Despite The Negative Reviews 'Glass' Mostly Works

I'm not an M. Night Shyamalan apologist by any means.  I felt that his act (what a twist!) had grown stale around the time of The Village.  His twists and turns felt forced and unnecessary.  I think The Village would have worked 100 times better without the surprise ending.  Even when he tried movies without twist endings (The Happening & Lady In The Water), he felt like a filmmaker without a cause.  I thought the (ridiculously whitewashed) The Last Airbender was an example of someone who had been given too much to work with and didn't know how to fit all the pieces together.  Finally, the less that's said about After Earth, his mistaken Scientology metaphor film with Will Smith, the better.  I, like many others, had written Shyamalan off for dead... resigned to the scrap heap of cinematic history.

However, something funny happened on the way to Hollywood exile.  Shyamalan started making good movies again.  Blumhouse stripped away all his excess and forced Shyamalan to tell stories again.  His first success was with the found footage film, The Visit.  This "they're not who you think they are" film shouldn't have worked.  He was years late to the found footage genre and it wasn't a particularly original idea.  However, Shyamalan knows how to craft a story and tell it visually.  I thoroughly enjoyed that film way more than I thought I would have.  Next came Split, a doozy of a story featuring a stunning performance by James McAvoy as a man with dozens of personalities and the girls he kidnapped.  I think we were all caught by surprise how enjoying that film was.  He even threw in a trademark twist ending that actually worked.  It was at the end of that film that we (spoiler alert!), as an audience, learned that Split was connected to Shyamalan's best film, Unbreakable.

And here we are with Glass, the movie that connects both films.  I was intrigued by the trailer and thought it would be a knockout hit with critics and audiences.  However, as the reviews started rolling in, it was apparent that this film was not critics' cup of tea.  It was getting savage reviews normally reserved for the likes of Michael Bay and Zac Snyder.  The reviews were nasty and personal in nature.  After watching Glass, I can say that it's not nearly as bad as the reviews say.  Sure, it has its flaws, and the dialogue is extremely heavy-handed at times, but Glass is a way better movie than people give it credit for.  It's as if the world hasn't forgiven Shyamalan for his past filmmaking transgressions and is taking it out on him through Glass' reviews.

Glass picks up months after the events of Split.  McAvoy's Kevin Wendle Crumb has once again kidnapped a bunch of young girls (McAvoy once again knocks his role out of the park, sliding seamlessly between Crumb's personalities).  Bruce Willis' David Dunn has opened a home security company with his son and still moonlights as The Overseer at night.  He is hot on the tale of Crumb, but before they can fully wage battle, they're captured and placed in a mental hospital.  A psychiatrist (played enjoyably by Sarah Paulson) is convinced that they're not actually superheroes, but rather suffer from a mental and/or physical condition that can be explained scientifically.  It's at this moment, we're reintroduced to Samuel L. Jackson's Mr. Glass.  He hasn't skipped a beat since Unbreakable.  Still dastardly and one step ahead of everyone, Mr. Glass is the glue that holds this film together.  His scheme leads to a conclusion that I can't explain without ruining the film.  I think it works, but it's probably going to be the part that has people arguing for years over this film's merits.

I will say that, while I enjoyed the ending, I can see why people may take issue with it.  It's the most heavy handed in terms of expository dialogue, something I wish Shymalan had turned down a bit.  I get it, we're in a movie that knows it's a comic book movie.  However, we don't need the running commentary by Mr. Glass during this section.  I think it would have been a much better movie if Shymalan had lead this part out.  Shyamalan has to learn that his audience can figure things out on their own.  We don't need to be spoonfed all the time.  I also think that of the approximately 27 personalities that James McAvoy played, The Beast is by far the least enjoyable.  I think this film may have overused him in this one.

That being said, despite its flaws, I found Glass to be an enjoyable conclusion to Shyamalan's superhero trilogy.  It's worth a shot even if the critics seem to take delight in trashing it.  2.5 out of 4 stars.