Checked out Glass, the new M. Night Shyamalan flick that’s a sequel to Unbreakable (the surprise superhero flick from around twenty years ago) and Split (the surprise undercover sequel to Unbreakable via an after-credits scene with Bruce Willis). I liked both Unbreakable (slow, ponderous, thoughful) and Split (more traditional, a little scary, pretty straight-forward pulpy horror flick) so I was looking forward to M. Night bringing the cast of both films together. And looking forward to seeing if M. Night could continue his streak after Split and the small but fun horror flick The Visit (after tanking hard with his previous FIVE films).
Glass stars Bruce Willis as David Dunn, returning as the unbreakable hero in a poncho, as he hunts down James McAvoy’s split personality villain The Hoard. They are captured by the cops and thrown into a mental institution with Samuel L. Jackson’s sedated mastermind Mr. Glass. Sarah Paulson plays a shrink who has to convince them their belief in their superpowers are just delusions of grandeur. But Mr. Glass has other ideas and maybe everyone doesn’t stay locked up for long.
This movie is massively disappointing in such a uniquely disappointing way. It’s not that the movie stinks and gets everything wrong, looks bad, is acted bad, etc. No, the vast majority of the movie is actually good on a production level. It looks amazing, the acting is all good (especially McAvoy as he shifts between multiple personalities), the soundtrack is great, and there are very cool and interesting individual moments. In fact, the first 15-20 minutes are really solid and fairly intense. And then the movie falls of a cliff. It meanders, it pokes along, and it just can’t keep itself together.
For one thing, the majority of the middle of the film is the shrink trying to convince the heroes and villains their power is all in their heads. But we saw the previous two films so we spend the majority of the time just waiting for her to be proven wrong. Shyamalan, as master of plot twists, of course could be setting us up for the ultimate turn-about… but (minor spoiler… and it’s in the trailers), these guys clearly do have super strength and can transform their bodies into beasts and whatnot. So its all really just a redundant, repetitive waste of time. It wouldn’t be so bad if it was shorter, if the scenes didn’t repeat the same themes, or if we had reason to believe the shrink.
Now, the film is trying to take after the slow burn, somber Unbreakable (the world’s most depressing superhero movie). And I give it credit for trying… but none of it really works in this film since we aren’t being led forward to new revelations so much as we’re spinning our wheels, knowing the majority of these scenes are pointless (because we, as the audience, know the truth). Every ponderous, slow burn step in this film made me wish it would just hurry up.
And when it does finally break out of the funk and turn into something more, it fails there too. Part of the reason is that I don’t think M. Night Shyamalan can direct an action scene to save his life. He’s trying to depict how a superhero fight might go in real life, with real physics, and believable levels of heightened strength. But that just seems to mean a lot of bear-hugs and an occasionally, very rare punch. It’s sluggish and tedious. But, on top of that, the end sequences are just messy and ponderous. Things should move at a zippier pace but instead he’s cramming a bunch of ideas together and none of them really work or are earned.
The entire film very simply needed a rewrite, it needed more assured direction, and it severely needed someone else in the editing chair. The basic problems are simply on the core storytelling level and it’s right back to M. Night Shyamalan’s worst instincts that gave us Lady in the Water and The Happening. He never had an idea he didn’t stuff on screen, assured that he’s the cinematic genius he was hailed as after The Sixth Sense.
I won’t keep going on. Individual moments of this film were interesting, thoughtful, and cool and would constantly give me hope the movie was going to turn around. But it never did. It kept returning to the same repetitive points or falling back into the same sluggish, murky storytelling. It seems to both want and not want sequels and never really hits the mark well enough to justify them. Plus it makes some very bad choices with its characters. I’ve heard argument this is an anti-superhero film that wants to disappoint its audience and pull the rug out from under them. I guess if that’s the plan, then mission accomplished. But it doesn’t justify such a terrible pace and bloated storytelling.
Score: 64