Glass

Rough­ly 10 min­utes into Glass – the final film in M Night Shyamalan’s ​‘Eas­trail 177 Tril­o­gy’ – Spencer Treat Clark’s char­ac­ter Joseph Dunn explains the con­cept of inter­net meme ​“Salt Bae” to his bemused father David (Bruce Willis). David seems sus­pi­cious. ​“That’s all he does?” he asks gruffly. ​“Puts salt on things?” If we con­sid­er Glass a self-reflec­tive metaphor for Shyamalan’s entire film­mak­ing career, per­haps the ques­tion is as much about him as it is a Turk­ish butch­er who became a viral sen­sa­tion back in 2017. After all, Shya­malan has become sim­i­lar­ly defined for one sin­gle ele­ment of his oeu­vre: plot twists.

Fol­low­ing the mas­sive suc­cess of Split in 2016 – and a pret­ty great cameo at the end of the film from Willis, con­firm­ing that Split and 2000’s Unbreak­able exist with­in the same cin­e­mat­ic uni­verse – a sequel was duly announced. The prospect of Willis and Samuel L Jack­son repris­ing their roles as com­ic book adver­saries David Dunn and Eli­jah Price was entic­ing enough, though there’s always trep­i­da­tion when it comes to revis­it­ing old ground. To wit, Shya­malan has a decid­ed­ly check­ered film­mak­ing his­to­ry, rang­ing from the sub­lime (The Sixth Sense, Signs) to the ridicu­lous (The Hap­pen­ing, The Last Air­ben­der, After Earth). What could pos­si­bly go wrong…

In the two decades since Unbreak­able, Dunn has led a rel­a­tive­ly qui­et life, estab­lish­ing a home secu­ri­ty busi­ness with his son while using his pow­ers of extra-sen­so­ry per­cep­tion and invul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to right wrongs across the city of Philadel­phia. For some rea­son, he does so in a sea­weed-coloured pon­cho, and has been nick­named ​“The Over­seer” / ​“The Green Guard” / ​“The Tip­toe Man” by the local press.

Mean­while, Price is lan­guish­ing in a secure facil­i­ty hav­ing been con­vict­ed of orches­trat­ing numer­ous acts of ter­ror­ism. Kevin Wen­dall Crumb (James McAvoy) and his host of mul­ti­ple per­son­al­i­ties, col­lec­tive­ly named ​“The Hoard”, have evad­ed cap­ture, kid­nap­ping and killing more teenage girls in order to paci­fy a super­hu­man enti­ty known as ​“The Beast”. The three meet when con­fined to a psy­chi­atric unit by Dr Ellie Sta­ple (Sarah Paul­son) who is charged with cur­ing them of their ​“delu­sion” about being superhuman.

The prob­lem with this, of course, is that we know these char­ac­ters are super­hu­man. Shya­malan has deliv­ered two pre­vi­ous films which estab­lished as much, and so it’s frus­trat­ing to see him spend a lengthy amount of time in Glass attempt­ing to under­mine his own mythol­o­gy for dra­mat­ic effect. It’s hard to buy into the idea that Dunn, Price and Crumb real­ly are delu­sion­al, and as such the inevitable Shya­malan twist set-up los­es all momentum.

That’s not for lack of try­ing on McAvoy’s part, though. Despite the film’s title, this is very much still the Kevin Crumb show, with the del­i­ca­cy of Dunn and Price’s terse rela­tion­ship over­shad­owed by their co-star’s larg­er-than-life performance(s). McAvoy spits and flits his way through all 24 of Crumb’s mul­ti­ple per­son­al­i­ties, in par­tic­u­lar lisp­ing nine-year-old Hed­wig (who spends a lot of time talk­ing about how much he likes Drake) and creepy matri­arch Patricia.

One scene gives McAvoy the oppor­tu­ni­ty to rapid-cycle through each per­son­al­i­ty, and though it’s cer­tain­ly impres­sive to watch it ends up feel­ing more like a way­ward dra­ma school audi­tion than some­thing with any rel­e­vance to the actu­al plot. The upshot of all this is that we don’t learn any­thing new about Dunn or Price, with Shya­malan recy­cling one key plot twist from Unbreak­able with pre­dictably dimin­ish­ing returns.

It’s a shame giv­en Shya­malan had a real shot at cre­at­ing his own com­ic book mythol­o­gy in a world entire­ly dom­i­nat­ed by the super­heroes of the mass-mar­ket. He codes his char­ac­ters in their colours through light­ing and cos­tume design, mak­ing each an icon, and there are some strik­ing shots which show the direc­tor does have sub­stan­tial tech­ni­cal skill. Yet at the same time he seems caught up in the idea of Glass as the redemp­tion sto­ry of his own career.

A Mr Glass mono­logue near the end of the film may as well be deliv­ered by Shya­malan him­self, with the pièce de résis­tance line, ​“I tru­ly am a mas­ter­mind,” feel­ing straight-up self-con­grat­u­la­to­ry. Giv­en the tri­als and tribu­la­tions of Shyamalan’s career, it’s fun to see him her­ald Glass as a tri­umphant, good-natured ​‘f**k you’ to crit­ics. Fun, but not exact­ly coher­ent filmmaking.

What’s more, this is per­haps the sil­li­est Shya­malan offer­ing yet, filled with reac­tion shots, phys­i­cal com­e­dy and goofy dia­logue. The fact that Samuel L Jack­son man­ages to keep a straight face when explain­ing to the audi­ence how the action unfold­ing resem­bles clas­sic com­ic book tropes is tes­ta­ment to his con­sum­mate professionalism.

Shya­malan is always at his best when deal­ing with one or two char­ac­ters, telling sto­ries on a per­son­al lev­el. By con­trast Glass feels curi­ous­ly imper­son­al, fail­ing to bring either the genre thrills of Split or the emo­tion­al weight of Unbreak­able. It’s strange, too, that the film appears to for­get that Price and Crumb are mass mur­der­ers, encour­ag­ing us to feel sym­pa­thy for them despite the heinous nature of their crimes. And that’s not to ignore the film’s prob­lem­at­ic depic­tion of Dis­so­cia­tive Iden­ti­ty Dis­or­der (and by exten­sion men­tal ill­ness in gen­er­al) as a pre­cur­sor to vio­lent behaviour.

Still, Glass is not an active­ly dis­lik­able film. Yes it’s scrap­py and daft, invok­ing the spir­it the Wachowskis’ big-bud­get odd­i­ty Jupiter Ascend­ing (McAvoy’s per­for­mance has much in com­mon with Eddie Redmayne’s), but there are bright spots. Shyamalan’s own cameo – which nat­u­ral­ly, comes with a twist – is the film’s great­est sin­gle moment. It may be a hot mess, but it’s a high­ly enter­tain­ing one all the same.