I got the year right on the title! Go me. Seriously, it took three release weeks into the year before there was a movie that was even half interesting to review came out. I had zero interest in Escape Room beyond it’s concept, Replicas is a movie that sat on the shelf for two years – which tells you a lot. A Dogs Way Home isn’t my genre nor is The Upside. Glass is the *only* release this week; and next week is The Kid Who Would Be King and Serenity ..no not that one. I miss the years when I could at least count on an Underworld movie coming out in January to liven things up. This really is one of the worst months of the year for movies and the absolute dump slot for studios to put movies that they have no faith in and just hope they break even on.

Did they catch a break with Glass?

Ok my teaser question was spur of the moment forgive me. In all seriousness, I had interest in this film from the moment I heard about the stinger during Split back during it’s release in January of 2017. I never got around to watching that one as M Night Shyamalan has never personally apologized to me for his Avatar The Last Airbender movie and honestly thinks he did nothing wrong with it. Yes, I am that petty. I already know James McAvoy can act circles around people in his sleep and Anya Taylor-Joy is a fantastic young actress. Shyamalan though, he can suck the life out of any performance and remove all joy from the film going experience. He *is* actually a talented director, but I believe he has bought too much of his own hype and when he released The Visit people began to forgive him, then Split made $130 million for a January release making it one of the top January releases ever.  I am thinking that people have once again forgiven too much.

Glass was written and directed by Shyamalan, per usual, and while I must applaud the effectiveness of linking two different, disparate movies into a third film; it rings…hollow. The concept of a truly downplayed superhero/supervillain origin story and meet up in the age of the Superhero movie is actually inspired so please don’t get me wrong here; but this was too downplayed. Shyamalan’s direction is still soul sucking from otherwise talented actors with only McAvoy being able to rise above it due to the nature of the character. Everyone is so dispassionate, so inhuman in their performances I cannot believe for a moment any of them are real people or even facsimile’s of real people. They feel more like twisted analogues of a perception of normal human behavior – even with extraordinary circumstances. It most certainly is his style, it’s just not one I can find appealing.

From a script perspective; there really isn’t anything here either. No one person gets enough time to really be -except McAvoy. He is, still, amazing and honestly deserves better; but if this pays the bills until his next movie so be it. Samuel L Jackson spends a third of the movie twitching, a third absent, and a third just…holding back his natural presence. That’s fine I guess, but again with the script that’s present nothing comes as a surprise to anyone – I mean anyone – paying attention. Bruce Willis continues to try to remember to be human and what joy is, I am sure one day he will, but until then there is Shyamalan movies. Anya Taylor-Joy tries to overcome the script and lack of dialogue of any meaning – when she’s given dialogue; but cannot quite do it. Sarah Paulson, whom I am told everyone loves on American Horror Story, is literally the worst. Based on everyone’s reaction to her and what we know about Shyamalan’s directing and writing skills, I blame him for everything. On the upside her character elicits an emotion from me and that emotion is her character is hair pullingly aggrivating. Her line reads are what you’d expect from table read where the actors are first getting together. The dialogue itself sounds like bad two am self help infomercials. Nothing about her or this script works for me.

TL:DR?

Yeah I guess we’re at the TL;DR already here. Glass is an exercise in frustration. Nuggets of interesting concepts handled by a distracted squirrel on ketamine. As I write my first review of the year, instead of the general ambivalence I felt leaving the theatre, I find myself getting agitated by the wasted effort, acting, and story beats that worked. Looking forward to the rest of the movies this year, I will be surprised if Glass doesn’t make my worst of list.

Not because it’s badly made, because it isn’t. Because I can tell effort was put in, I can tell people tried to overcome Shyamalan and it failed. The movie is bad because effort was put in and this was the final result.

Should I see it?

Go watch Bumblebee if you haven’t or Spider-Man. I can’t tell anyone in good conscience to see this

Would you see it again?

Making me watch this again should be a war crime or would trigger violence. I am not sure which.

Buying it?

Please see above. I am still getting aggravated thinking this much about it

Aren’t you being kind of harsh?

There are many types of bad movies out there.

There are bad movies because no one tried, or they are a clear cash grab that has no soul. There are bad movies because they had a vision, but not a budget and not the skill to overcome it. There are bad movies because they thought they were good; and so on…

This is actually one of the worst types. This is a movie that is bad that has a lot of effort put in by cast and crew. This is movie that had little to no studio interference to make it so. This is a movie with one man at the helm who has a vision and that vision….isn’t a good one. He has talent, but the vision and style has corrupted it. It’s his vision and we should respect that, but to put all this effort in for a final product like this? It’s just frustrating to endure. So please don’t.

I will see you all in a few weeks when the February releases start.