Review:
*Originally written January 22nd, 2019*
After nearly a decade of complete trash, then making a huge comeback with both The Visit and Split, M. Night Shyamalan seemed to have finally got his groove back as a director. Sadly, this belated follow-up to Split and Unbreakable is nothing but a soaring disappointed of mishandled ideas, outrageous plot-twists and inane use of established characters.
Following on from the events of Split, Glass finds David Dunn (Bruce Willis) on the trail of Kevin Crumb "The Horde" (James McAvoy) as he's back on the path of kidnapping and eating college girls. The two quickly find themselves locked up in a psychiatric hospital that also contains Elijah Price (Samuel L Jackson) as they're all treated by Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson), who specialises in cases of grand delusion involving people who believe themselves to be superheroes.
There is so little of this that works that it blows my mind this managed to get made. Shyamalan completely shits the bed with these characters we've seen grow since the series inception with 2000's Unbreakable. Everything feels like something out of a rough first draft, the dialogue is clunky and the execution of the twists are barbarically stupid and nonsensical.
The most intriguing aspect of this follow up is how things have changed for both David Dunn and Elijah Price since the events of Unbreakable, and it turns out its not much. Dunn is still donning his rain poncho and has become a local legend in the form of a vigilante in Philadelphia with the help of his son as he fights crime by night and runs a security store by day. While Price spends the first half of the film sedated and not saying a word.
A big question mark around this was Bruce Willis. This is a man who has not put effort into a role since Looper all the way back 2012, his career has pretty much involved him sleepwalking through straight-to-DVD action films since, with the exception of a Death Wish remake that somehow got a theatrical release last year. Annoyingly, Willis still seems to be in sleepwalking mode here, just spouting out his lines like he really doesn't want to be here. He just looks tired and fed up of life, but it's just such a shame he couldn't put effort into finishing off the story of one of his most acclaimed cult roles.
Then there's Samuel L Jackson, who does finally spring to life in the latter half of the film, essentially playing a campy comic-book villain who has lost all the nuance and weight of the Price we knew from Unbreakable. This is mostly due to the annoying script that constantly has Price mostly just talking about being in a comic-book and how what's happening in the story relates to where we would be in a comic-book. The whole things gets played out very fast and just keeps going until the film ends.
What's most frustrating about this whole experience is the flashes of potential brilliance that Shyamalan teases us with that ultimately goes nowhere. There's a smart, interesting dissection of the superhero genre buried in here somewhere, it's just a revised script and some better editing away. His visual style is all over the place too, some of the shots and colour design look fantastic, but when it comes to action, Shyamalan creates some deeply uninvolving action that lacks any sort of impact.
There is at least some bright spots involving James McAvoy, who is clearly having far more fun with his role than anyone else here. He effortlessly channels an insane amount of characters with his gonzo physical performance that is just pure joy to watch, despite the context being utter nonsense. While he is billed as one of the three main characters, he certainly takes up most of the screen time as Jackson doesn't even make an appearance until about 40 minutes in and Willis pretty much disappears for the entire middle of the film.
Anya Taylor-Joy's Casey is also a welcome addition, returning to her role from Split after being the only survivor from her encounter with The Horde. Then they just go and derail the whole thing by making her the only person who seems to calm Crumb down, and making her feel sympathy and a connection with Crumb, despite nearly being murdered by him and suffering days of abuse and psychological torture. It's just such a bizarre and misguided direction to take the character and it doesn't work in the slightest.
In the more shallow end of criticisms, it starts off entertaining enough, but grinds to a halt as we spend so much time in the asylum with these characters as they're treated for their delusions in increasingly frustrating and pointless scenes as we all know where it's all going and we know for a fact these characters are what they say they are, so spending so much time having a character try and convince them they're just normal people with mental health issues is just a chore.
Then it all comes crashing down such an anticlimactic showdown that brings all the characters to such shockingly unsatisfying conclusions that pretty much undo all the good work the previous two films have down and makes you wonder what the hell was the point of all this. Maybe expectations were too high, but also it was just Shyamalan becoming a borderline parody of himself as he delivers such hilarious awful plot-twist one after the other in the last 20 minutes or so.
I won't spoil anything, but one of the twists is something that many people had pointed out just after Split had been release and something I thought had already been confirmed, so seeing it played out as a huge twist just felt weird to me, especially as it was something I thought was pretty well known for nearly 2 years now. Then the last 3 main twists are so stupidly left-field and derailed a film I was already very on the fence about to begin with.
2019 has got its first huge disappointment and it's only January. This is not boding well. Glass is a huge mess on all fronts, barely saved by James McAvoy's scene stealing performance, but derailed by pretty much every other aspect of the film. Such a shame to see this series come to a bitterly insulting conclusion. Wack.
4/10 Dans
Glass is out now in cinemas in the UK
Watch the trailer below:
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Letterboxd: Dan
