The Final Piece
M. Night Shyamalan’s latest is a sequel to his 2000 film Unbreakable and his 2016 film Split. The latter didn’t appear to be connected to the former, as it followed Kevin (James McAvoy), a man with 23 different personalities, who kidnaps teenage girls to sacrifice them to “the Beast,“ an animal-like 24th personality that physically alters Kevin into a being of brute strength and incredible agility. The film unfolds on its own, with Kevin’s surviving captor, Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy), safely in the care of the police. After the movie effectively ends, we see Bruce Willis’ David Dunn, a security guard with superhuman strength and near-invincibility watching the coverage of this case on TV in a local coffee shop. David was the central character of Unbreakable, which is a grounded deconstruction of comic book heroes and villains, with Samuel L. Jackson’s Elijah Price as David’s nemesis (he’s revealed at the end of that film to have been causing catastrophic “accidents” to find someone with David’s abilities). Elijah, suffering from a lifelong brittle bone disorder, is also known as Mr. Glass.
Shyamalan puts all of the pieces together with this final installment, and though I’m not overly enthusiastic about the first two films in this trilogy, I found Glass to be a thoroughly engaging dissection of what it means to become a hero by believing in your potential.
Glass picks up shortly after the events of Split, as David is on the hunt for the being known as the Horde (Kevin’s villain name that encompasses all of the personalities). Just when he’s seemingly caught Kevin, both men are taken into custody by local police and put in the care of Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson), a psychiatrist specializing in delusions of grandeur, specifically people who think they’re superheroes. At the same facility is the heavily sedated Mr. Glass, who’s been locked up for 19 years. His ultimate goal by finding and exposing David was to show the world that superheroes really do exist, and that remains his goal, this time by pitting David against the Beast.
McAvoy, who was excellent as all of Kevin’s various personalities in Split, continues to impress in a role that demands he essentially change characters multiple times in any given scene. It’s astonishing work that he pulls off with seeming ease. Willis, though not as central a player here as in Unbreakable, gives a nice, understated performance that feels like the kind of work he should be given more often. Jackson is still excellent as the villain mastermind, and he remains a sympathetic presence despite being the so-called “bad guy.“ Paulson walks a fine line with her performance, as Dr. Staple is neither a clear friend nor foe, and she successfully anchors the central question of this film, which is, “is this superhero stuff really all in their heads?“ Having seen the last two films, we think we know better, but she gives a convincing performance, and I couldn’t help but wonder if the rug Shyamalan would pull was that the last two films all had reasonable explanations for their supernatural qualities.
Glass has taken a beating from critics, with many calling it boring. Compared to an Avengers-sized extravaganza, there’s no doubt that this film is simple in its execution. It’s really a character study, but if you’ve seen Unbreakable you wouldn’t expect something bigger or flashier. Shyamalan even teases the audience and the genre a bit in the third act, flaunting a brand new skyscraper as the setting for a big showdown, but that’s not the game he’s really playing. That would be too much like a regular superhero story, and Shyamalan is working with something more internal. I’ve never been a huge Shyamalan fan, but it’s a pleasure to see him working with twists that work toward the story’s greater meaning again, and don’t just serve as a cheap shock.