Glass Drops The Ball, Shatters Our Hopes

M. Night Shyamalan — aka Shyama-lama-Ding-Dong, aka Mr. WHAT-A-TWEEST — has had one of the most interesting directorial careers in the history of cinema. His latest brainchild is the culmination of 19 years so, without further ado, this is Glass.

The third film in this supposed trilogy of Shyamalan’s superhero epic (composed of Unbreakable and Split), Glass pits David Dunn/The Overseer (Bruce Willis) against The Horde/Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy) and Mr. Glass/Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson). All three are admitted into a mental hospital under the care of Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson), a head doctor who works with patients who claim to have special powers. In order to have them suppress those thoughts, she tries to persuade them that there is no such thing as superhuman powers and that they actually have a mental illness.

This was quite a confusing way to start my 2019 movie-going experience, and I did my best to keep an open mind considering how well-received Split was.

The acting was largely unimpressive with the exceptions of Anya Taylor-Joy, Spencer Treat Clark and James McAvoy. McAvoy’s performance, however, was the most standout. The man has a gift for character acting that is unrivaled.

Anya Taylor-Joy’s Casey Cooke was well performed, despite a very weak script. Spencer Treat Clark as Joseph Dunn also did his best with the content that he was given. The remainder of the A-lister cast felt like they were either ill-suited for the direction Shyamalan wanted to go in or weren’t allowed the range that they were fully capable of.

Visually, it was a little too grimdark for my taste. If dull tones are your thing, then prepare for a visual smorgasbord. The camera work came off as amateurish, with tons of poorly centered shots and a heavy-handed usage of mounted camera shots. And the less I say about the atrocious CGI, the better.

The music was on par with most early MCU films, that is to say, that I can honestly remember nothing about it aside from how generic it felt. Add in the dull fight scenes, and the myriad poorly threaded together plot points, and you have an exercise in mediocrity.

I had high hopes this movie, M. Night Shyamalan has proven that he is capable of some truly excellent work and I was hoping that Glass would be more of the brilliance that he gave us in Split and Lady in the Water. Sadly, he departed far from the subtlety of the first two movies in this trilogy and allowed his ego and hubris to cash in on the popularity of Superhero sci-fi blockbusters. The end result was a convoluted mess of a movie that requires a conspiracy pinboard to understand its narrative.

Watch it if you’re curious, but I probably won’t do it again.

I give Glass (Universal, PG-13, 2 hrs 9 mins) 2 out of 5.