Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan
Runtime: 129 minutes
First thing’s first, Glass hits closer to M. Night Shyamalan’s all-time greats like Unbreakable or The Sixth Sense, but doesn’t capture that lightning-in-a-bottle feeling. Then again, what could? He is no George Miller, who could return to the Mad Max well and draw up something as special as Fury Road, but he doesn’t have to be.
Glass deliberately departs from current trends in comic book movies, forgoing the CGI bloat of massive action set pieces and the globe-trotting scale of the Marvel/DC formulae. There is an undercurrent of commentary running through the whole thing. The contained, almost reserved (for a superhero movie), filmmaking on display is both refreshing and more affecting than its bigger budget counterparts (as an example, Ant Man and the Wasp had a budget of ~$160M, while Glass cost ~$20M). It feels like Shyamalan lightly admonishing Hollywood, saying; you know, you don’t need the GDP of Morocco to make a movie people will like.
Narratively, the movie is straightforward. Some time, and a traumatic spouse death, after the events of Unbreakable, the unnaturally tough David Dunn (Willis) is a vigilante hero with a day job in home security with his son. The duo is on the tail of Kevin Crumb (McAvoy), a person with dissociative identity disorder which when manifested as ‘The Beast’ is capable of superhuman feats, who has committed a series of grisly murders since Split. While Glass definitely builds on these previous films, it’s to its credit they are not required viewing. David tracks and confronts The Beast, freeing would-be victims but landing both himself and Kevin in the custody of Dr Ellie Stapler (Paulson). Confined to a specifically designed institution, David finds himself in the company of a figure from his past, the mass-murdering mastermind Elijah Price (Jackson), aka Mister Glass. The stage set, the story starts a familiar dance of ‘are they supernatural, are they not?’. The climax of the film has the standard Shyamalan twists, which are unlikely to surprise film and comic book fans alike, but, is interesting for what it chooses not to do.
The tight cinematography is the movie’s greatest strength. It leaves you peering into characters’ faces, lending to a sense of voyeurism and a kind of sterile tension. Like studying a volatile specimen from behind a one-way screen. The performances by Jackson, Willis, McAvoy and Paulson are well suited to the shooting style. It naturally encourages the eye to study the facial acting and so much characterisation is poured into expressions. Shyamalan’s horror chops come through in the placement of actors in a shot. What you can and can’t see behind a character plays into the subconscious claustrophobia of a camera positioned so close to someone’s face, and the score rises to meet the tense moments.To be clear, Glass is not a masterpiece or avant garde, but it is a breath of fresh air. The ending is a weak point, the last couple scenes could be removed entirely, but it’s a welcome change of pace and I look forward to observing Shyamalan’s transition into a director that specialises in smaller budget thrillers. A decent time, I recommend it to people after a pulpy, but introspective experience and superhero movie fans in need of a palate cleanser.
Read our review for Split, the previous instalment of this unexpected franchise, here.
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