WARNING: This article contains spoilers for the movie Glass.
Glass may already be the most controversial movie of 2019 With critics on Rotten Tomatoes giving it a 36/100 and the audience giving it a 75/100, this movie has pulled up a lot of controversies. With Glass featuring the characters David Dunn, Kevin Wendell Crum (The Horde), and Elijah Price, people knew this was going to be an interesting movie. David Dunn has his movie Unbreakable, The Horde has their movie Split, and Elijah Price (Mr. Glass) is the villain from Unbreakable. This movie Glass is–if you could not guess it–about Mr. Glass. This movie combines the three characters into one big movie, with the main setting being a Mental Hospital.
Summary:
At the start of the movie, we see two teenagers, one of them filming the other “Superman Punching” a random citizen. David Dunn then later breaks into their house and “teaches them a lesson.” Then we go over to David Dunn and his son in their home security shop trying to find a pattern in cases caused by The Horde. They find a pattern, so the next day David Dunn goes to the center of the triangle where they believe the newest crime is happening. David Dunn finds the crime scene and frees the teenage girls that were captured by The Horde, and then he has to fight him. The fight between the two goes on for a while, but at one point they jump out of a window and get caught by the police.
It is at this point that we meet the character Dr. Ellie Staple. (I will be calling her The Doctor for the rest of this article.) She says that she has been given three days to cure their “mental illness” that makes them think they are superheroes. Mr. Glass has been at the mental hospital for an unknown amount of time at this point. The Doctor says that each of them has had an accident causing damage to the frontal lobe of their brain. She uses David Dunn’s train accident as an example.
After this nothing really happens for a bit, but then The Doctor tells Mr. Glass some news. She tells him that he will have to get the surgery done to his brain on the current day instead of in three days like it was planned. The reason they had to push forward the surgery is that there was footage of him spinning around outside of his cell in his wheelchair. Mr. Glass gets the surgery done but it does not work, and he kills one of the nurses that came to check on him. After this, he convinces The Horde to escape the hospital. He convinces him by telling him that he will be able to fight David Dunn in front of the whole world. The reason this would happen is that there is a big building being opened; it will be the biggest building in all of Philadelphia.
After this, they get to the main room that controls the speakers, and everything. Mr. Glass announces to David Dunn that if he wants to save the people at the building, he will have to prove he is a superhero by breaking out of his cell. The cell door is made out of steel so he would have to have superhero strength to open that door. David Dunn ends up breaking open the door but by that point, Mr. Glass already has his master plan in action. David Dunn goes into the patient item room and collects his stuff, and he makes his way out of the building. Mr. Glass and Kevin Wendell Crum (The Horde) are going through the basement so it takes them a good amount of time.
David Dunn and The Horde start a fight outside of the building, and The Doctor calls the police to stop them. Then it is revealed that Mr. Glass actually caused everything. He explains why he did everything he did. After a bit of fighting, The Doctor reveals herself as a member of the group “Clover.” She explains that this group kills all the superheroes on the world because they do not want some people to be better than others. Once the fighting is finished, we see a member of “Clover” drowning David Dunn, killing him.
Review:
I really enjoyed Glass, and I thought it was an amazing movie. There were only two things that were a bit weird with this movie. One was the first scene of David and his son. It felt like the father-son connection was not really there yet, but that was probably because it might have been one of the first scenes they filmed. I really liked near the end of the movie when they revealed how all of the stories are connected. I feel like Shyamalan did a great job with this movie, but I am sad he is not going to do anything else with this universe. Overall this is probably one of my favorite movies I have ever watched, and I really enjoyed it.
by Lyle Goldader ’24