordeal with The Beast to expose her abusive uncle and seek treatment for her suffering yet is compelled towards Crumb after the incident and is ultimately the only one capable of bringing his true personality to the surface, raising the question of whether or not such magnetism is supernatural in nature or simply an empathetic soul offering effective comfort to a tortured individual.

Dunn’s touch based precognitive abilities are brought into question as deductive reasoning that isn’t proven or disproven one way or the other while the feats of strength displayed by him and Crumb are measured reasonably against what a human being is physically capable of.

The movie plays the mystery from all angles back and forth, perfectly punctuated by Sam Jackson’s Mr. Glass, who pontificates the nature of comic books as reflective of the world perceive by its human makers, as all art is, and how miracles can easily be explained away while pitching the question of whether or not that inherently makes them any less miraculous.

Shyamaln’s visionary sense of direction and subtle hand with terrific actors utilized in exploring these questions is the true star of the show as the first half of the movie comes together as a tight, dramatic, atmospheric, and lightly cerebral deconstructive study of comic book tropes that’s almost hypnotically engaging.

The second half of “Glass” then decides to torpedo that subtlety by devolving into a laughably bad comic book movie that would make the worst 90s superhero flicks look like major modern Marvel Studios productions by comparison.

I’ve made it no secret that the superhero genre is perhaps my single favorite rule set of storytelling in all of fiction, and something I find innately fascinating in whatever form it takes. "Glass" definitely takes a turn for the worse by its second act but even when the dialogue continued to grow stilted and embarrassingly didactic of its own thesis, which is less niche now than it was when “Unbreakable” was released, I still found the sort of schlock it was building to in the form of a disastrously cheesy climax my cup of tea as an entertaining but ambitiously flawed B-movie.

Unfortunately, the infamous Shyamalan twist rears its head in not one but three different flavors.

While the first of which regarding the revelation of certain character relationships isn’t so bad, the last two land in the final 10 minutes of the movie and upend satisfaction a mere seconds out from the credits in ways I genuinely can’t recall having experienced in recent history.

Although it would be hyperbolic to say a weak final ten minutes fully eliminates the enjoyment of a 2 hour feature, the degree with which the final bits of plot revelation suck the air out of the feature is profoundly staggering, akin to eating a delicious, freshly baked and frosted red velvet cake cooked by a Michelin 3 Star pastry chef only to wash down every savory bite of the meal with a tall glass of chunky, separated, room temperature milk 5 and a half months past its expiration date.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy “Glass” for what it’s worth. Even as a B-movie, it’s definitely the type of schlock I can enjoy for all of its positives and missteps. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea however and it’s certainly a step backward on its director’s path of redemption.

6 Dark Age Splash Pages out of 10