Glass an awkward step back for Shyamalan

James McAvoy in Glass. Image courtesy Universal Pictures.

Perhaps 10 years ago or so Glass would be more innovative and interesting than it is. A movie dedicated in large part to deconstructing superhero mythology was novel when writer/director M. Night Shyamalan first started playing with the idea with Unbreakable, but the influx of comic book movies and the need to analyze the genre has produced better versions of Shyamalan's newest movie, Glass. This, instead, feels like an amalgamation of ideas Shyamalan himself has already delved into in this very franchise, undercutting any sense of profundity he aimed for.

Officially the third film in the Unbreakable franchise, Glass connects the characters from the first film – Bruce Willis' heroic David Dunn and Samuel L. Jackson's Elijah Price/Mr. Glass – with the villain from Split, the multi-personality plagued Kevin (James McAvoy, still great in this role). The three of them are gathered together in an asylum under the watch of Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson), who believes their powers are actually delusions they've conjured to compensate for traumatic pasts. Dr. Staple has three days to work through their issues and ensure them their lives are normal. As the three men debate their existence, David's son Joseph (Spencer Treat Clark), Mr. Glass' mom (Charlayne Woodard), and Casey Cooke (Anya Taylor-Joy), who survived the first attack from the Beast, ask their own questions about the lives of their families and friends.

What remains somewhat unclear with Glass is the need to go backward with the origin stories. Both Unbreakable and Split dedicated significant parts of their films to answering questions about their characters' abilities. David has to overcome his own self-doubt about his abilities again, despite spending 19 years as an underground superhero. Kevin/Patricia/Hedwig et al already witnessed the arrival of the Beast and have spent two years kidnapping and killing girls in the greater Philadelphia area. They are established heroes and villains, capable of performing outlandish and beyond-human feats of strength, endurance, and invulnerability. By adding doubt only to eventually overcome that doubt, it shows Shyamalan didn't quite know how to go forward with the universe he developed.

 

It is additionally frustrating how poorly Shyamalan soul searches through his franchise. The premise of having three days to treat two serial killers and a violent vigilante is laughable in and of itself, and Glass does little to elevate it into something interesting. Even the one moment of highest intensity, the group therapy session with Dr. Staple, David, Kevin, and Elijah, lacks inspiration and tension. Dr. Staple's psychological skills are unconvincing, especially given how much David, Kevin, and Elijah have come through to discover their powers. The film can't really sell it's own disbelief, which reinforces the lack of point or direction for this entire endeavor.

Then there's the twist, because every Shyamalan movie has a twist. The twist in Glass is designed to add perspective and depth to this cinematic universe, but is on par with the events of films two, four, five, and six of the Halloween franchise. The swerve is handled awkwardly with insufficient foreshadowing, which is followed by yet another twist that is even weaker than the first twist. Shyamalan somehow adds too much foreshadowing and does too little of it, providing a rather frustrating ending just when the film was gaining a little momentum.

 

The ending underlines what how frustrating Shyamalan is as a filmmaker. He still is a pretty solid director; Glass generally looks good, with a creepy aesthetic that works really well for what the film has going for it. Shyamalan also has a knack for discomfiting viewers with subtle visual cues in lieu of jump scares, giving viewers enough of a heads up to remain freaked out about the ensuing moment. But whatever talents he has as a director, Shyamalan still cannot get out of his own way as a writer. The dialog, as always, is a mess. The twist on top of the twist is spurred by an out-of-character moment and some awful exposition. How that final twist is executed makes zero sense given the nature of the first twist. The questions Glass leaves are less philosophical than impractical, which is about the expectation for an M. Night Shyamalan film.

Review: Two out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG-13

Run time: 129 minutes

Genre: Drama

tl;dr

What Worked: James McAvoy, directing.

What Fell Short: Ending, dialog, writing.

What To Instead: Unbreakable

McAvoy shines in flawed but thrilling Split

James McAvoy in Split. Image courtesy Universal Pictures.

With Split, M. Night Shyamalan has created a terrific thriller rooted in elements of B-movie grit and grime that add a little verve otherwise missing from the man's repertoire. Shyamalan’s also created a film with a number of narrative flaws and a major problem with his female characters, neither of which is overly surprising given his previous efforts. It results in a mixed bag carried largely by the center performance by James McAvoy, who takes full advantage of the showcase role and captivates throughout. This movie at the very least proves how vital casting can be, and how a great performance can save a troubling film.

In a weird way, Shyamalan either nearly saves himself from himself or he nearly drowns himself. It depends on how you look at the man who directed and wrote this film and see if his talents as a director saved his poor writing skills or if his subpar writing skills undermined his directorial talents. Because the man is a pretty darn fine thriller director who takes Split's goofy premise – a man (McAvoy) with 23 distinct personalities kidnaps three students (Anya Taylor-Joy, Haley Lu Richardson and Jessica Sula) as part of a sacrifice to a seemingly legendary 24th entity – and somehow creates an intense, discomfiting atmosphere in which even the daylight intimidates. The film is loaded with tight spaces, small corridors, confines falling apart and darkness barely interspersed with light that offer up an impeccable ambiance for oddity. He plays around with a few camera angles to offer a little insight into his characters' point of view at a given moment. His best little trick though is changing how he frames the various figures played by McAvoy when interacting with the abducted students and with his doctor (played by Betty Buckley). It adds a bit of nuance to the relationship McAvoy's personas have with the other people in his life.

That latter point is a sign of a good filmmaker, but it also compensates for his inability to accomplish the same goal as a writer. The writing in Split is remarkably sub-standard, beginning with the aforementioned premise that is too improbable to believe and never quite sticks despite the best efforts of Shyamalan's better half and the cast to sell it. There's also the dialog that lessens the further characters get into conversations, their chats riddled with those little bits of faux mysticism he likes to vomit into just about everything he does. A movie can't just be about a man with multiple personalities; it has to be about a mythic beast, or a character searching for some sort of potion through documentary filmmaking like in The Visit. Shyamalan tries too hard as a writer to force his films to sound important without conveying the natural oddity of the magical realism he's searching for. It doesn't help that he's a lazy writer to boot. One of the major character arcs of the film – the conversion by McAvoy's characters to the aforementioned 24th personality called The Beast – is rather similar to the one used by The Tooth Fairy in Manhunter and Red Dragon. His female characters are inconsistent, with one note portrayals – neither Richardson nor Sula get much to do beyond scream and moan – and astounding incompetence shown Buckley's doctor. Taylor-Joy's character, the prototypical final girl, gets the worst of it, with Shyamalan using past molestation and the resulting self harm as key driving points of her character and her chances at survival. This point can be viewed as the laziest bit of writing in this film and as an incredibly sexist characterization in a movie littered with such points.

Split’s saving grace is the bonkers and incredible performance put on by McAvoy. McAvoy loses himself to the characters within the characters he plays, from the scheming and evil Dennis to the goofy child Hedwig to the very in control Patricia. He makes them distinct beings – complete with inflection changes and individual tics – even as they begin to blur into one another toward the end, bouncing from one persona to the next in an internal battle for control. It's riveting to watch play out and immensely impressive to see the wild swings McAvoy undergoes in about a minute before his bad parts gain control and the momentary reprieve from the danger ends.

Review: Three out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG-13

Run time: 117 minutes

Genre: Thriller

Ask Away

Target audience: Thriller fans who wanted something decent from M. Night Shyamalan.

Take the whole family?: I'm really impressed this thing somehow only garnered a PG-13 rating. Don't stray too far from that recommendation.

Theater or Netflix?: You can wait for it at home.

What happened to M. Night Shyamalan?: Aside from this film, which is the best thing he's done in years, what he's fallen into is the need to pull out tricks and stunts with many dashes of pretentiousness along with it. With Split he mostly grounds himself with tight corridors and grubbiness and gets a little dirty in the process. He's sort of like a less talented Terry Gilliam; both need constraints to hold back their worst impulses.

Watch this as well?: Psycho is the best bet for films featuring characters with dissociative identity disorder. Considering how much this film lifts from Manhunter, watch that and the still solid remake, Red Dragon. Unbreakable remains the best thing Shyamalan has directed, and is also one of the best superhero films of the past 20 years.