A glass half empty.

Cast your mind back to the end of the 20th century and a movie landscape bereft of superheroes. A world where The Avengers was just Ralph Fiennes running around town in a bowler hat and Batman still had Batnipples. These were dark days for the superhero movie, kids.

Then, like a dormant power brought forth by the trauma of watching Arnie pun his way through Batman & Robin, the turn of the millennium saw the superhero movie step out from the shadows. With the solid groundwork laid by 1998’s Blade, we began getting some X-Men here and a little Spider-Man there and, before you knew it, we had ourselves the foundations of a full-blown genre.

But, while these A-list heroes hogged the headlines, one of the most intriguing and financially successful superhero movies of the time quietly went about its business, untroubled by all the leather and spandex flying about around it.

Long before DC ran the term ‘grounded’ into the – umm – ground, Unbreakable came out of nowhere with a gritty, low-key dissection of the superhero that would further cement director M. Night Shyamalan as the man of the moment after his big break with The Sixth Sense. It was a fascinating and atmospheric examination of a genre that was still in its infancy and while the film was impressive at the time, it has developed a whole new angle 19 years on, with the superhero movie now the apex predator of the worldwide box office. 

But that was then, and this is now, and while there’s certainly something to be said about the world of comic book movies in the current climate, is M. Night Shyamalan really the one to be saying it?

Shortly after the events of Split, David Dunn (Bruce Willis) – now operating as a fully-fledged superhero vigilante under the alias ‘The Overseer’ – is on the hunt for Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy), a sufferer of dissociative identity disorder who is holding another group of young girls hostage. With David in hot pursuit, a series of escalating events sees him face to face with ‘The Beast’ – the most dangerous of all Kevin’s 23 personalities – while the shadowy presence of Elijah ‘Mr. Glass’ Price (Samuel L. Jackson) emerges as an orchestrator who holds secrets crucial to both supernatural men.

For an M. Night Shyamalan movie, Split was relatively bereft of the director’s now-patented plot twists. That was, however, until the very end when, to the genuine surprise of everyone, he dropped the bomb that (SPOILER ALERT – although considering where we are right now, the cat is well and truly out of the bag) we’d been watching a quasi-sequel to 2000’s Unbreakable all along.

Now, the twist was a clunky one, no doubt about it, but there’s no denying just how blindsided I was by the thought of Split being connected (even in a backdated kind of way) to one of the most impressive efforts in Shyamalan’s entire filmography. In a career of twists, this was Shyamalan’s twistiest; however, for all its cunning, it was a promise that the director really had to deliver on for it to have any lasting impact.

But, while Shyamalan has made good on at least some of that promise by actually delivering a finale to this most unlikely of trilogies, it certainly isn’t a satisfying one. 

Glass is a film full to the brim with potential as both an expansion of a unique cinematic universe and the final chapter to both Unbreakable and Split. Yet, ultimately, it’s an idea bereft of substance as Shyamalan comes up empty just when you thought his flagging career was on the mend. 

There’s something oddly compelling about a Shyamalaniverse (or, you know, whatever you want to call it), especially one that builds on the lore set down by two of his most successful movies to date, yet it’s nothing more than an underwhelming conclusion to a once promising trilogy.

Packed with promise though it may be, what we’re left with is a two-hour slog of tedious exposition, pompous superhero commentary, bone-shatteringly dull action, and a distinct lack of originality. Perhaps expectations were too high after Split or maybe the pressure of a career revival got to the director. Whatever the case, Glass must go down as one of the most disappointing efforts in a filmography that has had its fair share of let-downs.

While the scaled down, low-key approach is admirable in an era when superhero movies appear on a mission to outdo one another with CGI spectacle, the plot does nothing to back it up with anything truly engaging. Shot almost entirely in a single location, Glass shuffles about slowly and aimlessly with all the urgency of a doped-up Mr. Glass as Shyamalan’s proclivity for painfully long, drawn-out scenes suck all the life from the film.

After a promising opening section in which we see David go full vigilante as he hunts down Kevin/The Horde/The Beast - resulting in the kind of taught tension Shyamalan is so good at if he puts his mind to it - we’re whisked off to a sparsely populated mental institution, where we remain for the rest of the film. From this moment on, Glass crawls along at a snail’s pace and while it’s clear the director’s approach is intended to make up for the lack of big budget action with moody atmospherics, it winds up having the exact opposite effect. 

We’re offered interesting origins for the central trio’s superhuman abilities, yet they are so clumsily executed that it’s hard to muster the energy to care. Shyamalan’s films tend to work best when characters aren’t actually speaking and this is certainly true of Glass as his script falls flat on its face, largely through an irksome desire to explain absolutely everything to us ad nauseam.

Shyamalan’s dialogue swings from the sublime to ridiculous to the downright atrocious as he showcases the best and worst sides of himself as a writer and a filmmaker. Flat, exposition-heavy, and severely lacking purpose, the writing largely consists of sluggish, haughty monologues about the nature of superheroes that may have been appropriate two decades ago but feel completely redundant now. Thankfully it’s not all a total washout, yet, at its worst, the dialogue in Glass represents the nadir of Shyamalan’s career - and with a back catalogue that includes The Lady in the Water, The Happening, and The Last Airbender that’s quite something.

This would largely be forgivable if the performances carried it all, yet almost everyone is shamefully wasted. As the best of the bunch, James McAvoy at least shows some enthusiasm for a role that may feel like you’re watching the actor’s showreel yet showcases his astounding range perfectly. Despite what remains a rather questionable portrayal of mental illness, McAvoy rises above the shaky material to give a (quite literally) muscular performance that’s jam packed with commitment.

Which, unfortunately, is more than can be said for Bruce Willis, who has about as much presence in the film as his spectral character from The Sixth Sense. In a career that has been steadily circling the DVD bargain bin for a while now, you’d think the chance to team up with the director that gave him some of the best moments of his career would’ve woken him from his hibernation but, if anything, Glass sees him regress even further.

Elsewhere, Sam Jackson disappointingly spends two-thirds of his own bloody film under heavy sedation, while Sarah Paulson’s Dr. Ellie Staple sounds like she’s been dipping into Mr. Glass’ drug stash too with one of the flattest characters you’re ever likely to come across. And that’s all before you get to the complete waste of returning characters like Anya Taylor-Joy’s Casey who, despite Glass taking place just three weeks after the traumatic events of Split, appears to be getting along just fine and has even found herself a new stylist in the interim.

As is customary with any Shyamalan outing, there are twists aplenty and much of your time watching Glass will be spent in an ongoing guessing game regarding them. In many ways, this has all become part of the M. Night Shyamalan moviegoing experience, yet, as is abundantly clear here, it feels increasingly like an attempt to distract us from the poor quality of the script.

Plot twists are nice when supplemented by solid writing, otherwise they can feel lazy and hackneyed, but while some of Glass’ misdirections work well enough, others die on their arse. After the painfully slow build up, Shyamalan proceeds to jump the shark completely in the final act with so many twists and turns it’ll leave you dazed, confused, and wholly unsatisfied.

This dissatisfaction is compounded by a final showdown so underwhelming it undermines anything remotely good that Glass has offered to that point. The lacklustre nature of this final battle between all our key players speaks to the inherent problems with the entire film and how a lack of budget can undercut you if you’re not careful.

In many ways, Shyamalan desperately wants Glass to be a pertinent comment on superhero movies, all while trying as hard as he can to craft the film into one. But, while that would be perfectly fine if Glass had the skill and ingenuity to have its cake and eat it, the final act blows things big time by falling awkwardly between two stalls and coming off completely unsure of what it wants to be. 

Partnering with Blumhouse and working within a super-tight budget is all well and good but despite Glass working fairly well within these restrictions to an extent, when the big final battle between all your headline heroes and villains descends into what amounts to an awkward dust-up in a hospital car park, there can be no other way to look at it than a massive disappointment.

Neither Unbreakable nor Split were your archetypal superhero film and while it’s good to see Glass steer clear from all the CGI smashy-crashy stuff that can bog down even the best examples of the genre, something just doesn’t click with Shyamalan’s approach this time out.

At many points throughout his career, Shyamalan has been his own worst enemy with an annoying habit of over-egging the pudding and, despite signs he was calming down and returning to the basics with tight, tense efforts like The Visit and Split, we find him right back at square one again with Glass as he tries desperately to pad out his new universe. 

After a brief renaissance (a Shyamanaissance perhaps?), M. Night Shyamalan is back to his old tricks with a thoroughly unsatisfying end to what was a very promising trilogy. With flat, exposition-heavy dialogue; wasted stars; a ponderous and poorly paced plot; and an utterly underwhelming final act, Glass cracks under the weight of the pressure its director has put on it. While admirable in its intentions to be a commentary on the status of superheroes in society, Glass lacks the finesse to pull it off convincingly. A hell of a lot has happened to the comic book movie since Unbreakable hit cinemas 19 years ago and while there’s certainly a lot to be said about superheroes in the current cultural climate, judging by Glass, M. Night Shyamalan probably isn’t the best one to be doing the talking.