Plot
David Dunn has been helping the helpless for the last 20 years, as the trench-coated “Overseer”. Now with ‘The Horde’ on the loose, he is trying to find them. When they finally meet, their ‘showdown’ is interrupted by Dr Ellie Staple, a psychiatrist who has them committed to mental asylum.
She believes they are just ordinary men, who think they are superheroes. She also brings Elijah Price out of a years long drug induced catatonic state – and he quickly sides with The Horde, in order to show the world they exist.
Direction
M Night Shyamalan directs this end to his ‘trilogy’ and it is style with little substance.
A lot of fancy camera work/angles and movements show he’s solid behind the camera, but when its paired with a poor narrative and terrible screenplay, its not enough.
I did love the use of colours here, especially how each character has their own specific colour. Glass (Purple)
Cast/Characters
With this being a sequel to Unbreakable AND Split, many people return from both those films
Unbreakable, returning in one of his last pre illness big budget films Bruce Willis (David), Samuel L Jackson (Elijah), Spenser Treat Clark (Joseph Dunn) and Charlayne (Mrs Price).
Returning from Split are James McAvoy (Kevin Wendle Crumb/The Horde), and Anya Taylor Joy.
New cast member is Sarah Paulson as Ellie.
Screenplay/Setting/Themes
Starting with a fairly okay, but convenient opening where David and The Horde meet, the film changes direction completely having them locked up in an insane asylum where David is reunited with Elijah.
This introduced Dr Ellie Staple, whose character becomes the antagonist, to the antagonists (Elijah and The Horde), and the protagonist (David). This direction of narrative actually feels more unbelievable than there being superheroes.
McAvoy gets plenty more to do this time with more of the personalities revealing themselves and getting ‘time in the light’ . But it does feel like they are all acting differently, with Hedwig (who is forever nine) not really acting like a nine year old. McAvoy was flawless in Split, but here as good as he was – I felt like he was held back.
Willis was reportedly already suffering from some of his health issues – but I found him to be on point to the best he could be. Even Samuel L Jackson seemed like he was holding back – maybe even he thought the screenplay was rubbish. Considering the character assassination of Elijah (he does more ‘hands on’ villainy here – killing people one on one, whereas he was seemed ‘hands off’ kills in Unbreakable.
Those hopeful for plenty of David/Elijah moments will be disappointed as they only really share the screen in a small handful of scenes, and have one brief ‘conversation’ which is more of a super-villain taunt by Glass to Dunn’s Overseer.
There are so many moments of disbelief of occurrence throughout including, but not limited to; Mr Glass and The Horde escape the hospital pretending to be nurse and patient (do no one recognise them?), there are only one guard and one nurse working in a mental asylum with multiple mass murderers as patients? Mr Glass who has been in a state of catatonic for 20 years, knows how to break into the modern day security cameras???
The Shyamalan twist ending revealed that *** spoiler *** Kevin’s father was in the train crash that David survived in Unbreakable, causing his mother to abuse him, causing the creation of The Horde. Both Joseph’s and Mr Glass’ reactions to this seem… quite over the top.
Then second twist ending, where Glass’ “mission” – to show the world that superheroes exist (after he, David and Kevin/The Horde die mind you) isn’t the ‘gotcha’ ending that Shyamalan hoped it would be. Also the less said about his arrogant cameo the better.
The screenplay at times is even worse than I’ve seen in other films – especially with some truly silly dialogue – like Mrs Price’s discussion of what a comic book showdown is.
Score/Soundtrack
West Dylan Thordson returns to score, having done so in Split. Once again it is fine, but the haunting score by James Newton Howard in Unbreakable is missed.
Overall
A deeply disappointing end to what was arguably two of Shyamalan’s best films (Unbreakable and Split are in his top three).
2/5
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