Starring: James McAvoy, Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson

Directed by M. Night Shyamalan

In cinemas now

Security specialist David Dunn uses his special powers to track down serial killer Kevin Wendell Crumb, but this only the beginning of a bigger investigation into whether superheroes are real.

M. Night Shyamalan’s 2016 horror thriller Split saved its biggest twist until the very end – the appearance of Bruce Willis’ David Dunn, thus placing it in the same universe as the writer/director’s 2000 movie Unbreakable. It was totally unexpected and immediately conjured up the speculation that the two movies would merge, and two years later we have Glass, a sequel of sorts to both.

The bad news first – the hoped-for synergy of joining the two actually becomes less than the sum of its parts, in no small way because the two are so very different in style. Unbreakable is a slow-burning, contemplative look at what makes heroes, while Split is a tense thriller showcasing James McAvoy’s talents as the villain with multiple personalities. Not an obvious match, and even though Shyamalan created both properties, they still don’t quite gel. McAvoy is still excellent, getting the best moments and greatest screen time, flipping between genders and ages. In truth this is more of a Split sequel than Unbreakable, but that makes sense considering the average cinemagoer will have greater recall of the latter, if they saw the former at all.

What comes across is that despite its A-list cast, this is still a low budget movie. A lot of the action is inside a psychiatric hospital, and even when the film promises to ‘go big’ in scale we’re slightly cheated by what we actually get. Samuel L Jackson as the brittle-boned criminal mastermind Elijah initially feels wasted as he stares dumbly from his wheelchair, though this is all part of his ruse, but Bruce Willis’ Dunn gets the worst treatment of all, particularly as he’s the hero of the piece.

Sarah Paulson’s Dr Staple clearly has a few things up her sleeve as she treats the three superheroes at the clinic but I was continually pulled out of the narrative by clumsy and over-convenient contrivances. While things get a lot clearer by the end, why on earth would such powerful beings be guided in such a haphazard manner? Their guards are idiots, the cells are shambolic and surveillance unmonitored when it suits. We’re expected to swallow a lot of ‘really?’ moments along the way, which means that the real-world stuff really needs to be authentic, otherwise everything feels artificial.

Verdict: Shyamalan’s stock in trade used to be a twist ending, and I’m not going to reveal whether that device is used here (too much of a spoiler) and while this is definitely not at The Last Airbender / After Earth end of his movie CV, it’s sadly not another The Sixth Sense or Unbreakable. I didn’t realise I wanted a sequel to Unbreakable until the closing scene of Split, but now I wish they hadn’t bothered. 7/10

Nick Joy