How did we get here? Nineteen years ago, writer/director M. Night Shyamalan made “Unbreakable,” a nifty little deconstruction of the superhero genre starring Bruce Willis as David Dunn, a quietly indestructible man. The film concluded with the twist that Dunn had an “arch-nemesis” in the form of Samuel L. Jackson’s “Mister Glass,” a genius restrained by his ultra-fragile body. Shyamalan spent the better part of the next two decades shedding all the good will he’d accumulated at the start of his career, before re-emerging with the 2017 horror flick, “Split,” starring James McAvoy as Kevin Wendell Crumb, a man suffering from a “heightened” (read: somewhat offensive) form of Dissociative Identity Disorder.
“Split” largely succeeded thanks to McAvoy’s impressive performance, which kept the film grounded, even when McAvoy morphed into his personality called “the Beast” and started crawling on walls and shrugging off shotgun shells (though the contributions of Anya Taylor-Joy as Casey Cooke, Kevin’s would-be victim, should not be overlooked). The cherry-on-top of Shyamalan’s rebound? Willis cameoed in a mid-credits scene as Dunn, meaning “Split” was really a stealth sequel to “Unbreakable.” Shyamalan’s meta-textual twist was a brilliant move, cementing his comeback by linking his new, kosher work with a prior achievement—and signaling where he’d be headed next.
Thus, we have “Glass,” the final chapter in a bizarre superhero trilogy no studio would ever green-light. Unfortunately, “Glass” doesn’t live up to either of its predecessors. In other words, the director who made “The Happening” and “Lady in the Water” is back.
We’re reintroduced to David Dunn, still wearing a dark green poncho and dubbed “The Overseer” by the public for his heroic deeds over the past 18 years. His son (played again by Spencer Treat Clark) has grown up to become his “guy in the chair,” helping Dunn while he searches for “the Beast,” who has kidnapped another gaggle of teenage girls. “Glass” follows a rigid three act structure, in that the start is interesting, the middle is boring and the end is nonsensical. After a dull fight scene, Dunn and Kevin are apprehended by the authorities and brought to a discount-Arkham Asylum, where they are overseen by Dr. Ellie Staple (newcomer Sarah Paulson), who attempts to convince the pair that their “super powers” are nothing more than delusions.
This is an enormous structural misstep: Both “Split” and “Unbreakable” thoroughly convinced their audiences that these characters possess supernatural abilities, making the feigned-backtracking pointless. And for a movie called “Glass,” the film sure takes its time to introducing the titular character—Shyamalan is too busy shoving his stilted dialogue down the throats of talented performers.
The worst of which come when “Glass” attempts to further deconstruct comic books. The film imagines itself the “Scream” of superhero movies, with characters constantly reflecting the tropes and format the genre, while repeating them. But the filmmakers behind “Scream” demonstrated an understanding of horror (and its clichés), while Shyamalan never gets what makes comics so appealing. In an age when “Black Panther,” “Spider-Verse” and “Wonder Woman” show the power these movies and stories can carry, Shyamalan utterly fails to grasp why people care about this stuff.
But “Glass” didn’t have to deconstruct superheroes—a satisfying confrontation between Dunn and “The Beast” would have been enough. But the film fails here too, as the action sequences are staged poorly: It’s impossible to get a sense of the geography of the space where the characters are fighting, meaning you never know where anyone is. This is baffling because on the whole, “Glass” has top-notch cinematography. Working again with director of photography Mike Gioulakis, Shyamalan keeps his subject in the center of the frame and osculates between big wide shots and tense close-ups with extravagant lighting to match. It’s just that none of the director’s aesthetic choices or visual language bleeds into the physical conflict between Dunn and Crumb.
But while we’re on the topic of stuff this movie does right, James McAvoy still turns in a superb performance, though he’s been reduced to a piece of the puzzle instead of the main event. The same goes for Jackson’s second turn as “Mr. Glass” (once he shows up). Bruce Willis, meanwhile, is barely awake while “acting,” and as a result, “Glass” doesn’t really have a protagonist. But it’s the ever-excellent Anya Taylor-Joy who gets the shortest stick: The hero of “Split” gets barely any screen time and even less to do.
Taylor-Joy’s reduced role is yet another indicator that Shyamalan doesn’t really understand what makes his movies work (when they do). Had he really studied superhero movies, he’d know that the last entry of these trilogies is always the weakest (see “Spider-Man 3,” “X-Men: The Last Stand,” “The Dark Knight Rises”). “Glass” is no exception, when it should have been so much more. The Shyamalan-isance has ended, before it truly begun.
