"Glass" Movie Review

By: James Southworth
Rating: 2/5 Stars

Whenever the name "M. Night Shymalan" is uttered, there's always going to be some polarizing responses. Some people are more of the camp that while he started with potential, he went down an awful path of movies and hasn't truly been able to redeem himself since. Others would say that his good movies were good enough to make him deserving of a redemption arc, and that he's gotten that redemption in recent years. I can understand where both camps of thought are coming from. Shymalan has indeed made some of the best horror films I've seen: "The Sixth Sense" and "Split" are both absolutely stellar, and "The Visit" has more to like about it than to hate. But, I also can't deny that Shymalan has made some of the worst movies I've seen. For that reason, I always go into his films a little nervous about what version of him we're going to get. I was still very excited to see "Glass". After all, it's in a series with two of Shymalan's best films. It has three excellent actors starring in it. Unfortunately, what we get here is a pretty weak movie, especially in the writing department. This film is frustratingly disappointing, and really leaves you with a bad taste by the end of it.

In this movie, we see David Dunn (Bruce Willis) attempting to find Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy), a known criminal who has 24 different personalities. Find him he does, but his victory is short-lived, as psychologist Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson) takes him and Kevin both in to the Raven Hill Institution. She specializes in treating individuals who believe they are superheroes. She also happens to have Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson) contained in the same facility. There she tries to convince all three of them that they are not superheroes, that this is just a delusion in all their heads because they're trying to find a sense of meaning in a meaningless world.  What almost solely gives this film its stars are the stellar performances from the three leads. James McAvoy is once again jaw-droppingly good, playing even more of his personalities in this film than he did in "Split". We don't get to see the new ones for a prolonged amount of time. However, the fact that McAvoy was dedicated enough to give each personality distinct accents, physicality, and traits just shows how dedicated he is to this character. Of course, it is also delightful to see his previous personalities returning, with Patricia and Hedwig still being great fun to watch on screen. It's clear that Shymalan has a lot of passion for this character, as most of the time is dedicated to him. And why wouldn't you take every advantage possible of McAvoy's talents (even though I still don't think M. Night used any of the performers in the best way possible, more on that later)? Samuel L. Jackson does not have that much dialogue, but he shows in this film why he still deserves to be in conversation for being one of the most respectable veteran actors out there. He doesn't even have to try anymore, and charisma still exudes from him naturally. His character was intriguing to watch, and probably had the most understandable motivations out of any character in the film. Bruce Willis's character David Dunn feels, sadly, a little inconsequential to the film, but I still was glad to see Willis really do a good job here. He plays this character with a quiet intensity that works well. As far as other things that work, I will say some of the action scenes were filmed pretty well. There's one in particular where one character is in focus going away from a fight scene and we see another character in the background out of focus absolutely slaughtering people. It was an intriguing choice and it pays off. There's also one pretty cool twist in the movie that made me feel for a character in a way that I did not really expect.

Unfortunately, that marks the end of the positives that I have for this film. As I've thought about it more, the problems I have with "Glass" have piled on. This movie is incredibly frustrating, and a lot of its problems come right down to where it's set. Almost the whole film is in a psychiatric ward, with all three of our main characters chained up. Unfortunately, this doesn't leave a whole lot of room for any of the characters to do anything substantially interesting. Why would Shymalan want to limit three of his best characters like this? Audiences would rather see these characters interacting in the real world and actually doing things. What's even more infuriating is Shymalan doesn't even take full advantage of the contained setting. The three main characters barely interact with one another. I don't think David Dunn and Elijah Price even directly talk to one another face-to-face once in the film, which is truly disappointing. When we have the inevitable climactic showdown, it goes out with a whimper rather than a bang. Such wasted potential.

If I'm being honest though, the worst thing about this movie really is its writing. This movie is the definition of pretentious throughout: it clearly thinks it's being clever when it's not. I don't know if I've ever heard the word "superhero" used in so many different variations as it was used in this movie. This movie is clearly trying its hardest to be meta-textual and self-reflecting. There's no telling how many times in the movie Shymalan is basically telling the audience, "Ok, I'm making a realistic comic book movie! Don't you see how clever I am?". It's basically like he's telling you his script rather than just showing you what happens. Movies like "The Sixth Sense" and "Unbreakable" were clever in what they were doing because they don't reveal stuff to us through constant exposition or pseudo-deep commentary. Most of this "meta" dialogue comes through Sarah Paulson's character Dr. Staple, who is one of the most annoying characters I've seen in recent memory. Dr. Staple is nothing more than just an exposition machine. She talks and talks and talks. She doesn't ever stop, and I think she might have more lines than all the three main characters combined, which should have never happened. Paulson is not particularly good in the role either, but who can blame her? She really is given nothing to do. For as much as I like Samuel L. Jackson in this movie, many of Elijah Price's lines are also eye-roll worthy as the film goes on. He literally says things to the effect of "Now this is the climax of the movie where the hero and villain face one another in a big showdown." Yes, we get it M. Night. You are making a comic book movie, set in the real world. Being meta about it doesn't make it any less cliched. Because, yes, this is a pretty cliched superhero movie at its core. It follows a lot of the same beats. But a Marvel movie also, of course, has basic comic book beats. The difference is, in Marvel movies the beats are interesting... and fun. They're not fun to watch here, because Shymalan keeps banging us over the head with how "revolutionary" he's being with the type of superhero movie he's making. I guess in a way it could be considered "revolutionary", because this is one of the dullest superhero movies out there. Getting tired of me saying "superhero" yet? Then don't see this movie, because they say that word way more in it.

The movie ends on the most disastrous note possible. Up until this point in the film, I had been mainly just irritated with it, but I was able to tolerate the constant obvious commentary because of the great performances. The ending of the movie makes any redeemable element of this film almost not worth it. There are three different twists, which was really overkill. Like I said, the first one was good. But the other two just really don't make sense. I obviously won't reveal them, but they really made me wonder if any of the film I had just watched really mattered or not. At the end of the day, this film was truly a devastating disappointment. The three main characters and actors here deserved way better than what they got. Instead, they were put into a cliched comic book movie that tried to show it was not cliched and failed. This may not be Shymalan's worst movie, but it is his most frustrating because I know it could've been so much better. As it is written though, I'm not sure if there was any way to truly save this movie from the self-congratulatory, pretentious monster it became.