Glass | Film Review

Hey Guys x

I went to see the movie 'Split' when it first came out (on opening weekend, if I remember rightly) because of the intriguing concept, not knowing that it was connected to a movie that I hadn't yet seen. When I heard that 'Glass' was being made, I bought a copy of Unbreakable (because yes, I still watch DVDs when I can) and decided to watch it just before seeing the new one. So last night, I spent the night and early morning watching Unbreakable and Split back-to-back in preparation for Glass - and if you're gonna go and see Glass, I highly recommend that you do the same thing.

Following on from both the previous movies, the story picks up three weeks after the events of 'Split'. David Dunn (Bruce Willis) is still taking revenge against petty criminals and finds his next target in Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy), who he discovers has kidnapped four teenage girls. However, when Dunn and one of Crumb's 24 personalities come face-to-face, they both find themselves exposed to the outside world, causing them to be sent to a mental institution. However, also residing in this facility is Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), the only one who always believed that there were superheroes among men. But if these men are the heroes of the story, who are the villains?

This was a really enjoyable film, particularly if you see the two leading up to it. There are Easter eggs and flashbacks that take you back to the moments that you saw them the first time around, and these scenes are done extremely well.

The thing that stood out to me the most while watching the film was the amazing cinematography. I noticed in both the previous movies that M. Night Shyamalan has a habit of creating shots where the camera is sideways, or upside down, and while this film had these moments, there were so many different shots, so many different ways of seeing what's right in front of you. And for me, this definitely parallels the film in the sense that, lenses can be manipulated, what you see directly isn't always the full story, and none of these characters are what they appear to be at face-value. Whether this was the intention or not, it makes this film an extremely beautiful visual piece of work.

I also have to mention the acting. Now, Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Sarah Paulson, Anya Taylor-Joy (reprising her role from 'Split'), Spencer Treat Clark and Charlayne Woodard (Both reprising their roles from 'Unbreakable') were all incredible. I was particularly happy to see Spencer Treat Clark back playing the role of David Dunn's son Joseph, as I felt that he was an extremely prominent part of 'Unbreakable'. But without a doubt, the standout performance of this film comes from James McAvoy. I've been a fan of his for so long, but his work in this is phenomenal - Oscar-worthy phenomenal. He plays 20 characters in the film (including the 9 or so that he played in 'Split') and it's amazing that none of these characters get mixed up or confused, that you can immediately tell when a new character is present just by a slight change in his facial expression. But in terms of actually playing these characters, each one has a different tone of voice, a different accent (one even spoke Spanish), a different demeanour, a different posture, a different vocabulary - and there wasn't one aspect of this that didn't work. There wasn't one personality that fell short, there wasn't one that you didn't believe. Granted some of them got a lot of screen time, while others got one or two sentences, but that didn't matter. I can honestly say that James McAvoy was the best thing about this film, and I don't know if it would have worked without him.

Because, while the acting was great, the story itself fell short.

It began really well. The fact that these three people are forced together is something that was necessary for this to be considered the third in a trilogy that didn't seem connected. And the initial scenes in the hospital were also really well done, particularly those where we were able to see some of Kevin's personalities that haven't been on film yet.

But this is where things kind of fell flat. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that Sarah Paulson plays a psychiatrist who specialises in treating people who believe that they are superheroes. Not only is this too specific to be taken seriously, but for me, her disbelief undid a lot of the work that the first two movies did in setting up these characters. The thing that made these first two movies great is that we saw people who started off ordinary (whether good or bad), and then we discovered that they had superhuman abilities, and the lead-up to them showing their true abilities is something that we as the audience were waiting for while watching the films. So to have a huge plot point of this sequel be about whether these abilities existed in the first place took away some of the magic of the first two films.

And then there's the ending. Of course, we're treated to some M. Night Shyamalan signature twists. While one of these worked extremely well in connecting the three movies, the other one just felt very underwhelming and unnecessary. This film has been described as the most 'grounded' superhero movie, and this second twist, for me, un-grounded it. While we were interested in these characters because they had these powers, knowledge of their world became a lot bigger and spoiled what we most enjoy about seeing ordinary people become extraordinary.

Overall, I would definitely recommend the movie, particularly if you've seen both 'Unbreakable' and 'Split' (and definitely watch those if you are going to see 'Glass'), but this one is not the best of the trilogy and takes away some of the greatness of the first two. But it gets an extra .5 for McAvoy's incredible performance.

6.5/10

Lou