Update: January 17, 2019
Dragonlord’s Review of M. Night Shyamalan's GLASS (No Spoilers)
Bottom Line: M. Night Shyamalan disappointingly ruins the exciting cinematic universe he created with a silly story, some clumsy dialogue, stupid character decisions and going in a different, slightly boring direction instead of what the audience wanted.
Representing one of M. Night Shyamalan’s best work,
Unbreakable was a slow-burn, suspenseful realistic superhero thriller that was narrated brilliantly with unpredictable twists and turns.
Split was a come-out-of-nowhere highly-entertaining horror thriller that signaled M. Night’s potential comeback. Despite the exciting prospect of seeing the return of David Dunn (Bruce Willis) going up against a supernatural serial killer in the Horde (James McAvoy),
Glass shatters audience’s expectations and goes off in a totally different and slightly boring direction.
There’s no proper build-up between the confrontation between David and the Horde/the Beast. There’s no variation of a tense cat-and-mouse chase, the two just go at it in the first ten minutes.
Glass is in a rush to put these two in the mental hospital where majority of the movie takes place and where I am constantly infuriated upon seeing how impractical and stupid the mental institution’s security methods and protocols are. It does not help that the head shrink Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson) is annoying with her way of thinking and the way she talks.
McAvoy again shines with his multiple personality performance but the scene where most of Kevin’s personalities come out in rapid succession felt too gimmicky. Kevin’s character works best when the 4-5 prominent personalities are given screen time.
Enjoying a reprieve from slumming the straight-to-video market, Willis is enjoyable as the likable Dunn but the movie just doesn’t give him too much to do. Samuel L. Jackson as the titular character is very entertaining when he finally breaks free from his catatonic state and we see him outsmart everybody (even if it’s up against the world’s lousiest security institution). Anya Taylor-Joy returns as Casey Cooke looks absolutely lovely but some of her actions are perplexingly questionable and her role in here seemed forced.
Rounding up my thoughts: West Dylan Thordson’s score was good. The film was surprisingly tame, meaning it lacked the edge, the uneasiness, the disturbing images from the previous two installments. The meta subtext and dialogue were clumsily handled and occasionally cheesy. The secret organization’s meetings at the end were so dumb and laughable. The ending was a major disappointment (see spoiler box below). There is no post-credit scene.
Rating: 6/10
WARNING: SPOILER THOUGHTS AND MUSINGS BELOW.
Super sucks that a stupid secret anti-superheroes organization killed David and Kevin and in such underwhelming and meaningless way also. I am okay with Kevin dying but killing off David sucks big time.
The secret anti-superhero organization’s meeting is so impractical and extremely stupid. Instead of meeting in their own secret lair or just even rent a private conference room, they meet in a very public and packed restaurant or lounge and they wait until the last of the patrons leave before they start their meetings.
The clover tattoos as the secret organization's symbol felt like M. Night didn't give it a lot of thought.
Clover = Cloverfield. Hmmm...
When they introduced the plot of Mr. Glass and the Horde trying to blow up the Osaka Tower and David has to stop them, the thought of the showdown happening in public had me getting excited. Shame that it didn’t happen. They would have needed an extra $10 million in their budget to pull that scene off though (Glass’ budget is only $20 million).
