So yesterday, I took myself to the movies and saw Glass, M. Night Shyamalamalan’s (spelling?) latest mind-bending WHAT-IS-HAPPENING movie and also the sequel to both 2000’s Unbreakable and 2016’s Split.

Now when I saw Split, the big twist ending (shoving Bruce Willis in there to reveal that Split and Unbreakable are in the same cinematic universe, the Shyamaverse?) was kind of lost on me as I never saw Unbreakable. I loved Split, however, so I caught up and learned as much as I could about both films and their respective universes to prepare for Glass.

I still don’t think I was prepared enough. I mean what is it with movies this year and saying “oh?? you want a twist? Okay yeah. OH WHAT’S THAT?? MORE TWISTS????? OH LOOK HERE’S ANOTHER ONE!!!! TWISTS FOR EVERYONE!!!!!!”

That’s not a bad thing either!! At least I don’t think so. A good twist (or seventeen) really makes you think AND makes you want to watch the film again to look for clues you missed. It’s diabolical really.

So without further ado, let’s break open this “comic book” movie and shatter everything you thought you knew about this universe.

Pun game still strong.

THE PLOT

We begin approximately three-ish weeks after the events of Split, but that’s not the important timeline detail for you to remember: just as Glass is coming out 19 years after Unbreakable, this movie’s events take place 19 years after Unbreakable’s events. While this INCREDIBLY cool music plays, we go back and forth between following David Dunn (Bruce Willis) in his trademark rain poncho and Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy) in his…kidnap factory. The usual. David is in a bit of a vigilante routine at this point (his cover is “I’m taking a walk”) but we see he’s in headphone contact with his son, Joseph Dunn (Spencer Treat Clark), while he walks. After taking down two punks who contributed nothing to the plot or society, we learn that Dunn & Son are trying to track down the person/persons responsible for all the kidnapped girls recently. David runs into Hedwig (one of Crumb’s personalities) on the street and gets a vision of the latest group of girls, leading David to track down the factory where the girls are being kept alone, despite his son’s wishes. David manages to free the girls, but he runs into The Beast (another Crumb personality) and the two have an eeeepic battle in the factory. It does lead to one of the girls being whacked by a table (although I guess all she gets is a broken arm?? They try to use this against David later but like if he hadn’t done anything she’d be Beast food????) and both David and The Beast breaking through a window to fall to the ground below, where suddenly somehow there are police cars and guys with guns surrounding them and Sarah Paulson telling everyone not to shoot. Through the headphone microphone, Joseph hears where they are taking his father and Crumb and he learns it’s a psychiatric facility.

Finally there we see Samuel L. Jackson’s Elijah Price (or as we better know him, Mr. Glass). Sarah Paulson plays Dr. Ellie Staple, and her job is to convince our three misfits that they actually have a very specific disorder that causes them to BELIEVE they are superhuman, when in actuality, they’re not, just normal people who are a little broken (GET IT??? IT’S CALLED GLASS???? SYMBOLISM!!).

The rest of the movie is a test on both the characters and the audience as everyone is forced to review what they know about these characters and if it is, in fact, all a lie, and what they’re going to do about it.

THE REVIEW

Generally, Glass appears to be getting mixed reviews. There are people who loved Unbreakable and didn’t like Split so they don’t know what to make of this movie, there are people who loved both and had their own ideas for this movie and then were collectively disappointed and miffed when those ideas didn’t happen, there are people who hate the entire film but are still in awe of James McAvoy’s incredible, INCREDIBLE acting and his ability to flip from one character to an entirely different one in a matter of seconds. For me personally? I really, really loved it. And I love it more the more I think about it (as we discussed with Escape Room, my favorite movies are ones that make me think about them afterwards!). I thought it was frustrating and poignant in powerful ways, and heartfelt when it needed to be. We’ll get to the characters later, but it was incredible to feel myself questioning why I was rooting for the “bad guys.” Were they really the bad guys in the end? I was questioning everything the whole way through and I LOVED IT.

Every detail felt carefully placed, from the music to the color to the camerawork. It was a distressing ending on one hand but an empowering ending on the other. It was funny when it needed to be, heartbreaking when it needed to be, suspenseful when it needed to be, and made me want to punch Sarah Paulson in the face. And I love Sarah Paulson!

Okay, time to go into further details so SPOILER WARNING if you haven’t seen the movie yet!! And this is a Shyamalan film, so you know there’s a twist. Or, like I said earlier, a whole lot of twists. If you’re on the fence about the movie but you liked Split or Unbreakable and generally like Shyamalan films or this sounds like something you’d enjoy, I recommend seeing it first before reading further. If the details don’t bother you and you’re okay being spoiled before you see it, read on!

THE MUSIC

YOU GUYS. THE MUSIC. THE MUSIC!!!

Ohhhhhh MAN the music was great! It was so strange and anxiety-inducing when appropriate, and then it would switch and suddenly be really heartfelt and sad and you were sitting there like “whY aM I cRYinG??” Apparently the composer, West Dylan Thordson (also composer for Split) also mixed in some key themes from Unbreakable so it fully was a cinematic universe down to even the music?? I just. UGH. I can’t say enough about it. Even the track titles fill me with emotion (I mean, “Kevin & Casey”?? REALLY. WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS.)

Notable music moments include the opening track with the montage and anxiety and opening credits flitting all over the screen, it was an experience, the moment when David is slumped over in his room remembering moments from Unbreakable but questioning his powers, the big parking lot showdown, and of course that entire finale piece. And again, the finale piece is called “Origin Story” which is like oh, look, I’m crying again.

THE CHARACTERS

Absolutely one of my favorite elements of this movie and this TRILOGY have been the characters. Mr. Glass and David are PERFECT foils to each other, and the way that Kevin is revealed to be connected to them both is just heartbreaking. None of them are perfect by any means, of course: Elijah is a genius mass murderer, Kevin is a broken kidnapper/cannibal (does it count as cannibalism if it’s The Beast personality?), and even David is weak, quick to believe Ellie, and often acts without thinking (okay not as bad as the other two BUT the point is none of them are perfect superheroes, okay). All the characters are tied into the overall symbolism of the film: when you look at them through lenses (Mr. Glass as the genius evil mastermind, Kevin as his beastly underling, David as the superhero, Ellie as the caring, reality-driven psychiatrist, Joseph as the starstruck little boy, Casey as the battered final girl, and Mrs. Price as the mother of a mistake), you do not and cannot get the full picture. Elijah has only ever wanted a body that could keep up with his intellect, and if you were in his situation, wouldn’t you? Kevin’s personalities developed as a way to protect him from his incredibly abusive mother. David has massive survivor’s guilt both because of the train incident AND his wife is dead now too. Ellie is blinded by her belief that what she’s doing is right. Joseph never saw his father as JUST a superhero but as a whole person. Casey put her uncle behind bars and genuinely cares for Kevin as a kindred spirit; she is not happy about outliving him, or about him being caught initially in the first place. She is not hiding her scars from the world anymore! Mrs. Price loves Elijah and believes he is capable of good, but the world was not good to him.

There are so many sides to every character, not just Kevin with his multiple personalities. You initially want to feel one way about them because of how they’re presented, but as the movie goes on, you realize you can’t do that. These are not two-dimensional characters on a screen, these are whole, broken people in awful situations, and aren’t we all? We cannot dehumanize any of them. Even Ellie, after the horrid reveal, breaks down in a hallway and screams, showing she is not as perfectly put together as she seems. She’s scared, and angry, and human.

I could go on forever, I really could. But really, hats off to Shyamalan for characters that are so well-developed. You want them to do well, and it breaks you when they don’t. When they can’t.

THE ART

I have to talk about the scenery, costumes, and general design all in one category because it all connects together and tbh visually this film is absolutely a work of art.

One of my favorite elements of The Sixth Sense is the use of color, and in that film, it was the bright red seen throughout that gave clues. Color plays an equally important role in this film, and it goes from bright, to muted, to bright again, and then finally to just what I would call rich. It mirrors the mental and emotional state of our characters, it gives visual cues, it sets up Ellie as a sweet, caring pastel individual when really she is full of evil, so on and so forth.

Every character, as seen in the shot above, has a specific color that is kind of theirs. It was also used in another theatrical poster for the film. Elijah’s color being purple is something that carried over from Unbreakable; it’s a color of royalty and power. Kevin’s color is kind of a mustard yellow, and it’s very reminiscent of Split, with the sickly lighting of the zoo facility and the bright fall leaves of Casey’s hunting memories. David’s color is interestingly enough a sort of teal, which mixes both the idea of blue being both a “hero” and “good” color psychologically to the fact that his weakness is water. He’s constantly surrounded by the very thing that haunts him.

IT’S JUST

Ellie’s color is a pastel pink, although she really just keeps a pastel color palette throughout the film (when she’s not wearing stark white). It makes her seem gentle and like she truly wants the best for our three misfits, which makes it all the more frustrating when she seems to be torturing them instead and then oh, wait, yeah no she’s completely evil. Great.

Though the use of color is the most obvious artistic aspect to the film, the camerawork is also incredible. There are multiple scenes where the camera takes the viewpoint of Mr. Glass, so we see everything from his point of view (sometimes even tilted slightly since his head seems to be permanently flopped over when he’s sedated). There’s a moment where Joseph storms out of the hospital and the camera follows him, flipping upside-down and around to show Joseph’s mental state-is everything he knows, everything he so strongly believes in, really a lie?

There are extreme closeups, reflections, a strong emphasis on the visual of shattered glass, again, I could go on and on and on and on, and I still probably wouldn’t catch everything.

This is why I love watching The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Split multiple times-it’s a layered cinematic experience, and you catch something new every single time. I will absolutely be adding Glass to this list (even though that will mean crying a lot more).

THE TWIST(S)

Because it ain’t a Shyamalan movie if there ain’t a TWIST.

Or like 12 billion.

I guess the initial twist is that Elijah has been switching his medication and only pretending to be sedated, but that’s an early-on reveal and COME ON, did any of us really think he was letting them sedate him??? It’s Mr. Glass, y’all. Let’s be real. (“let’s be real” she says about…a movie character who is fictional).

There’s an interesting semi-twist where the audience, just like the characters, may be starting to believe that there truly is nothing supernatural about them-they’re just normal, if broken. It’s sad, man, but fear not-they actually ARE superhumans! The Beast IS real, Elijah IS a genius, and David really IS unbreakable. Hoorah!

The next twist serves to further connect all three characters: Kevin’s father, who was Kevin’s role model, and who left Kevin alone with his mother with no explanation which meant ~time for multiple personalities and lots of abuse~, actually DIED. And not only that, he was ON THE SAME TRAIN DAVID DUNN WAS ON IN UNBREAKABLE.

Mr. Glass, like he says in the film, created both Kevin as The Beast and David as the superhero.

WhaaaAAAAAAAAAAT!

And now you’re thinking cool! So that’s how they’re all connected, and how they’ve been all connected! Where can we go from here? Will they show the world they exist?? HOW EPIC WILL IT BE???

aaaaaaaand then they’re dead.

No.

Really.

Kevin starts us off by revenge-crushing Mr. Glass’s shoulder and punching him in the ribs. He then falls out of his chair, unable to hold himself up, and with each impact you hear his bones breaking (GET IT BECAUSE THE MOVIE IS CALLED GLASS??? GET IT????). He crawls over to his mother, who sits with him while he coughs up blood, I’m assuming from his ribs breaking and puncturing various organs. It’s…yeah.

Kevin still wants to fight David, but Casey gets to Kevin and manages to talk The Beast down. YEAH. She hugs him and asks Kevin to “stay in the light with her for a little while” (CATCH ME CRYING IN THE CLUB). The Beast becomes Kevin, and just when you think everything’s fine, Casey notices a red laser light on her shoulder, and when she turns to look, the light is now on Kevin, and he gets shot. The shooter, we see, has some kind of black clover tattoo on the inside of his wrist. Kevin collapses in Casey’s arms, various personalities say goodbye to her or talk about pain (Hedwig in particular asks Casey to make the pain stop and you hear that sound? That’s my heart breaking). Finally, Kevin comes back into the light and says he’ll stay in the light till the end. He dies in Casey’s arms.

David is pulled aside by a group of masked awful terrible people who start holding his head down in a pothole of water. Ellie comes up and asks David to take her hand, where he gets a vision of her in a creepy dining room with other creepy evil people. She says that in the comic books there’s always some evil organization trying to stop everyone-but they’re not like that. They’re not evil. They’re just right. This means that the ENTIRE DAMN TIME she was being sweet to them and gently trying to convince them they have a disorder, she KNEW that they actually WERE SUPERHUMAN and she was just TORTURING THEM. David notices that Ellie also has the black clover tattoo. Ellie walks away and the masked people finish drowning David. We later see Joseph, who was separated from his dad, running to his dad’s body and sobbing.

We cut back one last time to Elijah, talking with his mother. It was a little hard to make out, but Elijah and his mom are discussing his life being a limited release, and she doesn’t know how it ends because he never told her. Elijah simply says that no, this was never a limited release…it was an origin story.

So that’s it, right? Our three misfits are dead, and the supervillain got away with EVERYTHING.

Except NOPE.

WE AIN’T DONE YET.

Ellie goes back to her secret black clover tattoo society of evil declaring that everything is fine, and she’ll move on to the next city and do the same thing all over again. The entire movie, our three misfits have been questioning “why are we the only ones??” and now we know why-there have been more, there are more, Ellie’s just finishing them off. Before she leaves, Ellie stops in a comic book store (perhaps to gloat?) and overhears some comics fans discussing the mastermind trope. They say that the mastermind always has a real plan behind a fake one-and no one sees it coming.

Ellie realizes that there may be something to this, so she goes back to the hospital to make sure that all security footage of the misfits has been erased. The guy working there says yeah for sure, except oh NO Mr. Glass is a genius you FOOLS. Mr. Glass downloaded the security footage along with a monologue of sorts and sent it to his mother, who (I’m assuming) sends it to both Joseph and Casey. The three meet up and sit together in a train station (BECAUSE TRAINS!!! UNBREAKABLE!!!) and watch as the footage goes viral. The superhuman truth is out there now-people know they exist.

And other superhumans may realize they’re not alone.

Ellie realizes that this was Mr. Glass’s plan all along. It’s interesting to note that during the final battle, Glass refers to Casey, Joseph, and Mrs. Price as “the main characters’ entrance” when they arrive. Because remember, it’s not a limited edition-it’s an origin story.

“OOF” MOMENT

The only real “awkward” scene for me (there is an unfortunate lack of crazy dance scene from Hedwig, although he has a rollerskating scene) is in the beginning when Ellie and her soldiers interrupt The Beast’s and David’s fight. How…did they find them?? How did they get set up to surround them so perfectly??? I just…what?

The entire ending death montage is absolutely heartbreaking and I hate it, but the other real gutting moment is after that meeting in the pink room when Ellie got into their heads and we see David just crouched in a corner of his room all broken and sad and doubting and I just Bruce Willis looks so old and sad here I just please give the man a hug please.

FAVORITE MOMENT

Honestly there are so many good ones, but one that totally stands out is the first time Casey comes to visit and she talks with the various personalities and we see that her touch is incredibly healing to Kevin and that’s also when she says she put her uncle behind bars for what he did to her and just YES GIRL. YES.

Also the scene where Ellie realizes she’s lost is INCREDIBLY satisfying.

SHOULD YOU TAKE YOURSELF TO THIS MOVIE?

If you read this and think it sounds interesting, if you like Shyamalan movies, if you like pretty movies, if you like movies with an uplifting ending after all hope seems lost, if you like the actors, or if you just wanna marvel at James McAvoy’s incredible work with every one of his characters, I say go for it and take yourself to this movie! If this doesn’t sound like it’s something you’d enjoy, I don’t think it’s a movie you need to see. I think it’s a great movie and I really, really enjoyed it, but I also think it’s not necessarily for everyone! But in general, I give this movie:

4.5/5 COLOR-CODED SHARDS OF GLASS!

Yes everyone meet our new rating system! It’ll change depending on the movie, of course. If it’s a movie I think EVERYONE should see regardless of it being your cup of tea or not, I’ll give it that coveted 5/5 somethings.

This movie didn’t quite make it there, but I still think it’s quite good and I recommend giving it a try! You’ll cry a lot. And laugh a little! And want to punch Sarah Paulson.

(I still love her)

TRAILERS TO WATCH OUT FOR

We had a couple repeats (Pet Sematary, Miss Bala, and Happy Death Day 2 U) which we’ve discussed already, but we got some new ones to look out for! The Best of Enemies looks amazing, it’ll definitely be an emotional rollercoaster, but like an important one. Plus we know overall how it ends because of history, so the ending can’t be too sad hopefully please I have no more tears. Fighting with My Family actually…looks really good??? I was so skeptical because the poster made it look just weird and like another The Rock flick filled with explosions and bad CGI, BUT this looks surprisingly heartfelt and funny and like…good?? Us looks AMAZING. It was so fun to see the trailer on the bigscreen for the first time! I mean don’t get me wrong, I’m TERRIFIED and that movie will give me nightmares for YEARS probably, but I’m hoping Jordan Peele can give us another social thriller filled with great characters and things to make you THINK. And also lots of jumpscares probably which like not my favorite, but I’ll try it for Jordan Peele. The one trailer that made me just flat out say NOPE was The Curse of La Llorona. It has the potential I’m sure to be a fascinating urban legend-based horror, but that was the MOST ANXIETY-INDUCING TRAILER IN THE WORLD THAT IS EVERY CHILD’S WORST NIGHTMARE PLEASE GET THEM OUT OF THAT CAR. PLEASE.

And that about does it for this review of Glass! I’m sure I’ll find more and more I love or maybe even dislike about it as time goes on, but I’ll say it again, if this sounds like something you’d enjoy, might even like, or you just wanna see James McAvoy play 20+ characters and switch between them in an instant, I recommend taking yourself to the movies to see Glass!