Glass is the conclusion to the Eastrail 177 trilogy (Comprised of Unbreakable, Split, and this film) that imposes the idea that Superheroes exist in the real world. It stars Samuel L. Jackson and Bruce Willis as Elijah “Mr. Glass” Price/The Mastermind and David Dunn/The Overseer from Unbreakable and James McAvoy as Kevin Wendell Crumb/The Horde from Split. Joining them is Anya Taylor-Joy, Spencer Treat Clark, Charlayne Woodard, and Sarah Paulson as Casey Cooke, Joseph Dunn, Mrs. Price, and Dr. Ellie Staple. I know the film just came out, so I will try my best not to spoil Glass. The film takes place about three weeks after Split, David Dunn has been chasing The Horde as he has been murdering innocent girls. After a rough encounter, they are captured by a psychiatrist named Dr. Ellie Staple and are imprisoned in a psych ward. There, they are attempted to be convinced by Dr. Staple that they are not superheroes or supervillains and that they are simply imagining it. Later on, both men discover that Elijah Price/Mr.Glass is in the psych ward and seems to be sedated at first, but actually may not be. Mr.Glass learns of The Horde and sees that he has an opportunity to use him along with David to show the world that Superheroes and Supervillains exist. What follows is in interesting number of events that will make or break the film for audiences.
In order to understand my thoughts on the film, let me share my history with this trilogy from M. Night Shyamalan. It all started with the release of Split, a few years ago. I was interested in what I saw and later discovered through the end twist that Split was connected to another Shyamalan film called Unbreakable. I had heard about Unbreakable through online film critics such as Doug Walker, Chris Stuckmann, and Jeremy Jahns. I was told that it was an underrated film and that it had grown a huge following after releasing in 2000 to lukewarm reviews and poor box office results, keep in mind that this was before the superhero film genre exploded with 2008’s Iron Man and 2009’s The Dark Knight. I watched it for the first time and didn’t have a good response to it as I just saw it as a weak psychological thriller that puts Superheroes in a realistic environment with dated characters. It wasn’t until I read online that Shyamalan was writing a sequel that connects both Unbreakable and Split into one giant sequel and I decided to check out Unbreakable again and see what I missed. After watching it a second time, I fell in love with the film and James Newton Howard’s underrated score and then thought about how Shyamalan was going to tie it all together in this sequel. I was anticipating this film ever since it was announced that it was in development, and I saw that first trailer during Comic Con last summer, I was ready to see this film, and it started out decent with a few problems, but then it negatively shocked me at the very end. Mr. Shyamalan has finally disappointed me for the very first time, almost like he did with The Last Airbender, but there are a few decent things in the film.
I’ll start with the positives, I liked most of the camerawork in the film, Shyamalan, again, uses different shots to move the film in an almost decent pace, and I really emphasize the word almost. I liked most of the performances in the film, with James McAvoy being the star player in the cast. I liked the first half of the film’s plot, it starts out with a fight with David and Kevin and they are later brought together and dissected internally by Dr. Staple. What I mean is that it has a good follow up to Split and it delves deep into the idea that they may be imagining things about trying to be superheroes. The production design was once again brilliant, I like that the three major colors, Green for Hero/David, Yellow for Muscle Villain/Kevin, and Purple for Genius Villain/Mr. Glass, are represented all throughout the set pieces like walls, lights, and clothes. 
That being said, it’s time to share my negative thoughts and this is where most of the disappointment comes in, without trying to spoiling the plot of course. I didn’t like that most of the side characters were shafted to the side throughout the film, these are characters that haven’t been seen in a couple of years or nineteen years and they are not relevant until the very end. Some of the camerawork got really annoying, what I mean is there a lot of shots that were shot like GoPro footage and a lot of POV shots. The parts with Dr. Staple get tediously boring and repetitive, especially at the beginning of the third act and I feel she could’ve been written better. Both David Dunn and Mr. Glass do not appear very much throughout the film, in fact, Mr. Glass doesn’t start doing anything until the beginning of the third act, David does most of his stuff in the beginning then is put into a room and doesn’t become relevant until the middle of the third act. I didn’t hear a lot of themes from Unbreakable, even the main theme, and found that I missed James Newton Howard. Lastly, and this is my fatal flaw with Glass, the ending. This film has one of the most anger-inducing, sloppily written, poorly thought out, and overall slapped on endings that I have ever seen in a film, and I do not say that lightly. The ending makes the build up of the other two films pointless and honestly made me really angry.
Overall, Glass was a huge letdown of a film for me. It has some decent elements but has made me feel that Shyamalan flails completely whenever he works with huge anticipation. I have never been so disappointed by an ending of this magnitude and I feel like this could’ve been developed a whole lot better than what I saw. Fans of this franchise are probably going to be really mad by the end and although it is a watchable film, it’s going into my book of films that I regret ever getting excited for.
6.5 out of 10
Too bad! I know this was a highly anticipated finale to this series. Shylaman is so hit or miss.