Turkey (zero stars). Rated PG-13, and much too generously, for gore, violence, dramatic intensity and profanity
By Derrick Bang
This may not be M. Night Shyamalan’s worst film — The Last Airbender will hold that trophy, forever and always — but damn, it runs a close second.
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| Restrained and shackled for a group interview, our three misfits — from left, Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy) and Davis Dunn (Bruce Willis) — await their next encounter with specialist shrink Dr. Ellie Staple. |
Mind you, this is amid considerable competition; Shyamalan also is responsible for bottom-of-the-barrel dreck such as The Visit, Lady in the Water and After Earth.
Nor do these statements tell the entire story. Airbender isn’t merely a Shyamalan stinker; it was by far the worst big-budget studio film of 2010. And even though we’re only halfway through January, I feel quite confident in dismissing Glass as the worst studio film of this year.
Shyamalan has become an insufferably arrogant and self-indulgent filmmaker: one who feels that his cinematic contributions are akin to Moses delivering unto us the 10 Commandments. The signs are obvious: the measured, portentous line readings, with individual words separated by pauses so pregnant they could deliver; the needlessly weird camera angles, which serve no purpose save to call attention to themselves; the protracted, silent close-ups on cast members, as if to suggest they’re always Thinking Weighty Thoughts; and a torturously lethargic pace — and deadly dull storyline — that could make watching paint dry the height of entertainment.
I long ago grew suspicious of any film that opens in the office of a psychiatrist or psychologist; with very few exceptions, they’re inevitably bombs. And while it’s true Glass doesn’t do so, we spend an unbearable amount of time listening to shrink Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson) prattle away, often with cinematographer Mike Gioulakis’ camera just this side of being jammed up her nostrils.
On top of which, poor Paulson spends most of the film buried beneath enough make-up to satisfy every member of the Radio City Rockettes. Honestly, she looks like an embalmed corpse, newly risen from the grave.
Is all this pancake, rouge and eye shadow somehow intended to be Significant? Who knows? Who cares?
Shyamalan would have us believe that Glass is the final installment in his so-called “Eastrail 177 Trilogy,” supposedly gestating ever since 2000’s Unbreakable. To borrow the phrase that has become the rallying cry of Florida’s Parkland teen activists, I call bullshit. Shyamalan’s merely re-writing history to grant his newest film even more cachet, when it deserves none at all.
It is true that Glass blends the characters from Unbreakable and his most recent previous film: 2016’s tawdry Split, which rose above distasteful torture-porn rubbish only because of star James McAvoy’s enthusiastic rendering of a guy with dissociative identity disorder and 24 distinct personalities (some of them rather nasty).
McAvoy’s Kevin Wendell Crumb is back — along with his 23 other selves — and so are David Dunn (Bruce Willis) and Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), the latter two from Unbreakable. All are native to Shyamalan’s beloved Philadelphia, where — during the course of Split — McAvoy’s serial killer/cannibal, dubbed The Horde, did dreadful things to a trio of high school girls.
Glass picks up in the immediate wake of that tasty escapade, with reluctant hero Dunn patrolling Philadelphia’s mean streets in an effort to identify The Horde, who has kidnapped a fresh four-pack of high school cheerleaders.
For those in need of catching up, Dunn was the improbable sole survivor of the commuter train wreck that opened Unbreakable. Several encounters with rare comic book collector Elijah Price, who firmly believes in the existence of actual superheroes, led Dunn to discover that he has super strength, is impervious to injury or illness, and can sense the evil deeds of others, simply by touching them.
The wheelchair-bound yet hyper-intelligent Elijah, in turn, is the physical opposite; he suffers from a bizarre medical condition that makes his bones shatter at the slightest impact. Alas, it ultimately turned out that Elijah is a veteran mass murderer who has orchestrated all manner of major catastrophes — including the train wreck — in order to “prove” his theory that enhanced beings walk among us.
Elijah has since been confined to a high-security room at the Raven Hill Memorial Psychiatric Research Hospital, where he has come under the care of Dr. Staple. In the outer world, Dunn does catch up with The Horde, but — before their wall-shattering melee can be decided either way — they’re both captured by police and shipped off to Raven Hill.
(This high-security facility, with its extremely dangerous patients, apparently is staffed each night by only one nurse/aide. Is this begging for trouble? You betcha.)
As she repeatedly reminds us, the authoritative Dr. Staple specializes in a specific type of delusions of grandeur: people who believe they are comic book characters. She therefore begins a regimen of counter-arguments that increasingly, persuasively refute all of the supposedly extraordinary talents possessed by her three patients.
Yeah, right. One can but snicker.
Except that this goes on for well over half of this film’s butt-numbing 129 minutes, so our snickers rapidly become sighs of weary disgust. Like, geez, will it never end?
And Shyamalan expects us to swallow this nonsense? Even acknowledging his fondness for plot twists, there’s obviously no way these three guys aren’t the selves we’ve witnessed in those two previous films. Suggesting otherwise, and devoting so much effort to do so, is an unendurable waste of time.
When this bomb finally fizzles into half-hearted life in the final 25 minutes, yes, Shyamalan pulls off another “surprise” … although it’s not much of a revelation, since anybody with half an ounce of sense can smell it coming long, long before.
McAvoy once again has great fun with his multiple roles, the most notable being 9-year-old Kevin, authoritative Patricia and the horrific Beast. McAvoy is engaging, seductive and, yes, even funny at times … but he operates in a vacuum. He’s merely a frequent distraction in this lumbering flick: a nightclub act in search of a coherent plot.
Willis falls back on his signature stoicism as the quietly morose Dunn, who displays an actual personality only in the presence of his son Joseph (Spencer Treat Clark, in a nice bit of return casting, since he was just a little boy in Unbreakable). Elijah spends most of the film in what appears to be a waking coma, although we know better; Jackson suggests considerable activity taking place in the feverish mind behind that vacant stare.
Anya Taylor-Joy’s Casey Cooke, the sole surviving girl from Split, also returns. In one of this lame script’s most unbelievable plot points, rather than suffering from PTSD and shrieking nightmares — after having watched The Horde devour her two friends — Casey wants to help this monster, because (ahem) she feels sorry for the base personality of Kevin.
Shyamalan justifies all of this with didactic, eye-rolling “explanations” about Casey having suffered herself, and therefore her heart is pure, because — as The Beast tells her — “the broken are more evolved.” Blend this with Elijah’s similarly long-winded lectures about comic book gobbledygook, and all one can do is laugh.
In derision, not appreciation.
Comic book nerds apparently worship Shyamalan, because many of his films validate their fixations. That’s a rather small demographic to target, particularly when it’s done so clumsily and condescendingly.
Absolutely none of his laughably overcooked dialog is credible, regardless of who speaks which line; at no time do any of these characters look or sound like real people.
And if Shyamalan can’t even handle that much, why grant him the courtesy of our time and patience?
Paulson’s final primal shriek perfectly mirrored my own reaction, at that same moment … albeit for entirely different reasons.
Proceed at your own risk.
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