[rating=7.00]
Night Shyamalan’s comeback train has been speeding full throttle for several years now. Largely spurred by his partnership with Blumhouse, the new kingmakers of horror who produced The Visit and Split, Shyamalan has gone a long way towards redeeming himself for some of the missteps that haunted his career throughout the last decade or so.
Garnering a reputation as a one trick pony, whose narratives over rely on the Big Twist (not the first director to do so, by any means, but his name is now synonymous with Shocking Reveals on which his movies are built) his recent efforts have relied more on his skills as a filmmaker than his cinematic gotchas. Though he hasn’t shied away from twists and turns, these days his films stand up even without them. Whatever convoluted path he’s taken to get here, he’s finally becoming the kind of director he hinted at being with Unbreakable.
As his best film, he could clearly do worse than trying to emulate his success there. It makes sense that his last two releases, Split and Glass, have found him revisiting the grounded superheroic world he established there. While Split’s existence in that world was treated as a typical Shyamalan twist, it built upon the suggestion of its predecessor—that the world of Unbreakable was even larger and more varied than was presented in the film.
That Idea is explored further and in more detail in Glass, out today on Blu-ray. Uniting the characters of Unbreakable and Split, Glass is one of the boldest films of Shyamalan’s career. While it’s not always successful in its aims it still continues the largely upward trajectory of Shyamalan’s more recent output and represents a remarkable completion of a unique superhero trilogy.
Taking place shortly after the events of Split, the film follows David Dunn (Bruce Willis), now known on the streets as The Overseer, as he tries to track down The Horde (James McAvoy) from Split. Their encounter leads to their capture, and they’re taken to the same psychiatric hospital that has held Elijah “Mr. Glass” Price (Samuel L. Jackson) for almost two decades. Under the care of Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson), whose work centers around those who believe they are superheroes, the trio are confronted with the possibility that what they think about themselves might not be the truth.
Playing like more like a psychological thriller, Glass might move too slow for some audiences. It’s often frustratingly obtuse in its development, and the are they/aren’t they question feels somewhat moot given what we’ve seen in the previous films. As ever, there’s a method to Shyamalan’s madness. All things serve his purposes and even many of the seeming missteps add up to a shockingly poignant meditation on superheroes, comics, and how they affect our culture.
Though definitely the weakest of the trilogy, Glass still works as a film and gives us the Unbreakable sequel we’ve wanted since it first caught our attention in 2000. It’s grounded, philosophical reflection on the nature of superheroes and heroism works as an antithesis to the flashbang efforts of the MCU and DCEU and reminds us all that, when they want to be, superheroes can be about so much more than we give them credit for. As a deconstruction it’s fascinating.
The home release offers a plethora of special features to bring you even further into the world that Shyamalan has meticulously created. Deleted and alternate scenes, behind the scenes featurettes, and several featurettes that explain the style and creation of this world all serve to provide unique insights not just into Glass but the previous films and their characters as well.
To be sure, Glass is a somewhat flawed film but in a way that’s easy to overlook in the face of all it does right. It might not be the Unbreakable sequel we thought we wanted, but it more than lives up to its predecessor and, on rewatch, works even better than it did the first time.
Glass is now available to own on 4K Ultra and Blu-ray.
