I went into this film ready for a conversation, an internal dialog, a chance to connect with the screen. I wanted to have an effortlessly fluid philosophical discussion on where the line between hero and villain lay told through the lens of the common life. I wanted this discourse to be packaged in super-less or less than super powered box wherein character was more important than ability. Glass had a lot riding on it, as evident by my list of wants. Good storytellers always leave you wanting, not exactly more, but just enough. Unbreakable told a complete tale, and we were content to let it rest. A decade-plus later, Split surprised us by joining an old tale with something new. M. Night Shyamalan played the long game and really hooked us using two tales with pitch perfect performances, his trademark revelations, and cinematography that is simple yet deceptively deep like calm water on a lake. This all remains true of Glass and yet you can’t help but feel that it missed the mark. Add enough pressure, you are bound to get a few cracks.

To discuss Shyamalan’s films will inevitably turn to the magicians tool of misdirection. All of his films rely on some form of misdirection in this very overt and obvious way. Gesture left so they don’t look right. But you’re a smart audience and know he’s doing something with his right, so you all look right, but he knows you’re expecting that and ultimately has something going on right underneath you. It’s basically like a smart game of cat and mouse. Glass utilizes this mechanism to make a fair number of philosophical points, but tends to meander about in the examination of these points. To cut to the chase, this film will most likely leave you wanting. It doesn’t follow a traditional structure, opting instead to flip the script and have the stars confront each other almost immediately. There isn’t anything wrong with this inherently, but the rest of the runtime is then spent dissecting and discussing the nature of the superhuman. In my mind, I conjured a completely different movie when thinking of Glass, settling somewhere between Unbreakable and Split, but the tone and structure of both films don’t really mesh well when I really thought about it. Maybe that is way Glass is such a different kind of story.

This film is definitely going to divide fans, but the one thing I think they will all agree on is that the actors really drove the film home. In Unbreakable, Bruce Willis delivered one of his best performances as a subdued, dreary man in a struggling marriage. Samuel L. Jackson a broken man with an unbreakable will with whom audiences will radiate with for years to come. In Split, James McAvoy destroyed the screen with a performance that could have come off goofy and out of touch, but instead it electrified the film and drew in audience members. Anya Taylor-Joy played a girl so devastated by the circumstances of her life, so powerless, that her growth and strength in moments of duress was an incredible inspiration. Finally, in Glass, with all of our members together, older and stronger, we don’t really get the same level of focus on them as characters. Nevertheless, they still manage to summon the better part of their previous performances. Unfortunately, the focus of the film isn’t on the characters as much at is what their existence means to the human race.

It is not for me, or anyone, to tell an artist what they should be doing, but I kinda feel like Shyamalan should have given us a story that focused on the characters that resonated with us for the reasons they carried that weight to begin with. Instead, he focused so much of the film on a thesis statement about perception, faith, and criticism. Glass isn’t a bad movie, but a good movie that people didn’t expect. When you surprise people, especially after having them follow you into the emotional depths of your story, you are going to get two basic reactions, approval or dissension. In the end, the Unbreakable Glass was a Split with audiences. And no one can tell me I shouldn’t have written that sentence.

~* 7.5/10 *~