Film review: ‘Glass’

M. Night Shyamalan, who has entered the throwaway January release period of his directorial career, has returned to kick off 2019.

To be widely considered the worst director in Hollywood, you can’t rest on your laurels - you have to prove your awfulness every time out. From “The Village,” to “The Last Airbender” to “The Visit,” Shyamalan has plumbed the depths. And he’s cooked up another fine mess with “Glass.” Every time you start to worry that he might accidentally make a non-terrible film, he reconfirms your belief in cinema crafted to be scoffed at and flipped past when you’re scanning cable channels at 2 a.m.

Because “Glass” is the capstone to a trilogy that includes “Unbreakable” and “Split,” we are re-introduced to characters from those other execrable movies. There is Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy) a man with 23 different personalities who is, when we meet him, terrorizing a group of cheerleaders. He’s thwarted by David Dunn (Bruce Willis) the guy from “Unbreakable,” who can’t be hurt or injured and travels around in a poncho pummeling bad guys. And there’s also Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson) - although he prefers “First name Mister, last name Glass” - a criminal mastermind who has killed scores.

The characters find themselves in the same mental facility, thanks to Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson), a doctor who “specializes in people who think they are superheroes.” Like the famous Three Christs of Ypsilanti, she isolates the men and tries to fix their delusions of grandeur - but no one can fix Shyamalan’s. He goes not once, not twice, but three times to a comic book store as the characters find inspiration by… flipping through fake comics at random. You learn a lot of important history from the nerds hanging out there, such as, “The first Superman couldn’t even fly!”

As Dr. Staple interviews her patients at stultifying length, we see that Shyamalan can’t even film dialogue in a proper two-shot technique, instead letting the camera wander all around the room, in search of something more interesting than his script.

As for the acting, McAvoy’s ventriloquism is impressive in its own way, but turns laughable when he yokes up to The Beast personality and starts climbing the walls (one of the other personalities - the kid who can never grow old - stands in for the viewer Shyamalan requires). It turns out being trapped in one body with 23 personalities is less horrifying than being trapped in a movie theater with all M. Night’s ideas.

Willis and Jackson, limited actors who need great writing (like they got from Elmore Leonard in “Jackie Brown”) get no breaks from Shyamalan’s brutal screenplay. Glass prattles through nothing but boilerplate “A lot of people are going to die” speeches, and Dunn’s most memorable dialogue is a goofy conversation he has about Salt Bae.

The protagonists are visited by Casey Cooke (Anya Taylor-Joy) the one The Beast let get away in “Split,” David’s son Joseph (Spencer Treat Clark), and Elijah’s mom (Charlayne Woodard) who gawk in horror at the facility then leave.

As must be the case, Kevin, David and Mister Glass don’t stay forever enclosed in their cages at Raven Hill Memorial. In part to show they are just average mental patients, in part to facilitate the inevitable breakout, the dangerous men are guarded by just one staffer. The problem is that, by the time Shyamalan’s complicated board game is all set up, you’ve forgotten why you wanted to play at all and have been asleep for an hour.

Shyamalan ends things, as he is contractually obligated to do, with a big twist. But this one is so heavily telegraphed that even us non-geniuses are likely to see it coming.