I still remember the way the crowd reacted to that big reveal at the end of Split. It was at AFI Fest in November of 2016; the film had only premiered two months prior in Fantastic Fest, and folks were surprisingly mum on spoilers, unless you actively wanted to seek them out. The crowd went nuts after Bruce Willis reveals himself, as well as the fact that the film took place in the same universe as M. Night Shyamalan’s 2000 film Unbreakable, essentially acting as a stealth sequel with the intention of bringing all the characters together for a final installment.
That final installment now comes in the form of Glass, which takes place a couple years after the events of Split, and we’re introduced to David Dunn (Bruce Willis) as a vigilante who is referred to as “The Overseer,” and he is helped out by his son, Joseph (Spencer Treat Clark), who speaks to his father through an ear piece as he locates and fights criminals. David has an encounter with Kevin (James McAvoy), and tries to take him down, but the two are eventually caught by the authorities, and taken into one of the most poorly maintained healthcare facilities I’ve ever seen, which also just so happens to hold Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson). The three men are now under the supervision of Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson), who wishes to shatter their collective delusion about their abilities.
And that’s where we run into a strange problem with Glass. The entire second act is largely devoted to Dr. Staple interviewing and experimenting with the three men, sometimes individually, sometimes separately, to get them to realize that they do not in fact have any superhuman abilities, and how they don’t fit into the kind of archetypes you’d see in a comic book. It’s odd because we as the audience already know the truth about these characters, and the film doesn’t fully wrestle with that. There is a big, and again – strange, payoff to what Dr. Staple is doing, and while it makes plenty of plot sense, for the most part, it muddles the thematic beats of the film.
The fact that Unbreakable and Split being morphed into this one thing doesn’t seem like a bad idea to me, since they are simply tonally different approaches to somewhat grounded ideas about people with strange powers. The film doesn’t have any problems with bridging the two films into one cohesive piece. In fact, this might be the one aspect where it succeeds the most. It has the comic book commentary and mood of Unbreakable, and it also captures the horror and empathetic exploration of abuse of Split.
Despite that, this isn’t the film that (I presume) fans wanted, it’s not a big actioner, it’s not a crowd pleaser. In fact, it goes out of its way to zigzag around expectations and every populist impulse, which results in some bold and ballsy moves. I really appreciated that, and I admire any film willing to mess around with characters in unexpected ways, and risk fan backlash. It’s also well constructed, with great uses of symbolic color schemes, inventive camera work, and the cast is strong all around, even Willis seems like he cares.
Though, I should make clear that the film is far from perfect. Aside from some of the deeply odd narrative choices, it has all the same clunkiness that Shyamalan has been notorious for, especially with dialogue. Dr. Staple repeats herself at multiple points, there’s a large amount of exposition for information we already know (assuming you’ve seen the previous two movies), and the allusions and references to comic book tropes and archetypes can get pretty rough to sit through since Shyamalan’s observations of the genre and medium always came across as superficial, and nothing about it feels like it has adjusted to the comic book obsessed world that we live in right now.
It’s so strange to see a film with such modest ambitions be the center of so much attention and anticipation. It ultimately does a disservice to Glass since the kind of expectations people have going in will mostly be for a type of film that Shyamalan is clearly not interested in delivering. It’s certainly no Unbreakable (which I revisited last night, and wow, time has been very kind to that film), and I’d argue it’s not even on the same level as Split, but it still feels like a work that is able to riff on previously explored ideas while also bringing some new ones to the table. I actually dug this film quite a bit, and am curious if a second viewing will make me swing further, or in a totally different direction. I can’t go as far as to say Shyamalan’s big comeback is a rousing success, but I’m just happy he’s able to deliver some solid, idiosyncratic genre films in the meantime.