'Worst Movie of 2019! Boom! Try to Top That!'

Audiences seem to like Glass, the finale to M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable horror series, giving it a 78% rating on Rotten Tomatoes—some consolation for the 35% rating from critics. They have little love for the follow-up to 2000's Unbreakable and 2016's Split, which brings together David Dunn (Bruce Willis) and Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson) of the former, and Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy) of the latter. Four takes:

• "The actors bring their 'A' game," but "Shyamalan is so intent on not making a conventional superhero movie, he ends up not making much of a movie at all" and cementing himself as "the world's most annoying nerd," writes Peter Howell at the Toronto Star. He further criticizes the clumsy way the characters come together and the "derivative D-grade screenplay."
• "We came all this way for THAT?" writes Richard Roeper at the Chicago Sun-Times, admonishing a "crushingly disappointing" end to "what could have been one of the great trilogies in any genre in recent memory." The plot falls apart early, leaving "a number of momentum-stopping monologues in which someone talks about the history of comic books," he writes. Then comes "a stunningly arbitrary, irritatingly unsatisfying and borderline ridiculous final series of events."

• Chris Hewitt compares Glass to liquorice in that it's "not appreciated by that many people but that those who like it really, really like it." He's of the latter group. The film is "often ridiculous" and "not scary or suspenseful," but it is clever. Plus, it's "intensely satisfying to see Shyamalan developing ideas he laid down" in Unbreakable, Hewitt writes at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, noting it's essential you see that film and Split before the finale.
• Shyamalan gets no praise from Mick LaSalle, however. "He comes right out of the gate as if laying down a marker: Worst movie of 2019! Boom! Try to top that! Another filmmaker might be worried that no one will remember come December. But no, when you make a movie this ghastly, you have to know it: Forgetting Glass would be like forgetting pain," he writes at the San Francisco Chronicle.

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