Glass
by M. Night Shyamalan

It took sixteen years to get a sequel to Unbreakable that we never saw coming. 2016’s Split was remarkable in so many ways that it awakened a new love for Shyamalan’s Winter of 2000 hit for both people that had already seen it and those that hadn’t yet enjoyed it. Did 2019’s highly anticipated Glass live up to all the hype or did it fall flat? Well, I think it did a little of both.

James McAvoy, once again, knocks it out of the park with his ability to jump seamlessly from character to character as he reprises his role of Kevin (among many other names). Bruce Willis, though I love him in almost every role, just seemed so… tired… and Sam Jackson was definitely underutilized. That being said, the three main characters of The Beast, David Dunn, and Elijah Price came together wonderfully for a fantastic wrap up to an unexpected trilogy almost twenty years in the making. The supporting cast works wonders as well with not one, but two characters returning from the original film. David’s son Joseph (Spencer Treat Clark) and Elijah’s mother (Charlayne Woodard). And it wouldn’t be a follow up to Split without The Beast’s escaped victim Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy) returning to get a piece of the action. Sarah Paulson also joins the cast this time around and is not quite what you would think, but I won’t dive too deeply into that because spoilers.

While we spend most of the film building up to something that never quite happens, it’s only because it was meant to be something entirely different than what the audience expected. While that’s fine for most films, this film was meant to work off famous tropes often used in comic book universes, and those tropes are lost on non-comic book fans. Mr. Glass at one point explains everything with one great line at the end, and I loved that.

I don’t think Shyamalan’s greatest talent is world building, but you can see the effort is there, even though it may have fallen flat more than a few times. There were several times where McAvoy’s talents were borderline abused if that makes sense. I mean, there’s only so much of his eight million different personalities I need to experience before I start to roll my eyes. There were also a few times where I wondered if someone challenged Shyamalan with “how many times can you have James McAvoy dramatically take his shirt off?”

Bruce Willis, while he seemed tired and bored most of the time, used that to his advantage. David was a very conflicted character even in Unbreakable, and now he’s an aging metahuman with all sorts of drama he feels like he shouldn’t have to deal with, even though he did go searching for it in the first place. Jackson’s Elijah didn’t speak for the entire first act of the film, but we are treated to a great montage of the brilliant villain’s master plan toward the end. However, I would have loved to hear more of Elijah’s sassy, grandiose rambling in the first part of the film.

All in all, Glass was overhyped in my opinion. Maybe Shyamalan, like his metahumans of the series, let things go to his head. The greatest part of the film is the final act and it sort of makes up for the rest of the movie… in a way. I think it works well as a final film in the trilogy and wraps things up nicely, but maybe don’t act like the greatest film of the year is going to premiere in January.

(This review was originally published on Horror Metal Sounds.)