Glass

Concluding writer/director M. Night Shyamalan’s trilogy that started in 2000 with Unbreakable and then continued with the stealth sequel Split in 2017, this feels like a genuine labour of love, and should satisfy fans of the series by remaining true to its roots.

Premise:  When the multiple-personality serial killer dubbed “The Horde” by the media (James McAvoy) kidnaps another four teenage girls, David Dunn (Bruce Willis), who has now embraced his vigilante persona “The Overseer”, attempts to track him down.  But psychologist Dr Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson) believes they are both suffering from delusions of grandeur, just like her other long-term patient, the mass-murdering criminal mastermind Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), better known as “Mr Glass”.

Review:

This movie is the conclusion of a trilogy that’s been 19 years in the making, so it should go without saying, this is probably not a film to watch in isolation if you’ve not already seen Unbreakable and Split.  And equally, your enjoyment of Glass will probably depend on how much you enjoyed the first two films in the series (spoilers for which are included below).

Personally, I was a big fan of Unbreakable, and although I admire the skill and artistry of The Sixth Sense, my favourite M. Night Shyamalan film that I always come back to watch again and again is Unbreakable.  It was a superhero film unlike any other, made at a time when (following disasters like 1997’s Batman & Robin) no studio wanted to make a superhero movie.  It subverted expectations by taking a grounded and decidedly understated approach to superheroes, allowing the audience to follow David Dunn (Bruce Willis) on his journey as he began to question why he had been the only survivor of a catastrophic train crash.

“…M. Night Shyamalan isn’t interested in having super-powered beings knocking down city blocks…”

I think it’s important to remember how this trilogy started with Unbreakable, because Glass is very similar both in terms of its tone and its desire to subvert the expected tropes of the superhero genre.  Many at the time felt that the finale of Unbreakable was anticlimactic, as it simply involved an understated and brief tussle with a thug, and then a verbal confrontation with Samuel L. Jackson’s Elijah Price, revealed at the end to be a mass-murdering sociopath who called himself “Mr Glass”.  In the grand scheme of things, it hardly matched the scope and scale of something like Superman versus General Zod in Superman II.

But, importantly, that was the entire point.  M. Night Shyamalan wasn’t interested in having super-powered beings knocking down city blocks, because Unbreakable was, first and foremost, a character drama – and its finale worked perfectly by keeping within the grounded and believable tone of the film as a whole.  In its own way, Split also subverted expectations just as much as Unbreakable had.  Genre clichés dictated that at the end of the film, the “lone heroine survivor” Casey Cooke (Anya Taylor-Joy) should have found a way to defeat the crazed serial killer Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy), but instead she finds herself utterly powerless to stop him … until his alter persona “The Beast” deems her worthy to live due to the abuse she’s already suffered at the hands of her uncle.  Not exactly the typical ending of a serial killer thriller.

“…a gripping character drama, wrapped in the lore of superhero mythology…”

So why am I stressing how much Unbreakable and Split subverted genre expectations?  It’s because I’ve already heard some viewers saying that they felt the conclusion of Glass was anticlimactic, which to me suggests that they didn’t really think about how neither Unbreakable nor Split gave the audiences what they were expecting to see in their final acts.  Put simply, if you’re expecting Glass to culminate in a city-smashing, CGI-fuelled, super-powered showdown, you probably haven’t been paying attention.

What Glass does instead is provide another gripping character drama, wrapped in the lore of superhero mythology.  Bruce Willis is just as awkward and hesitant as the reluctant hero David Dunn as he was in Unbreakable, and anyone expecting a showy, John-McClane-style performance will be disappointed, as David Dunn simply isn’t the kind of charismatic hero to throw around quips and one-liners.  David Dunn is once again aided by his faithful, now grown up, son (still played by Spencer Treat Clark), who has become his “guy on the computer” back at base assisting via an earpiece.

“…the standout performance is James McAvoy’s…”

Despite being the title character, Samuel L. Jackson probably has the least to do as Elijah Price.  Maybe the film was named Glass simply because the other two films had already been named after the other main characters (David Dunn being “unbreakable”, and Kevin Wendell Crumb having “split”), or maybe it was because Elijah Price’s actions are arguably the main driving force behind the central premise of the film, despite having the least screen time.  Whatever the reason, it was perhaps disappointing not to see more of “Mr Glass” in the film, although he certainly makes an impression with the screen time that he does have.

Once again, however, the standout performance is James McAvoy’s.  His role is the polar opposite of Bruce Willis’ - whereas Willis is buttoned down and reserved as David Dunn, McAvoy has the far showier role, getting to play around a dozen different personalities within Kevin Wendell Crumb.  And he is amazing – effortlessly switching from one personality to another within a single shot, but each one remaining distinct and identifiable.  There are times when McAvoy doesn’t even have any dialogue, but the audience can tell which personality “has the light” simply by seeing McAvoy’s body language and the way he holds himself.  This was one of my favourite performances of McAvoy’s career.

“…unlikely to give you the finale you might have been expecting…”

Also returning from Split is Anya Taylor-Joy as Casey Cooke, and although she is (intentionally) only a secondary character in Glass, she still plays a crucial role that doesn’t feel forced or crowbarred in, and the audience also gets a satisfying conclusion to her plot threads left unresolved at the end of Split.  Joining the cast for Glass is Sarah Paulson as Dr Ellie Staple, and she does a great job of keeping the subject matter grounded.  After the finales of Unbreakable and Split, it would be easy for viewers to just accept that David Dunn and Kevin Wendell Crumb both have “superpowers”, but Ellie Staple does a good job of keeping those issues ambiguous, by questioning whether there are other, real world, explanations for everything.

Ultimately, it was always going to be difficult to juggle the tones and characters from two fundamentally different films, and Glass does give more screen time to James McAvoy’s character, arguably at the expense of Samuel L. Jackson’s.  But overall, Glass manages to satisfy as a sequel to both Unbreakable and Split, and gives all four central characters an intriguing final chapter to their stories.  And if you enjoyed the grounded and low-key approach used by M. Night Shyamalan in the first two films, you should know by now that Glass is unlikely to give you the finale you might have been expecting – and it’s all the more memorable and original for it.