User reviews

So just re watched the trilogy in a row. Mainly cause there is total toffee nowadays. Not sure why glass has the lowest of the low ratings in the three. Unbreakable was great. But 12 years before split. Split was a good movie and even better when you watch it soon after the first film. Glass however seems to get a bad rap. Not sure if all the sofa directors and writers out there wanted it to be the way they imagined while they was working in Asda stocking shelves or not. But get a grip. JM performance in both editions is fantastic but in glass it's stepped up to another level. Maybe the time to wait (like loads of things now) is way too long. But after doing the trio in a row you will definitely get a better appreciation of them all. Shame MNS ain't turnt out anything great since.

You can get a sequel to one film. Glass is a sequel to two different movies that span several decades and different production companies. Split (2016) and Unbreakable (2000).

David Dunn (Bruce Willis) is the vigilante who plans to catch Kevin Crumb (James McAvoy) the man with multiple personalities including the Beast, who has abducted four cheerleaders. After a showdown both get captured and sent to Raven Hill Memorial hospital which has been adapted to keep them both locked in their rooms.

Also inside the hospital is Mr Glass (Samuel L Jackson) almost comatose filled with drugs and confined to his wheelchair because of his brittle bones. The man who killed hundreds to prove a theory that some people had extraordinary powers. The kind of powers you find in comic books.

Dr Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson) has been sent in to show these three people that they are normal people, their abnormal frontal lobes making them think they have superpowers.

M. Night Shyamalan after his initial success with movies like The Sixth Sense and later flops such as The Happening. He went back to basics and re-invented himself through low budget independent horror/thrillers. It culminated in the critically acclaimed Split.

In Glass, Shyamalan pits Dunn against the Beast but it is also a tease. The film is called Glass. Watching and waiting is Elijah Price/Mr Glass. He has woven a web, his body is weak but his mind is sharp. That is his superpower. His past actions has led to the present and he envisages a comic strip superbattle.

Shyamalan has made the movie he wanted to make. The pace is deliberate, it alludes to comic book conventions but without taking the Marvel Films route. I thought it was wonderful even if the movie had faults.

This is not a superhero movie or an action packed sci-fi flick, this is a psychological thriller with people having supernatural abilities...or do they really have these abilities and are they really supernatural?? Just like in Unbreakable and Split, you will have your doubts and theories but in the end it all ends up going in another direction and then another one.

M. Night Shyamalan tries his best to keep the movie closer to real life than to fiction by essentially eliminating special effects or any kind of CGI. Keeping a steady pace from the opening scenes until the credits, he fills the movie with clever dialogues that bridge the gap between the three movies and adds gritty action to keep the audience engaged. Overall, this fuses into a picture with a 2000s Old School feel about it that cant be seen in too many movies nowadays.

James McAvoy is absolutely incredible in his transitioning between different personalities which happens a lot more than in Split. Sarah Paulson brings a new character and Sam Jackson with Bruce step right back into their old shoes. Cinematography is solid with an effective use of colors and in the music department Shyamalan took a page out of Nolan's last movie. M. Night is a 50/50 director and this movie lands on the good side with a couple of twists at the end that make you wonder if this is the end or just the beginning.

Watch both Unbreakable and Split and if you enjoy them then go for this one. The movie wont make sense if you dont see the previous two.

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I can describe Glass as an entertaining experience, but not solid enough to be an appropriate closure of the Unbreakable-Split-Glass trilogy.

While I can see what Mr Shyamalan wanted to do, I don't think he managed to deliver with the characters and the plot the necessary complexity to answer all the questions the audience raised in the previous two movies. Many things have been left unanswered especially about Kevin, while David Dunn is just a shadow that doesn't do much in the movie.

The real star in this movie is supposed to be Mr Glass, but not much about his past is told, either. Everything is absurdly summarized in a way that, in the end, we don't really know - or care - about who Mr Glass or Kevin were. There isn't enough character development or closure going on here.

Sarah Paulson's talent was wasted on a character who could be played by anyone. She is a brilliant actress but the character was poorly written and brings nothing new or dramatically useful to the plot.

Cinematography is fine just as the pacing of the movie. Like I said, it is entertaining, definitely - and perhaps it will please the audiences who are used to the almost shallow plots of superhero movies. But if you were expecting a more deep and challenging story about humans with supernatural powers, you will be disappointed.

In the end, Mr Shyamalan couldn't make a superhero movie, and couldn't make a deep, mind-bending metaphysical movie either. He merely brushed over both worlds, but didn't dive deeply into either of them. It is a pity that a plot that had potential and that showed up to be brilliant in "Split" had such an underwhelming and unremarkable closure.

Good: The acting across the board from the main cast: James McAvoy, Samuel L. Jackson, and Bruce Willis are great. However, like in "Split" McAvoy is definitely the standout portraying so many personalities one after the other is fascinating to watch. Although the setup is great and intriguing, it feels glossed over to get to the main plot. Shyamalan's direction with camera angles and shots also standout and help capture the scenes along with the color scheme as seen in the other movies. I appreciate the overall theme of the movie and the message Shymalan is trying to tell, but suffers in the end and pacing...

Bad: As a film that started off with "Unbreakable" and supposed to be the long awaited sequel to it, Bruce Willis' character does not have much depth and is more on the sidelines. There is a lot of talking and some parts definitely drag making the film feel longer than it actually is, however even with this not much seems to develop and happen.

Overall: The film is getting bashed way too hard by the critics, but overrated by the audience. The film's tone is more like "Unbreakable" than "Split" with more talking and a few action scenes here and there.

3.5/5

This is a thinking person's movie. It's largely dialogue heavy and not afraid to take its time. It's a movie that takes itself seriously. It's the kind of smart movie that confuses critics who prefer light easy-to-digest popcorn entertainment. When it shifts into full thriller or action mode, brace yourself, because it gets totally intense.

Director Shyamalan doesn't get much respect from the critics, but screw the critics, he did brilliantly here from writing to directing.

And James McAvoy deserves every acting award for 2019. Might as well just give him all of them now, best actor, best actress, best child actor, etc., all of them, because no one's topping this performance.

And about the action, I saw director Shyamalan talking in an interview about how he's mainly interested in drama and that action is not his strong point, but he was really downplaying his handling of the action, because the fight scenes here are legitimately awesome. Glass thankfully features none of the shaky rapid-editing style that plagues so many other action movies. It is all well shot, so you'll have no trouble following the action. We even see lots of unusually artistic camera shots during the action, such as showing long close up shots of people's faces while they're in the middle of fighting. My favorite was a long held shot from the point of view of being inside a van while we're seeing a fight happening outside, as the combatants are circling around and slamming into the van. That was just plain cool, the kind of shot that's just mind-boggling to think about how they managed to pull it off.

And don't trust the rotten critics. Just don't. They're so worthless, those critics. They're wrong about almost every movie these days. Glass just continues the critics' rotten streak of being totally out of touch with what's really good or bad.

This is coming from someone who has been looking forward to this movie for a long time. I thought the acting was fantastic, especially James McAvoy who plays all the personalities fantastically. Bruce Willis doesn't phone it in and actually does a good job. If you're expecting a superhero movie, you're not going to get one. This is most definitely and physcological thriller that happens to have superheroes. This film is filled with incredible memorable moments that you'll certainly remember walking out of the movie. However, the end will turn a lot of people off, as it goes in directions that are very divisive. If you go in with an open mind, I think you'll enjoy most of it.

I was completely onboard with Glass for most of the movie, but then it decided to go off the rails. I was invested in the characters and was willing to overlook the clunky exposition and monologuing--until the finale. I feel like M. Night Shyamalan was so determined to surprise the audience that he forgot how to satisfactorily finish a story. To be honest, Glass left me feeling half empty about the whole trilogy.

Let me start by saying the critics are just flat out WRONG with this one. And this is coming from a guy who has only enjoyed about half of this guys movies. If you are going in their to watch a superhero movie check yourself at the door. This is a dark twisted psychological horror with a chaotic like thread that reminds you of noir films of the past. It's like a Picasso painting in movie form. The ending is divisive and risky, which I love! It's not for everybody, but I think that's why I loved this movie.

As with most of his films, Writer-Director M. Knight Shyamalan's widely appreciated trait is to pull the rug under our feet during the film's closing minute. Which is why we all thought Split was a psychological horror film until the last minute, where that final unbroken shot sweeps across a diner until it stops over Bruce Willis' David Dunn. That's when we realised we were watching the sequel to one of Shyamalan's best films - Unbreakable. When Spilt revealed that it existed in the same universe as Unbreakable, it instantly positioned those films as two-thirds of a trilogy. And almost immediately after, Shyamalan revealed that Glass would be the finale to an idea gestating for nearly 20 years. That itself sounds like a labour of love for Shyamalan who not only embraces but also defies popular comic book logic.

Picking up roughly a few weeks after the climactic events in the previous film, Glass has Willis' vigilante David Dunn, James McAvoy's deeply disturbed serial killer Kevin Crumb, and Samuel L Jackson's titular criminal mastermind assemble for a face to face showdown for the first time. You just have to wait for nearly the entire length of the film for that to happen. To get there, Shyamalan takes us through a long and elaborate setup where he's showing us one thing but secretly doing something else; His preferred modus operandi maybe, but this time employing the illusion of delusion. Which is where Sarah Paulson joins the story as a psychiatrist whose speciality is in debunking people deluded into thinking they are superhuman. Read that again. In other words, there may have been others who think they are superheroes. This is the single most commendable idea in the entirety of this trilogy. It simply means that unlike popular characters from the Marvel and DC comics, Shyamalan's superheroes are not from another planet, or a result of lab experiments gone wrong. It's an idea that has immense potential, not only for this film but also for any indie filmmaker who wants to tell a superhero story in the future. Shyamalan got this right, but only in theory.

The execution is a different story, and why Glass is a shattered mess. As much as Dunn, Crumb and Mr. Glass are fleshed out characters on their own, they are strangely incompatible together. It's as if Shyamalan has invested so much attention on their individual character development that he has overlooked the whole purpose of what they were meant to become. Instead, a lot of time is spent reintroducing the same characters again. That's an unforgivable mistake for the final episode in a trilogy. The passage of time is also another questionable flaw. Dunn is seen in his rain poncho from 19 years ago and he is helped by his son Joseph track down petty street criminals. If not for a fully grown Spencer Clark Treat as Joseph, you would think nothing has changed since the first film. On the other hand, McAvoy was praised for his outstanding versatility in Split. Shyamalan knows that and so gives us a triple dose of McAvoy cycling between Hedwig, Kevin, Barry, Dennis, Patricia and even more of growling and wall crawling from The Beast. The air of mystery and terror turns to repetition, which feels like a stall for time and a full hour before Jackson's catatonic Mr. Glass has anything to say. Have you ever seen a film where the notoriously verbose Samuel L Jackson does nothing but blink?

In time everything falls to pieces. The biggest problem with this film isn't how disjointed the narrative is, or the unnecessary recap of the previous two films at laborious pacing, or even the complicated attempt at another twist ending. The problem is that despite nearly 20 years in the making, Glass feels unfinished and empty. Akin to the concept in the film, it's like finding a solid gold bar and then throwing it out through a window.

Not sure what's worse, this film or the fake 9-10/10 reviews.

Not what I expected - in a disappointing way. Then add all the ridiculous praising 10/10 reviews and it takes more away from any positive aspects this film had.

For starters, outstanding performance as usual by James McAvoy, and he perfectly brought back his Split characters. Samuel L. Jackson was great as always and even Bruce Willis actually showed interest in performing for this film.

My issue was that the writing was all over the place and the 129 min length felt like 180 mins. Maybe it was the pacing, or more needed to be edited/cut to shorten this film to a more acceptable 100-110 length. The directing was decent but nothing spectacular.

I expected more but sadly was disappointed. It's not a flop, nor is it a 10/10 like all these fake reviews. It's a well deserved 6/10. Would I recommend it? Sure if you're a fan of Unbreakable, Split and its characters. Would I see it again? Nope.

Ninteen years ago M. Night Shyamalan made a film called 75 million dollar film Unbreakable when he was hot off the heels of a world wide sensation with The Sixth Sense. The film film did okay money wise (248 million) and with critics but did not generate the excitement of his prior hit but has since garnered a very strong following despite talk of it becoming a trilogy having long gone silent. Fast forward to 2016, Shyamalan after a string of high profile, higher budget flops is now making smaller budget films and gets himself a big hit with the 9 million dollar film Split that goes on to make over 278 million. Not only that, the final post climax scene ties it to the Unbreakable universe, setting up the highly anticipated Glass that will serve to cap the trilogy as a sequel to both Unbreakable and Split.

I am happy to report that despite the massive success of Split that Glass is a low budget film made for just 20 million dollars with a great deal of that presumably going to the larger cast. This film brings together characters from Unbreakable (Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Spencer Treat Clark and others) and Split (James McAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy) with a bevy of new characters. The feeling of comic book mythology that was expertly woven into Unbreakable is back here in spades and this definitely feels more the tone of that film. I won't go into specifics but the story elements of the first half hour feels what someone would typically make as the entire third film in this trilogy but Shyamalan wisely goes into some different territory and we get some great scenes with the characters in a slower paced middle section of the film. Unfortunately not every character really gets to shine here as is common with many team up films each person only has a limited time which makes this film unlike both prior entries really only viewing for people who have seen the others, definitely not a stand alone tale.

They make the most of the limited budget and as is often the case with good film makers, it makes them more creative. It is a nice looking film and well made but I think the abundance of POV shots could have been tempered back a a little. The performances from the many characters were all great but as expected James McAvoy steals the show taking on his role from Split again as the man with 23 different personalities (of which he plays 20 here). There were a few things along the way that seemed like lazy or silly scripting that did get a new light once the final twist was revealed. Speaking of twists, there is more than one and he may have overdone it. I imagine the ending will not be for everyone but I enjoyed the film from start to finish, there was a possibility for a while that it would have made the Kill Bill Vol.2 error of promising a big showdown and not delivering but the route they went in the end worked much better. In the end I am happy with this film despite preferring the previous two entries and it has become quite the trilogy.. one that I will revisit.

As far as Shyamalan movies are concerned I deemed Unbreakable (2000) to be one of the better ones. Though I can confidently say I never saw the potential of a sequel let alone a trilogy.

Combining all the characters from Unbreakable (2000) and Split (2016) for one final showdown we see this unexpectedly lengthy story come to a close, but did it deliver?

Well I expected the worst, though not terrible I certainly never got on the Split (2016) bandwagon. McAvoy was great, but I don't think the film was. I was however very curious what they were going to do here and it had peaked my interest.

Sadly I don't think Glass is great and certainly not as clever as I foolishly expected it to be. Big finale twist? Absolutely, several in fact but they were hardly unexpected nor shocking.

The cast delivered and it all looked the part but the trilogy needed to end on something big and I just don't think it did. It ended with a nod instead of a cheer and despite my opinion of the franchise I still felt it deserved better.

Passable stuff, entirely watchable but this franchise hasn't left me understanding its critical acclaim in the remotest.

The Good:

Decent performances

A culmination of an almost 20yr story

The Bad:

Certain elements make little to no sense

Underwhelming and hardly a "Smart" film

Shyamalan tries hard to convince us that this trilogy makes sense but it never feels like it does. In spite of another great performance from Mc Avoy, the movie never manages to be more than an opportunity to tag along the super-hero fashion, putting together movies that were not originally meant to be.

This was an enjoyable film for the most part, Night's talents as a director really shone in this film, through his use of framing and colour choices. The final product really highlights the care and thought which Night put into the visual choices of the film. His downfall however is that though he may be a good director, he's also a terrible writer, this is a film which has had 2 great films worth of build-up, and for it's first hour and half, Glass was actually a very enjoyable experience and worthy successor to its predecessors. Willis, McAvoy and Jackson were all wonderful, their characters were incredibly entertaining to watch and their interactions with each other were bloody brilliant. However, unlike its predecessors, Glass was unable to maintain its momentum in its final act, which left me thinking Night chose an ending purely based around the surprise factor rather than a more logical approach. The writing just wasn't very good in my mind, perhaps in his mind, the ending to Glass made perfect sense, however as a viewer i felt i didn't get the satisfaction of fully understanding the motivations and reasoning behind the character choices in that final act of the film. The large amount of characters featured in this film may have also attributed to this film not working as well as it could have, i think this is because there was a lack of focus. We have 3 main characters, but you don't really feel like you get to spend enough time with any of them through the movie, because there isn't enough focus placed on the characters before the scene transitions. The side characters are also heavily under-used, these characters have scattered and somewhat out of place scenes throughout the movie which i thought could've been completely left in the editing room, with the exception of Willis' character's son, none of the side characters really needed to be in the movie until the final act.

I still believe this film was an enjoyable experience, though the ending leaves much to be desired, Shyamalan ends his eastrail 177 trilogy with a fairly mixed bag of a film.

Right from the get go ... the entire idea of the movie falls apart for me. So, there are those particular people that are incarcerated. While i can get it for the "beast" that is split .. as he clearly poses a threat AND signs of severe mental disorder. It is much, much harder to justify for the other two. There simply is not enough evidence to suggest they would be picked out to join this trio.

We as spectators know .. but the people "in the world" would not. You do not "see" superior intellect. You do not "see" someone that is unbreakable. Sure there would be doctors and reports about some irregularities - but NOTHING to suggest such actions being taken.

Apart from this (and the unrealistic amount of measures taken against each of those .. ) the idea is that we want to prove that they are not super-human.

Alright .. but that falls flat, when the entire location is decked out in anti-super-human-measures.

The motivations of the doctor are weak, too. Plot-holes in movies are a common thing .. and often unavoidable. But when they are too big .. the whole structure falls apart. The doctor acts so unprofessional (like confirmation bias) that it totally breaks immersion. And that is very sad for a movie like that.

All in all .. sadly an underwhelming movie .. but with good acting indeed. Its the writing that fails it big time

Ok, my wife and I just got back from opening night of Glass. We talked about the movie from the end of the movie all the way back home. WOW!!!! We had a lot to talk about. As my title reads this is not an Avengers movie. Do not expect non-stop action. Expect action, story, details, dialogue, emotion, more story, and then some more action. This is a great movie to start off 2019 and James McAvoy deserves an Oscar. Like any M. Night movie you will either love it or hate it. My wife and I LOVED IT!!!!

The movie has holes you could drive a 747 through and in places, especially at the end, is really contrived, but it's still worth seeing. Note to M.N.S.: Relax, dude. Just because you hit it big having twists at the end of your movies doesn't mean you have to keep upping the ante. Go do a comedy.

I was supposed to love Glass.

Why don't I love Glass?

The critics hate Glass. I rarely agree with them, but for once, they were right.

I loved Unbreakable--one of the most underappreciated movies of 2000. "Split" was groundbreaking -- a film that floored me from start to finish and ended with one of the best plot twists ever! So I was frothing at the mouth when Glass was finally complete. This movie would erase the stain of The Last Airbender and restore M. Knight Shyamalan to greatness. Chances are at the time of this post, he's probably raking in a fortune from the hype, but I like so many critics, found myself sitting in the theater with furled eyebrows and stupified look that clearly read: Is he serious?

Glass picks up 19 years after Unbreakable. A weathered David Dunn (Bruce Willis) is still hunting down bad guys as a raincoat wearing vigilante. Elijah Price/Mr. Glass (Sam Jackson) is in a psych ward, and Kevin Crumb (James McAvoy) continues to terrorize young girls with one of his other 19 personalities. The movie opens with a splendid ode to vigilante justice in the vein of the Dark Knight and immediately re-establishes McAvoy's Kevin (aka the Beast) as one of the greatest on-screen villains ever.

The bar for success had been set and all M. Knight Shyamalan needed to do was hop right over it.

Well, not so fast, Flash.

This movie first starts to go off the rails when the titular character is left offscreen for the first hour. It might as well have been called Dunn vs. Kevin. Then, when all three characters are finally on-screen together, it sets up one of the most feeble-minded plot twists in the movie. I won't spoil it, but I will say, the entire concept of superhero therapy is as hokey as it sounded in the trailer. When you finally learn Sarah Paulson's role in the film as Dr. Ellie Staple, you'll wonder why her original plan was implemented at all.

But I tried to let it go because there are so many good things happening in this film. Shyamalan's POV style of action and off-screen terror--while a cliche of his cinematic style--is still useful in creating some pretty cool visuals. He keeps the camera tight on people, so sometimes it's uncomfortable, forcing you to deal with our primal issues with space, but it also builds tension in the best kind of way. So there's things here to be applauded. Visually, he is masterful in this film. It's the story that weakens this film.

It's no secret that Mr. Glass teams up with The Beast/Kevin to fight Dunn. That's what we're waiting on. But the epic battle is relatively weak. Where there should be action, there's monologuing. Where there should be tension, there's a distance between the hero and villain. And where there should be logic, there is none.

In the end, out of nowhere, Paulson's role is revealed, and it opens the door for a million questions about plausibility. Everything Mr. Glass has orchestrated comes into question. How did he know to plan for this? Sure, his superpower is intellilect but is he a prophet too. The Beast and Dunn are given a resolution the feels confusing considering everything they were put through. And Paulson's character presents earth-shattering plot twists that upend the credibility of the entire film as a cohesive narrative.

"Glass" is not a bad film. It's just not a great one. And it should have been. It's bound to be as polarizing as Bird Box. You'll either love it or hate it. I don't hate it. I'm just mad I couldn't walk away loving it.