Title: Glass
Rating: PG-13
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Starring: James McAvoy, Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Willis, Sarah Paulson
Runtime: 2hr 9min

What It Is: In this sequel to Unbreakable and Split, Kevin Wendell Crumb’s (McAvoy) domineering personalities, or ‘The Hoarde’, as they call it, continue to kidnap and murder young women. After some time of searching for the culprit of these crimes, David Dunn (Willis) discovers The Hoarde’s secret hideout and rescues a team of cheerleaders from the 24th personality, The Beast. This results in the capture of David and The Hoarde by the authorities. They are taken to a mental institution where Elijah Glass (Jackson) is also held. Psychiatrist Ellie Staple (Paulson) states she has three days to convince the three that they are not actually superheroes.

What We Think: I liked Split a lot. Upon watching the teaser trailers for Glass—I had low expectations, I wholly admit that… and yet… should’ve set them lower. 

This was worse than I thought it’d be. Any of the emotional depth, intensity, and/or intimidation that these characters had in Unbreakable or Split is gone in this film. The Beast is no longer scary; Hedwig is no longer creepy /cute/funny; Casey played by Anya Taylor-Joy is less than a third of the strong and intelligent character she was in Split; Willis is as lively as a cardboard box, and, to say the least, Jackson is at his most entertaining when he’s Glass in under heavy sedatives. And we know it’s none of the actors’ faults to why the performances are so weak. 

The perfect word I would use, to sum up, this flick is GOOFY. Those days of The Happening have returned. It felt almost like I was watching Lady in the Water, with all the cheesy themes (“believe in yourself”) repeated over every other scene and bland writing that has the characters walking in circles and occasionally bumping into each other. The extras were annoying. Looking back: I can’t even really say who the movie is actually centered around. It’s all over the place in that aspect, in a one-note kind of fashion. There’s no focus on one person or one group of people. It’s about everyone. What ’s the point if no one is worth watching?

The sound design is distracting and off-kilter, the cinematography not exactly bland but not exactly eye-catching or pleasing either. The whole thing wasn’t great to look at; it wasn’t exciting. It was too long with drawn-out and repetitive and trivial scenes. There’s never any payoff whatsoever. There were no quality twists. There is only a shallow cash grab here to behold, taking anything successful from the previous films and anyone talented and cheaply exploiting them.

Our Grade: D-, Where Split was successful as a horror-thriller, Glass fails as a thriller-drama. Seriously—why did they even call it Glass? Mr. Glass didn’t really get more screentime over anyone else. I seriously considered walking out of the theater in the middle of the movie and refusing to do the review; if it weren’t for the quiet endurance of the person I was with to stick it out, we wouldn’t be here. Some parts are silly enough to laugh at; maybe this is the movie for you if you want to watch it buzzed with your pals, but I cannot recommend Glass: or, M.-Night-Shyamalan-Writes-a-Boring-Fanfiction-About-His-Own-Cinemaverse.