'Glass' Is Slightly Disappointing, But a Worthy Conclusion to the Eastrail 177 Trilogy

There has been an insane amount of hype surrounding this movie. For months, fans have been speculating about it, and many cinephiles like me have had this film as one of their most anticipated films of the year.

And I just got back from the theater after watching it. Here are my spoiler-free thoughts on the movie:

Here we go!

Glass is a superhero thriller written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. The film is a sequel to his 2000 film, Unbreakable, and his 2016 film, Split. It follows David Dunn (Bruce Willis) and Keven Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy), as they get locked in the same mental institution as Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson).

Upon their arrival, Price decides to use Dunn and Crumb's supernatural abilities in order to prove to the world that superheroes exist, while Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson) tries to convince them that they are merely having delusions of grandeur.

And umm... I liked it. I didn't love it and I didn't like it a lot. I liked Glass enough to say that I liked it, but that's it. Because while there are so many aspects of the film that I liked, there are other aspects that I really didn't. Let me start with what I liked.

First off, it was very nice to see Dunn (now known as "The Overseer") and Price on-screen together again for the first time since Unbreakable.

The performances in the film are all great. Willis gives a good performance, Jackson gives a great performance, and McAvoy, once again, gives a fantastic performance as this character with al these personalities. He sells every persona and it was very entertaining to watch such a great performance.

I also really liked the way this film connected Unbreakable and Split in some very great ways. Glass includes some deleted scenes from Unbreakable, which were VERY interesting to see, and Shyamalan used long takes to give this film the same vibe as Unbreakable, which was very nice.

But this movie disappointed me a little bit with its overall story. After a very interesting first act where we get to see what Dunn has been doing with his life after the end of the first film (which was cool), the second act of the film finds our three central characters in a mental institution.

And once that happens, the story pretty much stops. There are only a few developments in the story during the second act, but most of the middle of the film is just in one location, and the actual story ends up staying in one place.

In that aspect, the film's story is reminiscent of Split. Because in Unbreakable, we were constantly finding these new developments in the story and in Dunn's character, but here, most of the story is simply the characters sitting in a room.

And while it didn't BORE me at all, because the dialogue was interesting, it just isn't what I expected or wanted from this film.

I also don't quite get why this film was called Glass, because Mr. Glass doesn't even show up until about half an hour into the movie, and he doesn't say a single word for the first hour.

But anyways, this film also has a very polarizing ending. Some love it, some hate it. I liked parts of it, and I also hated parts of it. I'm not gonna spoil it, but here are just a few of my thoughts.

The endings of Shyamalan's earlier films, such as Split, The Sixth Sense, and Unbreakable are some of my favorite endings ever. Because they're so unexpected but when you go back and watch it again, you'll see it made sense because of the amount of hints given to the audience to clue you in on the ending.

And this is where Glass failed. The final ten minutes of the film introduce this completely new plot element that wasn't hinted at ONCE in the first two hours (to my knowledge), and it just felt very out of place and random.

It confused me, honestly. I liked certain parts of the ending, and I thought in some ways, it ended the series pretty well, but this completely new plot element just really threw me off, especially given how important it was in the ending, but not so much during the first two acts.

And I just thought it felt very rushed. It was this really big, important piece of the puzzle that just didn't get a fair amount of explanation in the movie. In some ways, the last 15 minutes almost felt like a completely different movie.

Also, the beginning of the third act of this movie sets up this big, huge action spectacle that I got pretty excited for. But by the end, the payoff wasn't that great at all. And what we got instead paled in comparison to what the movie was building towards.

Glass features the best and worst of M. Night Shyamalan. Some scenes in the movie are directed very well, with some long takes that I really liked. And other scenes are so bad they're laughable.

Everyone was so hyped about the big fight between David Dunn and the Horde. But that scene was actually pretty bad in my opinion because Shyamalan isn't an action director. As a result, the choreography is pretty boring.

And there are some shots in the fight where we see it through the POV of either Dunn or the Horde. It looked terrible. Using POV shots in a fight scene is generally a pretty effective way to make the scene look like crap. So, the fight was pretty bad, in my opinion.

It's just kind of sad, because there are so many times in the movie where you feel like you're watching OG Shyamalan. But then there are scenes where you can just feel like you're watching the new Last Airbender.

There were just certain choices he made in this movie that I didn't like or agree with. Some scenes made me laugh and smile, and overall, I liked it, but I just wasn't the biggest fan of the way this movie concluded.

Put simply, Unbreakable was a modern-day masterpiece, Split is an okay horror/thriller, and Glass... exists. It's a forgettable sequel that I don't think was as good as many fans were hoping for.

The first act was great, second act was average, and the final act is just something I have very mixed feelings on, because I didn't quite like the ending that much.

It's the kind of ending that's gonna impact audiences in many different ways. For me, it made me go "WTF?!" but not necessarily in the good way. The ending did not completely disappoint me, but I just felt like it could have been constructed in a way that was much better.

There's so much emotion in the ending that could have been done more effectively, but for me, it didn't quite work. To compare, I think Unbreakable was MILES better than this movie, and I liked this around the same amount that I liked Split.

Maybe I need to just see this again.

I'm gonna give 'Glass' an 8.1/10.

Now, if I could get a round of applause for writing this entire review without spoiling the movie, that would be appreciated.

Thank you for reading.