Nineteen years later, filmmaker M Night Shyamalan has finally closed his Unbreakable trilogy. Sam Jackson and Bruce Willis do not skip a beat, re-entering their seminal early 00s characters while James McAvoy expands upon his already career-high performance as The Horde.
Shyamalan’s final entry to the journey of David Dunn, Elijah Price, and Kevin Wendell Crumb has brought on a maddening and overly critical reception, yet the film subverts expectations of being a gigantic superhero showdown with a mind-blowing big reveal; instead it is a darkly twisted and frankly ballsy bookend to where everything had originally started in 2000.
Shyamalan delicately weaves the closing of Split into the pre-existing world of David Dunn. A lot of questions are answered from the last time we saw Dunn, but plenty remains. What is fascinating about the picture is how the three main characters stories have been woven into one two-hour film.
Dunn and his son (same actor from Unbreakable) run a security firm, and Dunn has still been active, labeled The Overseer by the tabloids, the Horde is on the loose and has been savagely sacrificing cheerleaders, and Mr. Glass has been dormant, heavily sedated in a psych ward.
What is wickedly marvellous about the picture is that Shyamalan went back to making a film for him, not for an audience that is banking on some heady twist that offers up a divine revelation.
It is best not to question or have a preconceived, templated narrative in mind when viewing the film because Glass doesn’t go anywhere as expected, building to a third act and a climax that is equal parts satisfying as it is heartbreaking. The seminal personal relationships of parent and child and star-crossed lovers are main focal points of the film and are shot and constructed in such a magnificent way.
There is one shot of the film, that starts the climax that might just be the best scene of Shyamalan’s career. The film concludes in such an insanely bold manner, it takes the trilogy from intimate worldbuilding and expands into the stratosphere within the reserved world that had been seen prior.
Glass may not work on many levels for audiences who have been conditioned by a melting pot of superhero films that bend over backward to stick to whatever the new socially aware fad is rampant, because it is an intelligent and grounded working of the same template, but in a way that has never been done before.
The film doesn’t strive to empower, sell merchandise, or reboot a reboot – it is a brilliant and rewarding conclusion that shatters into an exhilarating and emotionally exhausting experience.
Review by Frank Mengarelli
Summary
M. Night Shyamalan ends his trilogy with an unforgiving risk that has enraged audiences, yet it is an absolute perfect closing to his superhero trilogy.
