movie reviews glass

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors.

Now streaming on:

More “Split 2” than “Unbreakable 2,” M. Night Shyamalan has finally produced his first direct sequel, the mash-up that is “Glass,” bringing together characters from two of his biggest hits. As the end of “ Split ” hinted, that film took place in the same universe as Shyamalan’s 2000 film “ Unbreakable ,” still his best work to date. The promise of the coda to “Split” is fulfilled in “Glass,” bringing together Shyamalan’s vision of the Freudian brain in the uncontrolled id of DID-afflicted Kevin Crumb ( James McAvoy ), the regulating force of the super-ego in David Dunn ( Bruce Willis ), and the moderator between the hero and the villain in the ego that is Elijah Price aka Mr. Glass ( Samuel L. Jackson ). Once again, Shyamalan is playing with comic book tropes, adding his twists to monologuing heroes and villains who are remarkably self-aware of their own genre arcs. There’s a truly ambitious film buried in “Glass,” and I do mean buried . The problem is that Shyamalan can’t find the story, allowing his narrative to meander, never gaining the momentum it needs to work. Say what you will about “Unbreakable” and even “Split,” they had a propulsive energy that’s lacking here, at least partially because any sense of relatability is gone. “Glass” is a misfire, and it’s the kind of depressing misfire that hurts even more given what it could have been.

“Unbreakable” and “Split” have protagonists thrust into life-changing situations. The former told the story of David Dunn, the only survivor of a horrible train crash, who learned that he was more than human. The latter tells two stories—that of a girl, Casey ( Anya Taylor-Joy , who returns here and is given woefully little to do), forced to discover her own strengths, and that of a mentally ill patient who may be more than your average person diagnosed with DID. 

As “Glass” opens, we know David Dunn, now known in Philadelphia as the mysterious protector called the Overseer and working with his son ( Spencer Treat Clark ), is a superhero. And we know Kevin Crumb has a personality called The Beast that can climb walls and take shotgun blasts. And yet so much of “Glass” is devoted to trying to convince David and Kevin that they are not super in any way. In the pursuit of another twist ending, Shyamalan takes a narrative step back, covering so much of the same ground that the two previous films did instead of carving a new path. He’s so obsessed with ending on a gotcha note that he delays any sort of narrative interest until then, basically forcing his audience to tread water until that point. Think long and hard about what you know at the end of “Glass” as opposed to what you knew at the beginning and you’ll realize how hollow this whole venture has been.

Most of “Glass” takes place at Raven Hill Memorial Psychiatric Hospital. In what could be called the prologue, David/Overseer tracks Kevin/Horde down after the villainous man with multiple personalities kidnaps four young women, holding them in an abandoned factory. The two men fight, and one immediately gets the sense that something is not quite right. This showdown between two of the most memorable characters in Shyamalan’s history lacks the punch or creative fight choreography fans should expect. The pair head out a window and into the arms of Dr. Ellie Staple ( Sarah Paulson ), the confident doctor who shuttles them off to the same psych ward that’s been housing Mr. Glass for almost two decades. Glass is kept in a deeply vegetative state in a room in the same wing as David and Kevin. Dr. Staple tries to convince all three that they are not really super in any way. David’s strength isn’t that abnormal and Kevin’s powers as The Beast could be explained away.

In the midsection of “Glass,” Shyamalan hits every beat more than once, almost joylessly. Paulson gives the same speech multiple times, and a bit with a bright light that can change which personality of Kevin’s dominates goes on forever ... and then happens again. Shyamalan is determined to cycle through the back stories of these characters, even employing footage from “Unbreakable” and “Split” in flashbacks as if he doesn’t realize that 95% of viewers have seen them. He seems so intent on the reveals of his final fifteen minutes that he forgets to take opportunities to make the nearly two hours before that interesting. Why is Raven Hill such a dull bore to look at? Why is Shyamalan determined to make another film about whether or not superheroes are superheroes instead of just building on the foundation he’s created? Imagine “ The Avengers ” retelling all the origin stories and then questioning whether or not The Hulk is really a superhero or just an angry dude.

There are glimpses of the crazy, ambitious movie that “Glass” could have been, and that’s what saves it from complete "Happening"-level disaster. Once again, McAvoy is giving it his all , even if he’s not getting as much back in return as he did last time (and is balanced by another half-hearted Willis performance in which I swear you can practically see him fall asleep). And there are just enough out-there ideas in “Glass” that it’s impossible to completely dismiss even if they don't come together. It’s that fine line between ambitiously clunky in a way that engages the viewer and just sloppy. I honestly kept trying to engage with “Glass” as a fan of Shyamalan’s early films, comic books, and movies that try to mash-up familiar genres in a way that makes a new one. I ultimately resigned myself to the fact that it’s not my fault that it’s broken.

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

Now playing

Nothing Can't Be Undone by a HotPot

Simon abrams.

Unsung Hero

Christy lemire.

The Fall Guy

The Strangers: Chapter 1

Challengers

Matt zoller seitz.

The Garfield Movie

Film credits.

Glass (2019)

Rated PG-13 for violence including some bloody images, thematic elements, and language.

129 minutes

James McAvoy as Kevin Wendell Crumb / The Horde / The Beast / Patricia / Dennis / Hedwig / Barry / Jade / Orwell / Heinrich / Norma

Bruce Willis as David Dunn / The Overseer

Samuel L. Jackson as Elijah Price / Mr. Glass

Anya Taylor-Joy as Casey Cooke

Sarah Paulson as Dr. Ellie Staple

Spencer Treat Clark as Joseph Dunn

Charlayne Woodard as Mrs. Price

Luke Kirby as Pierce

• M. Night Shyamalan

Cinematographer

• Mike Gioulakis
• Luke Franco Ciarrocchi
• Renaldo Kell
• West Dylan Thordson

Latest blog posts

Cannes 2024: Marcello Mio, Parthenope, Elementary

Fantastic Start to Fourth Season of Evil Maintains Creepy Quality

West Side Oratory: Judas and the Black Messiah

Cannes 2024 Video #4: Jason Gorber on Canada's Films

Things you buy through our links may earn  Vox Media  a commission.

M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass Congeals on the Screen

In his 2004 supernatural melodrama The Lady in the Water , M. Night Shyamalan cast himself as an author who receives a message from a “madam narf” (i.e., an elite mermaid-ish entity from the “Blue World”) to the effect that he shouldn’t give up writing in spite of low wages and nasty critics, because the story he’s penning at that very moment will inspire a child who will grow up and transform the world. I’m pretty sure Shyamalan regards his decades-in-the-making thriller, Glass , as the same sort of world-transformative work — an exhortation to incipient superheroes who walk among us to believe in their own powers. I only wish Shyamalan’s storytelling was as lively as his pathology. His mixture of pulp and idolatry congeals on the screen.

The sequel to both last year’s surprise horror hit, Split , and the glacial comic-book art movie, Unbreakable (2000), Glass takes off from the notion that we have gods in our midst: humans who have metamorphosed via a mixture of latent genius and severe emotional trauma into superheroes or, in the case of the ultrabreakable Elijah Price, a.k.a. Mr. Glass (Samuel L. Jackson), archvillains. (It was Price in Unbreakable who contended that comic books were not disposable fantasies for adolescents but “an ancient way of passing on history.”) Shyamalan’s true villains, though, are not the arch ones. They’re the people who deny that such exalted individuals exist or actively strive to suppress them. Shrinks. Bureaucrats. Critics.

This critic can at least refresh your memory of the Shyamster’s cosmos, because if you haven’t seen or don’t recall Split and/or Unbreakable you’ll be mighty puzzled. Split came on as a B-horror picture in which Kevin (James McAvoy), a psycho with multiple distinct personalities, kidnapped some high-school girls, tortured them with silly accents, and slaughtered all but the nonbasic one, Casey Cooke (Anya Taylor-Joy). But then Shyamalan got fancy. Casey survived, it turns out, because she’d been sexually abused, which gave her preternatural sensitivity and strength.

I don’t think Shyamalan meant to say that sexual assault is super-empowering, but his view of defense mechanisms and their hierarchy is not dissimilar from the one trumpeted by Mr. Glass, who engineered traumas to help superior individuals locate their individual superiorities. Kevin — the psycho with his “horde” of inner entities who take turns in the “spotlight” — was also abused, with the result that he has not just a wide range of stereotyped alter egos (prim matron, lisping 11-year-old, working-class tough, film professor) but a swollen, raging entity called “the Beast” off whom bullets bounce. Any day the Beast appears is going to be a bad day.

The commercial hook of Glass is a monster jamboree: The Beast meets the hero and villain of Unbreakable . It’s Shyamalan’s The Avengers . The hero is Bruce Willis’s David Dunn, the lone survivor of a train wreck on account of David having bones that don’t break. In Glass , he has become — with the aid of his computer-whiz son, Joseph (Spencer Treat Clark) — “the Overseer,” a vigilante in a rain poncho who trudges around Philadelphia accosting thugs while TV talking heads pose civic-minded questions about the ethics of vigilantism. After their first Frankenstein-meets-the-Wolfman face-off, David and Kevin wind up in the west wing of Raven Hill Memorial Hospital alongside a heavily sedated Mr. Glass and under the care of Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson), whose declared mission is to convince them their superpowers are all in their heads.

Most of Glass takes place in that vast, chilly facility (it was filmed in the now-closed Allentown State Mental Hospital north of Philly), in long group therapy sessions in which Dr. Staple tries to get David Dunn and whichever member of Kevin’s horde takes the spotlight to recall the moment when he first became aware that he was super, as well as the moment when he knew he had a weakness akin to Superman’s kryptonite. She explains to them that there are medical reasons for their disorders. She tells Kevin, “the Beast isn’t as powerful as you think,” thereby shaking Kevin’s confidence — which ought to be a good thing, right? Not in the Shyamster’s universe, where it’s not only essential to believe but damnable not to. (I don’t think Shyamalan wants to demonize psychiatry the way the Scientologists do, only to say that shrinks tend to miss the big, metaphysical picture. Willis’s Malcolm Crowe in The Sixth Sense missed a doozy.) Mr. Glass, meanwhile, lolls in his wheelchair at a 45-degree angle, leaving us to wonder whether he’s genuinely drugged or faking it while hatching a diabolical plan to foment a super-battle between the Beast and the Overseer on the world’s mightiest stage. Three guesses. Make that one. Glass has to be present because he’s the catalyst. He put the story in motion.

To be clear, I have no problem with the essentials of that story. I had no problem with it when Bruce Wayne suffered the trauma of losing his parents and created a vigilante alter ego whose activities raised all manner of ethical questions, or when Superman lost his parents but found in his alienation a source of clarity and strength, or when various X-Men and X-Women learned to set aside their sadness at being shunned for their differences and nurture what made them special. I had no problem with the Beast when he was the Wolverine or the more family-friendly Hulk. There’s nothing in Glass that hasn’t been done faster and more entertainingly in scores of superhero movies, minus the funereal pacing and pompous, clunky dialogue. If Shyamalan is an original, his originality is in draining the life out of pop archetypes, twerpily annotating them, and presenting it all as a gift from on high. The train-station finale of Glass must be seen to be disbelieved. The actors must have wanted to jump on the next train out.

Oh, these poor actors. The great Sarah Paulson has the worst lines (“It would be an honor to get to know your perspicacious mind,” Dr. Staple tells Dunn) and the worst camera setups. I’d love to be able to forget her last shot. Anya Taylor-Joy is brought back to be ludicrously mushy and supportive of Kevin, whom Casey supposedly saw massacre teenage girls a mere three weeks earlier. (Casey knows that Kevin’s inner self is sweet and scared.) As Elijah’s mother, Charlayne Woodard must convince us that (a) her son, though a gleeful mass murderer, is a tender, hurting soul, and (b) that she gave birth to him at the age of negative five. (Woodard was born in 1953, Jackson in 1948.) Willis successfully reproduces his stuporous-ness from Unbreakable — not a happy achievement. But Jackson is agreeably hammy, especially when he finally gets to don his purple jacket and white ascot and madly gesticulate with his cane. And McAvoy slips more fluidly in and out of his various stereotypes — he’s impressive even if his material isn’t.

Glass comes after two hit movies ( The Visit and Split ) in which Shyamalan tamped down his ambitions and tried to tell scary stories with a minimum of fuss. But the end of Split was a tip-off that the journeyman genre-man was being shoved out of the spotlight by the Lady in the Water scribe whose work would inspire the messiah. I hope Shyamalan comes to realize that he should be careful of his inner grandiose posturing apostle. It’s his Beast.

• vulture homepage lede
• movie review

Most Viewed Stories

• Cinematrix No. 64: May 23, 2024
• Ella Purnell Is Hollywood’s New Favorite Action Hero
• Vanderpump Rules Should Have Done This Years Ago
• The Double Loss of Under the Bridge
• The 20 Best Documentaries on Netflix
• 21 Ways to Hack Stardom
• A Complete Track-by-Track Timeline of Drake and Kendrick Lamar’s Feud

Editor’s Picks

Most Popular

What is your email.

This email will be used to sign into all New York sites. By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy and to receive email correspondence from us.

Sign In To Continue Reading

Create your free account.

Password must be at least 8 characters and contain:

• Lower case letters (a-z)
• Upper case letters (A-Z)
• Numbers (0-9)
• Special Characters (!@#$%^&*)

As part of your account, you’ll receive occasional updates and offers from New York , which you can opt out of anytime.

Film Review: M. Night Shyamalan’s ‘Glass’

M. Night Shyamalan combines the characters from "Unbreakable" and "Split" into a comic-book sequel that holds you without haunting you.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

• ‘Armand’ Review: An Accusation at a Primary School Results in a Drama So Convoluted It’s Claustrophobic 15 hours ago
• ‘The Shrouds’ Review: David Cronenberg Makes a Movie About Grief — and Body Horror, and Digital Gravestones — That in Its Somber Way Verges on Self-Parody 2 days ago
• ‘The Apprentice’ Review: Sebastian Stan Plays Donald Trump in a Docudrama That Nails Everything About Him but His Mystery 2 days ago

In “ Glass ,” writer-director M. Night Shyamalan revisits three of his most popular and iconic characters. There’s David Dunn ( Bruce Willis ), the sad-sack Philadelphia security guard from “ Unbreakable ,” who discovered that he was physically indestructible and, with a kind of agonized destiny, began to take on the identity of an earthly superhero. There’s Elijah Price ( Samuel L. Jackson ), from the same movie, the man with bones that shatter like glass, who grew up escaping into a world of comic books and yearned so badly to know that a real-life superhero could exist that he was willing to commit horrendous crimes to find one. And there’s Kevin Wendell Crumb ( James McAvoy ), the leering, shaven-headed chatterbox psycho from “Split,” who has 24 personalities, each more self-adoring than the last, that he flicks through as if channel surfing.

What are these three doing in the same movie? They’re shoring up the Shyamalan brand by reviving two of his biggest hits. They’re mirroring the way heroes and villains now drift in and out of each other’s narratives in the metastasizing multiverse of Hollywood comic-book cinema. And all three, viewed from the perspective of a rational world, act as if they might belong in an insane asylum, which is where most of “Glass” takes place.

Popular on Variety

“Unbreakable,” for some of us, is still the best film that M. Night Shyamalan has ever made. When it came out in 2000, comic-book movie culture was still in its relative infancy, though it didn’t feel that way. Batman, in his dystopian-avenger mode, had already been portrayed on the big screen by three different actors (Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, and George Clooney), and though the first “X-Men” film was released just six months before “Unbreakable,” its ensemble-of-super-freaks quality seemed to suggest the whole jumbled grab-bag cosmos of comic-book films that was coming down the pike. All of which made “Unbreakable” a haunting commentary on a genre it also embodied. With a pace that was less ADD than art film, and an introspective grandeur that hovered between neurosis and catharsis, it was Shyamalan’s most majestic tone poem of a thriller, one that tapped deep into the glories and pathologies of our obsession with comic books.

“Glass” continues the saga, only this time stripped of any sense of revelation. We are now, if anything, oversaturated with comic-book films, so in theory the time is right for a movie like this one. And you could say that “Glass” follows the inevitable path of any comic-book sequel, with the origin story safely behind it. All of the first film’s secrets have been dragged into the light.

But in “Unbreakable,” the vibe of moody mystery was all. In the early scenes of “Glass,” Willis’s David, still lean and mean in his graying fringe and beard, and now working closely with his son, Joseph (played by the grown-up Spencer Treat Clark), has become a fully operational super-powered vigilante, who dons his hooded rain poncho as an official crime-fighting uniform. You may wonder, with a chuckle, if he’s got a name based on that look — and, in fact, he does. He is known as the Green Guard (and also the Overseer). After literally bumping into McAvoy’s Kevin, he heads to the abandoned factory where Kevin has shackled four cheerleaders to a pipe and proceeds to free them. To do so, he’s got to tangle with Kevin in his hellbent mode known as the Beast: the strong-man id who’s all roaring rage and bulging torso veins, like a scaled-down bad-guy version of the Hulk.

Yet this all now feels very conventional, as if we were merely seeing the Dark Knight in a less cool uniform. David is wanted by the police, who think his crime-fighting ventures are getting in the way of due process — and that, too, is a conflict that’s been touched on in other comic-book films. After David, along with Kevin, is caught and captured, both are placed in the Raven Hill Memorial Psychiatric Research Center, a stately asylum where Elijah, a.k.a. Mr. Glass, has been incarcerated for the past 19 years. They may be good guys and bad guys, but in the eyes of Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson), a psychiatrist who speaks in a hypnotic mode of smug deliberation, all three are suffering from the exact same mental disorder: the belief that they possess the super qualities of comic-book characters. According to Dr. Staple, it’s a delusion that’s going around. (It’s become her field.)

Shyamalan may be the most gifted director of the last 20 years to see his own name turn into a punchline. It’s not just that he singlehandedly made the words “twist ending” into a signature that become a tic that began, over time, to inspire a collective eye roll. It’s that as his films grew less confident and more mannered, the tail seemed to be wagging the dog, as if everything that preceded his trademark twists had no purpose but to lead up to them. Shyamalan, though, as he proved with “Split,” can still win over an audience, and in “Glass” he’s a poised and confident filmmaker who seizes our attention.

Yet the movie, watchable as it is, is still a disappointment, because it extends and belabors the conceits of “Unbreakable” without the sensation of mystical dark discovery that made that film indelible. “Glass” is a sequel that feels more dutiful than necessary. It turns the earlier film’s ominous pop poetry into overexplicit blockbuster prose.

The new movie has what is basically a very simple plot: Can Elijah and Kevin team up to escape the asylum? And can David, who truly doesn’t belong there, figure out how to free himself from its confines? Shyamalan makes the place feel like the clinical prison it is, but he’s a supple enough filmmaker to avoid feelings of claustrophobia (he sets one highly effective sequence in a vast chamber that’s all lavender pink).

Kevin is housed in a room where a machine that blasts him with light can force his personality to change with the touch of a button. His multiple personalities are known, collectively, as the Horde, and McAvoy plays them with the same obscenely avid, gender-bending fluidity that made his performance in “Split” such a showboat feat. If anything, he’s more fun to watch now that he doesn’t have to be the whole show. (To this viewer, a little of Kevin goes a long way.) Anya Taylor-Joy plays the lone survivor of one of his killing sprees, and despite her soulful presence there’s not a lot the actress can do with this sketchy and sentimental role. As for Elijah, he’s a heavily sedated wreck who doesn’t utter a word for half the movie — but, of course, he’s just biding his time.

In “Unbreakable,” Elijah, with his purple finery and parted Afro and scowl from the depths of hell, was the rare villain who inspired empathy, a man who committed unspeakable violence out of a kind of quest — to find the hero of his dreams. In “Glass,” he’s still a mastermind with a lot on his mind, though the character seems less resonant now that he’s an official antagonist. There is, as before, a twist to his madness, and though on paper it’s not a bad twist, it somehow lacks the “Whoa!” factor.

So does the whole movie. It’s good to see Shyamalan back (to a degree) in form, to the extent that he’s recovered his basic mojo as a yarn spinner. But “Glass” occupies us without haunting us; it’s more busy than it is stirring or exciting. Maybe that’s because revisiting this material feels a touch opportunistic, and maybe it’s because the deluge of comic-book movies that now threatens to engulf us on a daily basis has leeched what’s left of the mystery out of comics. In “Unbreakable,” Elijah said, “I believe comics are a form of history that someone, somewhere felt or experienced.” He still believes that, but today’s comic-book culture looks more like a dream broadcast from corporate central. What it no longer feels connected to, even in “Glass,” is experience.

Reviewed at AMC 34th St., Jan. 8, 2019. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 129 MIN.

• Production: A Universal Pictures release of a Blinding Edge Pictures, Blumhouse production. Producers: Jason Blum, M. Night Shyamalan, Ashwin Rajan, Marc Bienstock. Executive producers: Steven Schneider, Gary Barber, Roger Birnbaum, Kevin Frakes.
• Crew: Director, screenplay: M. Night Shyamalan. Camera (color, widescreen): Michael Gioulakis. Editor: Luke Ciarrocchi. Music: West Dylan Thordson.
• With: Bruce Willis, James McAvoy, Samuel L. Jackson, Sarah Paulson, Anya Taylor-Joy, Spencer Treat Clark, Charlayne Woodard, Adam David Thompson, Luke Kirby.

More From Our Brands

Megan thee stallion and glorilla in the city that never sleeps — but feverishly twerks, why you should be snapping up neo-vintage watches—and how to start collecting them, tnt sports launches chat, data altcasts for nba, nhl playoffs, the best loofahs and body scrubbers, according to dermatologists, 2024 nba playoffs: how to watch the conference finals online, verify it's you, please log in.

Where to Watch

James McAvoy (Patricia) Bruce Willis (David Dunn) Samuel L. Jackson (Elijah Price) Anya Taylor-Joy (Casey Cooke) Sarah Paulson (Dr. Ellie Staple) Spencer Treat Clark (Joseph Dunn) Charlayne Woodard (Mrs. Price) Luke Kirby (Pierce) Adam David Thompson (Daryl) M. Night Shyamalan (Jai, Security Guard)

M. Night Shyamalan

Security guard David Dunn uses his supernatural abilities to track Kevin Wendell Crumb, a disturbed man who has twenty-four personalities.

Recommendations

More about Glass

M. night shyamalan mashes up two past hits into the wacky superhero sequel glass.

The first time Samuel L. Jackson appears in Unbreakable , M. Night Shyamalan’s majestically moody turn-of-the-century …

Advertisement

Glass should be unbreakable in an especially dire-looking January for movies

So many movies, so little time. Every week brings a new crop of them, opening in multiplexes and arthouse theaters …

M. Night Shyamalan's first cut of Glass was over 3 hours long

The pressure to make movies that cater to the masses is ever-present in Hollywood. Figuring out how to do that while …

Sarah Paulson's walking on broken Glass in the trailer for M. Night Shyamalan's latest

The trailer for M. Night Shayamalan’s Glass debuted this afternoon following a panel about the film at this year’s …

Synopsis for M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass teases the evolution of the Shyamaverse

M. Night Shyamalan’s 2000 superhero movie Unbreakable is the rare film that’s still cool to like, even if it wasn’t …

Home » Movies

Glass (2019) Review

We review the 2019 film Glass, which does not contain any significant spoilers.

For me, M. Night Shyamalan used to be opening day appointment viewing. Where you could hand over your hard-earned money and be immersed in a world he created that was as distinctive as only he can make it. The Sixth Sense was a trendsetter that changed popular big-budget movie culture for decades, with everyone taking their hand at the last-second twist, forgetting it was the well-drawn script that was responsible for the unveiling.

What made Unbreakable so special was you were watching a comic book movie without knowing it (he must have tied the studio heads to their chairs to keep from marketing that for the film, but this was pre-Marvel studio days), which was before Christopher Nolan took his grounded superhero approach with his Batman trilogy. Then there was the film Signs . His third critical and ultra-commercial success in a row. His script set a new standard in storytelling, not for thrill’s sake, which it surely had, but for writing a story with deeper hidden themes about love and faith.

Glass Review and Plot Summary

Split was a straight horror film until it wasn’t. That gave his fan base (and the ones that have given up) hope that he found that movie magic that made him a top-tier director of twisty thrills, and that mysteriously left him in the last 5 minutes of The Village and was confirmed with the crashing of the Will Smith vehicle After Earth . So, how fair have the expectations really been over his work? Glass has had massive expectations since the end credit scenes of Split . Only shattering those expectations would satisfy everyone after his first two films. I have a feeling that rekindling the M. Night magic will satisfy fans more than his critics.

The film starts with the Beast ( James McAvoy ) again kidnapping four cheerleaders because of their impureness.  The Overseer ( Bruce Willis – bad nickname) begins to find the missing girls. He has the help of his son ( Spencer Treat Clark , reprising his role), which leads to Dr. Ellie Staple ( Sarah Paulson ) bringing the band back together, so to speak. Along with Mr. Glass ( Samuel L. Jackson ), she begins to help them deal with their delusions of grandeur. She believes there are times in their life that have left them broken, and they are making up their comic book superhero personas to deal with the pain.

Glass’s ending is being called divisive by many. And it may be for some, but strictly by being a victim of its own high expectations, also because of the renewed faith in Shyamalan’s work. His film is like taking a road trip with no map and seeing where the wind takes you, like his previous works. The turns you may take indicate what you encounter at the end of your journey, for better or worse.

That’s what happens with Glass. I t takes a turn at its showdown that may leave some feeling left without a payoff that is rewarding for fans of the series. It’s a trilogy that seems by accident, almost. If anything, the trilogy could have benefited from a previous Unbreakable film to flesh out the Shyamalan comic book universe. Since there has been so much time since the first, you feel they have only scratched the surface of the film’s characters. Though, they only examine skin deep with a few childhood flashbacks.

Is the movie Glass good?

The film’s script is well-paced and suspenseful, while the direction is visually engaging and pulls in the viewer.  The musical score by West Dylan Thordson ( Foxcatcher ) is, actually, quite wonderful, enhancing key moments in the film and giving the story a weighted depth. McAvoy, who was so good in Split , takes that Crumb character’s final jaw-dropping scene and expands in at almost the film’s length here. The character (or family of characters) of Kevin Wendell Crumb is the main source of comic relief. He also happens to be the most interesting character who drives the film.

Shyamalan has always been his worst enemy. With a career arc downturn, that had the feeling that he has always been smarter than his audience. His last two films are at his most humbled, letting the twists come naturally.  This “accidental” trilogy is engaging, suspenseful, and the payoff is low-key rather than showy.  If you think about it, only two endings could happen; one would satisfy critics, the other would satisfy comic-book fandoms. At the very least, you must give the director credit for doing something different from the Marvel or DC’s of the world. He has created a distinct tone, entertaining, if not as fresh as expected.

What did you think of the 2019 movie Glass? Comment below.

More Stories

• Knock at the Cabin Review

Article by Marc Miller

Marc Miller (also known as M.N. Miller) joined Ready Steady Cut in April 2018 as a Film and TV Critic, publishing over 1,600 articles on the website. Since a young age, Marc dreamed of becoming a legitimate critic and having that famous “Rotten Tomato” approved status – in 2023, he achieved that status.

The Legend of Vox Machina Season 2 Episodes 3 and 4 Recap - What Is In The Sunken Tomb?

Reacher season 1, episode 1 recap – “Welcome to Margrave”

This website cannot be displayed as your browser is extremely out of date.

Please update your browser to one of the following: Chrome , Firefox , Edge

To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories .

• Backchannel
• Newsletters
• WIRED Insider
• WIRED Consulting

Angela Watercutter

Glass Isn’t Perfect—But It Says a Lot About Heroism in 2019

There's one big question at the core of writer-director M. Night Shyamalan 's new movie Glass : Who gets to be a hero? In the real world, a hero can be anybody. Someone who does the Heimlich maneuver in a diner, a firefighter, Colin Kaepernick . In movies (and TV and books and comics), though, the people folks call heroes tend to wear capes and have supernatural abilities. They may have started out as average citizens, but through some otherworldly power or scientific experiment, they've become more than human. Their heroism comes from their abilities. But in Shyamalan's world, these two types of heroes—or villains, or both—are indistinguishable. And that's what makes them great.

It all started with Unbreakable , a comic-book-inspired movie Shyamalan pretty much had to beg studios to produce back in 2000. In that film, David Dunn (Bruce Willis) discovered he had the uncanny ability to survive almost anything, while Elijah Price/Mr. Glass (Samuel L. Jackson) suffered from a condition where almost anything could break him, so he used his brain to become an evil mastermind. Fans loved it at the time, but Shyamalan moved on to movies like The Village and Lady in the Water , and it seemed like he might never return to that world again.

Then, in 2016, he released Split , a movie about a man (James McAvoy, doing the most in the best possible way) who had 20-plus personalities, one of which possessed superhuman strength and abilities. It wasn't advertised as an Unbreakable sequel, but there at the end was David Dunn, setting up Glass , a movie that would complete the most unlikely "superhero" trilogy ever. Unlikely because it comes from Shyamalan and not Marvel or DC, and unlikely because its protagonists and antagonists are real people who live in Philly rather than Gotham, and there isn't an Infinity Stone in sight.

"It goes hand-in-hand with my attempt in my movies to ground everything," Shyamalan says. "To ground the supernatural, and in this case the comic book world—or at least the concepts of that world—in a way that starts to make us wonder whether a percentage of what I'm depicting is actually true."

Glass exists in percentages that just might be real. Set nearly two decades after the events in Unbreakable and a short time after those in Split , it finds Dunn working at a store that sells security systems and side-hustling as a vigilante known as the Overseer. McAvoy's Kevin Wendell Crumb/the Beast is haunting Philadelphia and kidnapping and murdering young women, and Mr. Glass has been institutionalized under the care of Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson), who seeks to treat people with a particular delusion of grandeur that makes them believe they have superhuman powers. When Dunn and Crumb come under her care as well, she finds herself with three very different subjects to observe—and Mr. Glass finds himself two potential accomplices in his scheme to show the world just how real self-manifested superpowers truly are.

By Carlton Reid

By Emily Mullin

By Steven Levy

By Andy Greenberg

Glass , then, positions itself as a sort of super-antihero movie, a flick that asks why anyone is hoping to be saved when they could be saving themselves. Or at least that's what it seems to be trying to do. As often happens when a Shyamalan movie falters, it presents a stellar concept that doesn't necessarily make a great story. The nearly two decades since Unbreakable have attuned audiences to the narrative language of comic-book movies, which gives Shyamalan a lot of room to play, but his film often gets bogged down trying to explain its points rather than making them. (Did this movie need multiple scenes where someone goes to a comics shop and Finally Gets It? Or was having Mr. Glass screaming, "It's not a showdown, it's an origin story!" necessary? Probably not.) In its attempt to set up the final act's big twist—it's a Shyamalan movie, there's always a twist—it spends a lot of time telling its audience what's happening, rather than showing them.

Narrative glitches aside, Glass , along with Unbreakable and Split , creates something few movies before them have: an actual original superhero trilogy. Other movies ( Hancock and Super come to mind) have tried to riff on the formula, but hardly any have deconstructed the meaning of superheroes while also featuring them. Its good guys and bad guys could teach Hollywood's caped crusaders a thing or two about saving the world—even if they can't be saved from the movie they're in.

• The FTC thinks you pay too much for smartphones
• The new Spider-Man trailer raises some questions
• A look behind cycling's most masochistic race
• Your tweets give away more location data than you think
• Women's sexuality is still taboo for tech
• 👀 Looking for the latest gadgets? Check out our picks , gift guides , and best deals all year round
• 📩 Hungry for even more deep dives on your next favorite topic? Sign up for the Backchannel newsletter

Jennifer M. Wood

Brian Barrett

Screen Rant

Glass review: shyamalan's superhero trilogy finale is one weird beast.

Your changes have been saved

Email Is sent

Please verify your email address.

You’ve reached your account maximum for followed topics.

All 9 Jason Statham Non-Action Movies, Ranked Worst To Best

This 9-year-old fury road theory won't die - but i've got a better explanation for tom hardy's mad max, new denzel washington movie breaks an 18-year drought after $185 million hit, glass concludes shyamalan's superhero movie trilogy in a manner that manages to be absorbing, frustrating, and bewildering at the same time..

M. Night Shyamalan has certainly had his fair share of ups and downs since his early career triumphs on The Sixth Sense and, to a lesser degree, Unbreakable . Now, two years after the writer/director delivered Split - a secret followup to Unbreakable and his most widely celebrated movie in a long time - he's back with Glass , a project that brings the characters of  Unbreakable and Split together in an all-new thriller about superheroes in the real world. Even in the age of the MCU and DCEU, there's something truly unique about the way Shyamalan approaches the idea of comic book superheroes in his latest film... which is not to say it's necessarily good, either. Glass concludes Shyamalan's superhero movie trilogy in a manner that manages to be absorbing, frustrating, and bewildering at the same time.

Glass picks up after the events of Split , which concluded with Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy) being taken over by his more dominant personalities (aka. the members of The Horde), including the super-human being known as The Beast. Unbreakable 's David Dunn (Bruce Willis) now runs a home security business and secretly fights crime in Philadelphia as "The Overseer" - among other nicknames - with the help of his fully-grown son Joseph (Spencer Treat Clark). Together, David and Joseph are able to track The Horde and discover where they've been hiding, after they kidnap yet another group of young girls to sacrifice to The Beast. However, the subsequent showdown between David and The Beast is cut short when the police arrive to arrest them, led by one Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson).

Dr. Staple, it turns out, is a psychiatrist who specialize in treating people who believe they are superheroes, and has David and Kevin brought to Raven Hill Memorial: the same institution for the criminally insane where Elijah Price aka Mr. Glass (Samuel L. Jackson) has resided, ever since he was arrested for his crimes at the end of Unbreakable . As Staple attempts to convince the three men that they are not the comic book characters they believe themselves to be, Elijah takes advantage of his new inmates' arrival to set his own plan in motion - one that will finally force the world to see that superheroes really do exist. Meanwhile, Joseph, Eljiah's mother (Charlayne Woodard), and Casey Cooke (Anya Taylor-Joy) - the only regular person to survive their encounter with The Beast - attempt to save the three men from a dark fate, before it's too late.

Despite what its title implies, Glass isn't so much a movie about Elijah (or any one character) as it is a film about what he believes: that extraordinary people have always walked among us and have inspired our myths throughout history, comic books included. At the same time, the movie revisits a key idea from Unbreakable and Split - that people can discover the extraordinary in themselves through the power of belief - and brings it to the forefront, in order to tell a story about why it's important for the world to see people as they truly are. These themes are fascinating enough to carry Glass through its first two-thirds, despite the familiar flaws in Shyamalan's screenwriting (like his habit of writing stilted dialogue) and the sometimes clunky ways he weaves loose plot threads from Unbreakable and Split together. Unfortunately, the film goes off the rails when it gets to its big third act twists - some of which are predictable, others of which are poorly-executed and more likely to confound moviegoers that amaze them or get them thinking.

In general, Glass ' issues lie with its execution, not its core themes or concepts. Shyamalan, as he did in Unbreakable , aspires to deconstruct the tropes of superhero and comic book stories through dialogue, but what might've once felt like necessary exposition - like the scenes where Elijah explains basic comic book storytelling to others - now feels out of touch, in the modern era of superhero movies. Where something like last year's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was aware that moviegoers have a pretty good understanding of the superhero genre now and took this into consideration, Glass seems to think audiences need even the most basic of plot beats spelled out for them. It's a familiar case of a film that violates the "Show, don't tell" rule all too often and results in some impressively campy moments, including a soon-to-be-infamous shot where Jackson practically breaks the fourth wall while delivering his line to the camera.

On the plus side, Jackson relishes the scenes where Glass allows him to ham it up, and for the most part these moments are (apparently) meant to feel more theatrical than the rest of the film. McAvoy also seems to be having a blast here, especially since he gets a chance to play several other personalities that weren't featured in Split , in addition to the key members of The Horde from that film. Willis delivers the most grounded performance of the three leads, but his turn as a far older and wiser David Dunn is some of his best acting since Moonrise Kingdom ... which is another way of saying he actually commits to the role he's playing, for the first time in a hot minute. Sorry to say, though, with so much of the focus on the film's main three, the supporting players in Glass are relegated to serving as glorified plot devices. That's all the more disappointing when it comes to Taylor-Joy's Casey Cooke (who, after all, was also a lead in Split ).

Like the rest of the film, Shyamalan's direction here is a mixed bag.  Glass is arguably best during the segments that play to Shyamalan's strengths as a storyteller who excels at creating suspense through his camerawork and editing. The movie is also pretty effective at making the interiors of Raven Hill Memorial feel claustrophobic and austere, thanks to a combination of Split DP Mike Gioulakis' inventive shot choices and the way Shyamalan integrates bolder colors (purple, yellow, and green) into the toned-down hues of the film's sets, for symbolic purposes. At the same time, Glass struggles to stage the fights between David and The Beast in a clear and cohesive fashion, resulting in some ungainly action sequences that plays out as a series of striking wide shots strung together by awkward closeups. As a result, Split composer West Dylan Thordson's score tends to be more threatening and heart-pounding than whatever's actually happening in these scenes.

On the whole, Glass isn't a bad film so much as a weird and messy yet otherwise ambitious one that embodies both Shyamalan's best and worst tendencies as a storyteller. It's a misfire that fails to reach the bars set by Unbreakable and Split , but a captivating one that's unmistakably its creator's invention and allows him to end his unconventional superhero trilogy on his own terms, be that for the better or not. For the same reasons, Glass might end up being one of Shyamalan's most polarizing offerings in some time. It's certainly not the Unbreakable sequel that many people have spent nearly twenty years hoping for but, then again, it's probably safe to assume this entire trilogy took on a very different form than what Shyamalan originally envisioned, all those years ago. However the rest of 2019 plays out, it's hard to imagine there will be another superhero movie quite as memorably strange as this one.

Glass  is now playing in U.S. theaters nationwide. It is 129 minutes long and is rated PG-13 for violence including some bloody images, thematic elements, and language.

Let us know what you thought of the film in the comments section!

Key Release Dates

Unbreakable 2, our rating:.

• Movie Reviews
• 2.5 star movies

Common Sense Media

Movie & TV reviews for parents

• For Parents
• For Educators
• Our Work and Impact

Or browse by category:

• Get the app
• Movie Reviews
• Best Movie Lists
• Best Movies on Netflix, Disney+, and More

Common Sense Selections for Movies

50 Modern Movies All Kids Should Watch Before They're 12

• Best TV Lists
• Best TV Shows on Netflix, Disney+, and More
• Common Sense Selections for TV
• Video Reviews of TV Shows

Best Kids' Shows on Disney+

Best Kids' TV Shows on Netflix

• Book Reviews
• Best Book Lists
• Common Sense Selections for Books

8 Tips for Getting Kids Hooked on Books

50 Books All Kids Should Read Before They're 12

• Game Reviews
• Best Game Lists

Common Sense Selections for Games

• Video Reviews of Games

Nintendo Switch Games for Family Fun

• Podcast Reviews
• Best Podcast Lists

Common Sense Selections for Podcasts

Parents' Guide to Podcasts

• App Reviews
• Best App Lists

Social Networking for Teens

Gun-Free Action Game Apps

Reviews for AI Apps and Tools

• YouTube Channel Reviews
• YouTube Kids Channels by Topic

Parents' Ultimate Guide to YouTube Kids

YouTube Kids Channels for Gamers

• Preschoolers (2-4)
• Little Kids (5-7)
• Big Kids (8-9)
• Pre-Teens (10-12)
• Teens (13+)
• Screen Time
• Social Media
• Online Safety
• Identity and Community

Real-Life Heroes on YouTube for Tweens and Teens

• Family Tech Planners
• Digital Skills
• All Articles
• Latino Culture
• Black Voices
• Asian Stories
• Native Narratives
• LGBTQ+ Pride
• Best of Diverse Representation List

Celebrating Black History Month

Movies and TV Shows with Arab Leads

Celebrate Hip-Hop's 50th Anniversary

Common sense media reviewers.

Violence, peril in flawed but enjoyable trilogy finale.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Discusses comic books at length, pondering what th

David Dunn, here dubbed "the Overseer," is a decen

Teen girls are kidnapped, chained by their wrists.

Brief talk of kissing.

Infrequent language includes "s--t," "p---y," "bit

Parents need to know that Glass is the third part of an intense trilogy that writer/director M. Night Shyamalan began with 2000's Unbreakable and continued in 2017's Split. The storyline focuses on the existence of super-beings and what that might actually mean for the world. Expect strong…

Positive Messages

Discusses comic books at length, pondering what their connection to reality actually is. It doesn't go terribly deep into this thesis, but with the world seemingly obsessed with superheroes, it's certainly interesting.

Positive Role Models

David Dunn, here dubbed "the Overseer," is a decent enough role model, choosing to use his powers for good and trying to help others as much as possible. But other central characters are far less admirable.

Violence & Scariness

Teen girls are kidnapped, chained by their wrists. A girl gets hit with a flying table (her arm is said to be broken). Intense punching, fighting, slamming, crushing, struggling, threats. A neck is sliced with broken glass. Character is shot. Brief shot of lots of blood. A character takes a big bite out of a victim; the bite itself isn't seen, but chewing and swallowing is seen/heard, and there's blood on his mouth. Characters crash through a window. Reference to an abusive uncle. Quick shot of abusive mom, approaching her son with a hot iron. Bullies nearly drown a boy in a pool. Images of young boys in peril; a young boy breaks bones on a carnival ride. Peril. Drowning.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Infrequent language includes "s--t," "p---y," "bitch," "ass," "goddamn," and "douche." Middle-finger gesture.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Glass is the third part of an intense trilogy that writer/director M. Night Shyamalan began with 2000's Unbreakable and continued in 2017's Split . The storyline focuses on the existence of super-beings and what that might actually mean for the world. Expect strong violence, with lots of fighting, punching, smashing, slamming, and crushing. Characters are killed via throat-slashing, drowning, bullets, and more. After defeating a foe, a character takes a big bite out of him (viewers hear chewing and swallowing and see blood on his mouth). Characters are in peril for brief periods throughout the film, and there's some discussion of children being abused by adults. Kissing is mentioned, but otherwise sex isn't an issue. Language is infrequent but includes uses of "s--t," "ass," "bitch," and "p---y." The movie has its flaws, but it's surprisingly satisfying, and fans will likely get a kick out of it. Bruce Willis , James McAvoy , and Samuel L. Jackson star. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (11)
• Kids say (28)

Based on 11 parent reviews

Disappointing Threequel

This movie is great, what's the story.

In GLASS, the mysterious kidnapper with dissociative identity disorder from Split ( James McAvoy ) is still on the loose -- and has newly kidnapped four teen cheerleaders. David Dunn ( Bruce Willis ), the superhero from Unbreakable , finds them and has a showdown with "the Beast," aka the kidnapper's most dangerous personality. They're both caught and sent to a facility where Dr. Ellie Staple ( Sarah Paulson ) is determined to convince them that they -- along with Dunn's old rival, Elijah, aka "Mr. Glass" ( Samuel L. Jackson ) -- aren't superior beings. Meanwhile, the kidnapper's former victim, Casey ( Anya Taylor-Joy ), goes to see him and discovers a connection to his "original" personality, Kevin. But even though Mr. Glass appears to be heavily sedated, there's a plan afoot.

Is It Any Good?

Depending on how ready you are to embrace (or forgive) M. Night Shyamalan 's nerdy, talky, intertwined comic book mythos, this trilogy closer is surprisingly enjoyable on many levels. Following Shyamalan's Unbreakable (2000) and Split (2017), Glass nicely ties everything together, and while the conclusion may not be up to the level of The Sixth Sense (what is?), the director has still created a satisfying mini-universe on its own terms. The movie's philosophizing about comic books doesn't go very deep -- it's more about how comics relate to reality than it is about the mystery of their wide appeal -- but it's certainly relevant and interesting.

As the movie goes on, explanations drag a little too long, but the real trick lies in three secondary characters: Kevin's former kidnap victim, Casey; David's son, Joseph ( Spencer Treat Clark ); and Mr. Glass's mother ( Charlayne Woodard ). The way these three view their respective super-beings underscores just how important the extraordinary and the spectacular are to all of us in our everyday lives. As always, Shyamalan's directorial technique is clean, and his shots are well-staged and well-chosen. But few would argue that anything in Glass is more amazing than McAvoy's performance; the actor embodies his character's various personalities in vivid, emotional moments.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Glass 's violence . What makes it feel so intense? How much is shown/not shown? Was the effect thrilling or shocking? What's the difference? What's the impact of media violence on kids?

Is there any truth to comic books , historically? What's their appeal?

Is the Overseer character -- who tries to use his powers for good -- a role model ? Why or why not?

The movie's antagonists are trying to rid the world of all super-beings (both good and evil) and keep "order." Do you agree with their motives? Why or why not?

How does this movie compare with its predecessors? Does the full story make a satisfying arc? If so, how? If not, then why not?

Movie Details

• In theaters : January 18, 2019
• On DVD or streaming : April 16, 2019
• Cast : Bruce Willis , Samuel L. Jackson , James McAvoy
• Director : M. Night Shyamalan
• Inclusion Information : Black actors
• Studio : Universal Pictures
• Genre : Thriller
• Topics : Superheroes
• Run time : 129 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : violence including some bloody images, thematic elements, and language
• Last updated : April 11, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

Our editors recommend.

The Sixth Sense

The Village

Thriller movies, scary movies for kids, related topics.

• Superheroes

Want suggestions based on your streaming services? Get personalized recommendations

Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

Glass review – M Night Shyamalan's superheroes assemble

The director unites Samuel L Jackson, Bruce Willis and James McAvoy from earlier films in a pointless supernatural sequel

W ith a bumper helping of pointlessness, M Night Shyamalan has created a bulky, lengthy, anti-climactic sequel to two of his previous films: the smart horror-thriller Split (2016) and the deeply strange mystery Unbreakable (2000), fusing them into a kind of own-brand superhero franchise. There’s a cheeky dig at a certain comic-book institution when a magazine announces Philadelphia’s newest, biggest skyscraper (a possible showdown site) as an architectural “marvel’’.

James McAvoy reprises his bravura plural-performance from Split, playing the Horde, a villain with dissociative identity disorder. Bruce Willis is back as David Dunn, the guy who miraculously survived a train crash in Unbreakable with superstrength. These days, he’s roaming the streets as a lone avenger, nicknamed the Overseer, wearing a signature hooded black poncho (which surely limits his movement and field of vision?) in partnership with his now grownup son Joseph, played again by Spencer Treat Clark, who handles the admin and monitors social media coverage back at base. And locked away in a psychiatric facility is Shyamalan’s strangest creation, Mr Glass, played by Samuel L Jackson, a villain with the bizarre superweakness of ultra-fragile bones, balanced by excessive cerebral brilliance.

These three figures are now to be yoked together by destiny, and come under the patient eye of psychiatrist Dr Ellie Staple, played by Sarah Paulson, whose mission is to persuade them that they do not have superpowers, just a malady of the mind. Like so many of Shyamalan’s adventures, Glass starts strongly and fizzles, a dramatic droop which is initially camouflaged by the escalating grandiosity of visual rhetoric, something febrile and high-concept that is visionary in everything except having vision.

At least it’s good to be reminded of Unbreakable, Shyamalan’s authentically weird gem.

• Science fiction and fantasy films
• Drama films
• M Night Shyamalan
• Bruce Willis
• Samuel L Jackson
• James McAvoy

Comments (…)

Most viewed.

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Trouble logging in?

By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes.

Email not verified

Let's keep in touch.

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

• Upcoming Movies and TV shows
• Trivia & Rotten Tomatoes Podcast
• Media News + More

By clicking "Sign Me Up," you are agreeing to receive occasional emails and communications from Fandango Media (Fandango, Vudu, and Rotten Tomatoes) and consenting to Fandango's Privacy Policy and Terms and Policies . Please allow 10 business days for your account to reflect your preferences.

OK, got it!

Movies / TV

No results found.

• What's the Tomatometer®?
• Login/signup

Movies in theaters

• Opening this week
• Top box office
• Coming soon to theaters
• Certified fresh movies

Movies at home

• Fandango at Home
• Netflix streaming
• Prime Video
• Most popular streaming movies
• What to Watch New

Certified fresh picks

• Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga Link to Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
• Hit Man Link to Hit Man
• Babes Link to Babes

New TV Tonight

• Evil: Season 4
• Stax: Soulsville, U.S.A.: Season 1
• Trying: Season 4
• Tires: Season 1
• Fairly OddParents: A New Wish: Season 1
• Lolla: The Story of Lollapalooza: Season 1
• Jurassic World: Chaos Theory: Season 1
• Mulligan: Season 2
• The 1% Club: Season 1

Most Popular TV on RT

• Dark Matter: Season 1
• Outer Range: Season 2
• X-Men '97: Season 1
• Bridgerton: Season 3
• Bodkin: Season 1
• Fallout: Season 1
• The 8 Show: Season 1
• Baby Reindeer: Season 1
• Best TV Shows
• Most Popular TV
• TV & Streaming News

Certified fresh pick

• Bridgerton: Season 3 Link to Bridgerton: Season 3
• All-Time Lists
• Binge Guide
• Comics on TV
• Five Favorite Films
• Video Interviews
• Weekend Box Office
• Weekly Ketchup
• What to Watch

Cannes Film Festival 2024: Movie Scorecard

Best Horror Movies of 2024 Ranked – New Scary Movies to Watch

Asian-American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander Heritage

What to Watch: In Theaters and On Streaming

Vote For the Best Movie of 1999 – Round 1

‘Seen on the Screen’ Podcast: A Celebration of Universal Stories 

• Trending on RT
• Furiosa First Reviews
• Most Anticipated 2025 Movies
• Cannes Film Festival Preview
• TV Premiere Dates

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

Where to watch.

Watch Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery with a subscription on Netflix.

What to Know

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery brings back Benoit Blanc for another wildly entertaining mystery rounded out by an outstanding ensemble cast.

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery solves the often deadly riddle of how to deliver a satisfying sequel to a movie that was nearly perfect to begin with.

Critics Reviews

Audience reviews, cast & crew.

Rian Johnson

Daniel Craig

Benoit Blanc

Dave Bautista

Kate Hudson

Kathryn Hahn

Movie Clips

More like this, related movie news.

'If' movie review: Ryan Reynolds' imaginary friend fantasy might go over your kids' heads

Even with likable youngsters, a vast array of cartoonish characters, various pratfalls and shenanigans, and Ryan Reynolds in non- Deadpool mode, the family comedy “IF” isn’t really a "kids movie" – at least not in a conventional sense.

There’s a refreshing whiff of whimsy and playful originality to writer/director John Krasinski’s bighearted fantasy (★★½ out of four; rated PG; in theaters Friday), which centers on a young girl who discovers a secret world of imaginary friends (aka IFs). What it can’t find is the common thread of universal appeal. Yeah, children are geared to like any movie with a cheery unicorn, superhero dog, flaming marshmallow with melting eye and assorted furry monsters. But “IF” features heady themes of parental loss and reconnecting with one’s youth, plus boasts a showstopping dance set to Tina Turner , and that all leans fairly adult. Mash those together and the result is akin to a live-action Pixar movie without the nuanced execution.

Twelve-year-old Bea (Cailey Fleming) doesn’t really think of herself as a kid anymore. Her mom died of a terminal illness, and now her dad (Krasinski) is going into the hospital for surgery to fix his “broken heart,” so she’s staying with her grandma (Fiona Shaw) in New York City.

When poking around her new environment, Bea learns she has the ability to see imaginary friends. And she’s not the only one: Bea meets charmingly crusty upstairs neighbor Cal (Reynolds) as well as his IF pals, like spritely Blossom (voiced by Phoebe Waller-Bridge) and overly sensitive purple furry monster named Blue (Steve Carell). They run a sort of matchmaking agency to connect forgotten IFs whose kids have outgrown them with new children in need of their companionship, and Bea volunteers to help out.

'Welcome to Wrexham': Ryan Reynolds talks triumph, joy and loss of new season

Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.

Bea is introduced to an IF retirement community located under a Coney Island carousel with a bevy of oddball personalities in the very kid-friendly middle section of the movie. “IF” low-key has the most starry supporting cast of any movie this summer because of all the A-listers voicing imaginary friends, an impressive list that includes Emily Blunt and Sam Rockwell as the aforementioned unicorn and superdog, Matt Damon as a helpful sunflower, George Clooney as a spaceman, Amy Schumer as a gummy bear and Bradley Cooper as an ice cube in a glass. (It's no talking raccoon, but it works.)

One of the movie's most poignant roles is a wise bear played by Louis Gossett Jr. in one of his final roles. Rather than just being a cameo, he’s nicely central to a key emotional scene.

While the best family flicks win over kids of all ages, “IF” is a film for grown-ups in PG dressing. The movie is amusing but safe in its humor, the overt earnestness overshadows some great bits of subversive silliness, and the thoughtful larger narrative, which reveals itself by the end to be much more than a story about a girl befriending a bunch of make-believe misfits, will go over some little ones’ heads. Tweens and teens, though, will likely engage with or feel seen by Bea’s character arc, struggling to move into a new phase of life while being tied to her younger years – not to mention worrying about her dad, who tries to make light of his medical situation for Bea.

Reynolds does his part enchanting all ages in this tale of two movies: He’s always got that irascible “fun uncle” vibe for kids, and he strikes a fun chemistry opposite Fleming that belies the serious stuff “IF” digs into frequently. But unless your child is into old movies, they probably won’t get why “Harvey” is playing in the background in a scene. And when “IF” reaches its cathartic finale, some kiddos might be wondering why their parents are sniffling and tearing up – if they're still paying attention and not off playing with their own imaginary friend by then.

• Cast & crew

The Watchers

A young artist gets stranded in an extensive, immaculate forest in western Ireland, where, after finding shelter, she becomes trapped alongside three strangers, stalked by mysterious creatur... Read all A young artist gets stranded in an extensive, immaculate forest in western Ireland, where, after finding shelter, she becomes trapped alongside three strangers, stalked by mysterious creatures each night. A young artist gets stranded in an extensive, immaculate forest in western Ireland, where, after finding shelter, she becomes trapped alongside three strangers, stalked by mysterious creatures each night.

• Ishana Shyamalan
• Dakota Fanning
• Georgina Campbell
• Olwen Fouéré

• Mina's Mother

• Watcher Movement Artist

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

The Big List of Summer Movies

More like this

Did you know

• Trivia Ishana Shyamalan 's directorial debut.
• Connections Referenced in All About: All About Horror in 2024 (2023)

New and Upcoming Horror

• When will The Watchers be released? Powered by Alexa
• June 7, 2024 (United States)
• United States
• Những Kẻ Theo Dõi
• Blinding Edge Pictures
• Inimitable Pictures
• New Line Cinema
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 42 minutes
• Dolby Digital

Related news

Contribute to this page.

• See more gaps
• Learn more about contributing

More to explore

Recently viewed

We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us!

Internet Archive Audio

• This Just In
• Grateful Dead
• Old Time Radio
• 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings
• Audio Books & Poetry
• Computers, Technology and Science
• Music, Arts & Culture
• News & Public Affairs
• Spirituality & Religion
• Radio News Archive

• Flickr Commons
• Occupy Wall Street Flickr
• NASA Images
• Solar System Collection
• Ames Research Center

• All Software
• Old School Emulation
• MS-DOS Games
• Historical Software
• Classic PC Games
• Software Library
• Kodi Archive and Support File
• Vintage Software
• CD-ROM Software
• CD-ROM Software Library
• Software Sites
• Tucows Software Library
• Shareware CD-ROMs
• Software Capsules Compilation
• CD-ROM Images
• ZX Spectrum
• DOOM Level CD

• Smithsonian Libraries
• FEDLINK (US)
• Lincoln Collection
• American Libraries
• Canadian Libraries
• Universal Library
• Project Gutenberg
• Children's Library
• Biodiversity Heritage Library
• Books by Language
• Additional Collections

• Prelinger Archives
• Democracy Now!
• Occupy Wall Street
• TV NSA Clip Library
• Animation & Cartoons
• Arts & Music
• Computers & Technology
• Cultural & Academic Films
• Ephemeral Films
• Sports Videos
• Videogame Videos
• Youth Media

Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet.

Mobile Apps

• Wayback Machine (iOS)
• Wayback Machine (Android)

Browser Extensions

Archive-it subscription.

• Explore the Collections
• Build Collections

Save Page Now

Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future.

Please enter a valid web address

• Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape

Scary Movie Película Completa En Español

Video item preview, share or embed this item, flag this item for.

• Graphic Violence
• Explicit Sexual Content
• Hate Speech
• Misinformation/Disinformation
• Marketing/Phishing/Advertising
• Misleading/Inaccurate/Missing Metadata

plus-circle Add Review comment Reviews

Download options, in collections.

Uploaded by anonymus696 on April 3, 2024

SIMILAR ITEMS (based on metadata)

Advertisement

Supported by

‘Sight’ Review: An Eye Doctor’s (Inner) Journey From China

Based on the real life of the pioneering ophthalmologist Ming Wang, this movie follows the character’s struggle to see inside himself.

• Share full article

By Glenn Kenny

Ming Wang, the real-life physician whose biography is the basis for this fictional feature, is a Nashville-based ophthalmologist whose degree in laser physics has presumably been a boon in his work restoring sight to visually impaired patients, many of whom are children.

As is the custom with inspirational medical movies, however, the new film “Sight,” directed by Andrew Hyatt, leans hard into uplift — it provides only the narrative-necessary minimum of the science. Wang’s achievement in developing innovative technology is central to one of the stories here, yes. But the dominating narrative is one of personal growth.

Weaving several decades’ worth of flashbacks into its action, otherwise set in 2006, the movie shows Wang’s traumatic childhood in Hangzhou, China, where he and his friend Lili are terrorized by the Cultural Revolution’s Red Guard. He wants to be a doctor like his father, who tells him his best “chance” in life is to “become a musician.” You don’t hear that too often.

Brilliant at school, Wang is able to make his way to M.I.T., but even in the elite educational environments he passes through, he’s discouraged from pursuing his dreams of becoming a physician. These trials leave Wang with a defensive ego and a tendency to shut out others emotionally. He’s forced to deal with failure and to learn to trust.

All of this is laid out in competent commonplace fashion, with the principal actors Terry Chen, Greg Kinnear and the always welcome Fionnula Flanagan displaying the expected professionalism.

Wang has written a memoir in which he discusses his Christian faith in some detail. The film proper does not. But the faith-friendly distributor, Angel Films, has appended to the feature a “Pay It Forward” coda (similar to that on their 2023 release “Sound of Freedom”) in which the real Wang testifies to his spirituality.

Sight Rated PG-13 for thematic material, mild violence. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters.

An earlier version of this review described incorrectly Hangzhou, where a character grew up. It is a city in China, not a province.

How we handle corrections

Explore More in TV and Movies

Not sure what to watch next we can help..

Season 49 of “Saturday Night Live” has ended. Here’s a look back at its most memorable monologues, sketches, product parodies and impressions .

“Megalopolis,” the first film from the director Francis Ford Coppola in 13 years, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. Here’s what to know .

Why is the “Planet of the Apes” franchise so gripping and effective? Because it doesn’t monkey around, our movie critic writes .

Luke Newton has been in the sexy Netflix hit “Bridgerton” from the start. But a new season will be his first as co-lead — or chief hunk .

If you are overwhelmed by the endless options, don’t despair — we put together the best offerings   on Netflix , Max , Disney+ , Amazon Prime  and Hulu  to make choosing your next binge a little easier.

Sign up for our Watching newsletter  to get recommendations on the best films and TV shows to stream and watch, delivered to your inbox.

Trusted Reviews is supported by its audience. If you purchase through links on our site, we may earn a commission. Learn more.

Tempered Glass vs Plastic Film: Which iPad screen protector is better?

iPads have such large, gorgeous displays, so it’s important to keep them looking their best with a screen protector. But, with both plastic film protectors and tempered glass protectors available for Apple’s big-screen tablet collection, which is best?

It’s not as simple a question as you might assume; while tempered glass certainly offers better overall protection for your iPad , film protectors can also serve a purpose for the right person, being much thinner, lightweight and cheaper than the premium alternative.

With that said, here are the key differences between tempered glass and plastic film protectors, and our verdict on which is better to protect your iPad screen.  

Plastic film protectors are near-invisible, but they’re not perfect

The biggest benefit to plastic film screen protectors is that they’re near-invisible once applied to a screen. They’re incredibly thin, offer 100% clarity and don’t add any real heft to your device while still protecting it from light damage. 

In fact, many 2024 smartphones come with one pre-applied as they cause such little impact on the overall screen experience – though the same can’t be said about the iPad, sadly. Still, that means you’re free to apply a plastic film screen protector on your iPad’s display without worry that it’ll have any negative effect on the look or feel of the screen. 

The biggest benefit to plastic film protectors is the cost; given that they’re just thin sheets of transparent plastic, it shouldn’t come as much surprise that they’re pretty cheap. 

You can pick up plastic screen protectors for the 10th-gen iPad for just £3.95 at Amazon at the time of writing, and alternatives for other iPads are just as affordable. This means that they’re not only an inexpensive initial investment that’ll help protect your iPad’s screen, but they’re cheap enough to replace once they get a little scratched. 

However, the thin, flexible nature of plastic film screen protectors means they only offer limited protection. A plastic film protector can protect your precious iPad from marks, light scratches and other cosmetic damage, but that’s about it; any hard impacts to the screen that’d crack a non-protected screen will cause similar damage with a plastic protector applied. 

That’s where tempered glass screen protectors come into play.

Tempered glass screen protectors are much more durable

Tempered glass screen protectors are a more premium alternative to plastic film protectors that offer way better protection, both from cosmetic damage and hard impacts to the screen. 

That’s possible because the glass used has been tempered to improve its durability. That means it’s essentially highly scratch-resistant, with a hardness rating of 9H which makes it almost as hard as diamond. That means that tempered glass protectors can confidently resist scratches from even sharp objects like keys, and that should translate to a largely mark-free iPad experience.

Tempered glass protectors don’t just protect the screen from incoming damage either; they can also help protect the screen if you drop your iPad. This is because tempered glass has excellent shatter resistance, helping to absorb the impact from the drop and prevent the screen from taking the brunt of the damage. 

It’s not going to protect it from all drops – if the corner of the iPad’s frame gets dented into the display from a drop, that’ll cause internal screen damage – but it’s certainly added peace of mind, especially when combined with a durable case. 

The use of glass also means that tempered screen protectors are very clear, not impacting the clarity of your iPad’s screen, while many also come with an oleophobic coating to help reduce the amount of fingerprints and smudges the protector picks up. 

You’ve also got other options when it comes to tempered screen protectors, like privacy glass that hides your screen activity from those around you, and textured alternatives that feel nicer to the touch, which further improve your tablet experience. 

Of course, with all these benefits comes increased cost, especially when it comes to larger tempered glass screen protectors for iPads – though they’re still relatively cheap in the grand scheme of things. These can cost upwards of £15 depending on the manufacturer you opt for, but it’s generally worth paying a little more for better quality. 

Tempered glass protectors are also quite thick, meaning they’ll be noticeable once applied to your iPad, and this could also cause potential compatibility issues with protective iPad cases, some of which reach right to the edge of the screen. 

It’s not necessarily a dealbreaker with the improved screen protection on offer, but it’s worth bearing in mind if you use a case or keyboard cover frequently. 

Which type of iPad screen protector is best?

Both plastic and tempered glass screen protectors have their merits, and the decision of which is best will depend entirely on your personal needs. 

If you just want a cheap screen protector to protect your iPad from cosmetic damage, or you already use a case and just want extra peace of mind, a plastic screen protector will likely fulfil your needs. It may not offer the best protection, but it’s slim, affordable and offers great screen clarity.

If, however, you want the best protection for your iPad screen, tempered glass is certainly the way to go. It’s a more expensive investment and they’re much thicker than plastic alternatives, but with 9H hardness and shatter resistance, it’ll not only stave off scratches and other marks but possibly even protect your screen from fall damage. 

You might like…

iPad Pro vs MacBook Pro: Tablet or laptop?

Sonos Roam 2 vs Sonos Roam: A true upgrade?

Sonos Ace vs Sony WH-1000XM5: What’s the difference?

Sonos Ace vs AirPods Max: How do these flagship headphones compare?

Apple iPad Air vs iPad Pro: What’s the difference?

Google Pixel 8a vs iPhone 14: What’s the difference?

Lewis is the Mobile Editor of Trusted Reviews with plenty of phone experience, from the Nokia 3210 to the iPhone 14 Pro Max. He has been in the tech industry writing about phones, headphones, tablets,…

Why trust our journalism?

Founded in 2003, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.

Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.

Editorial independence

Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.

Professional conduct

We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.

Sign up to our newsletter

Get the best of Trusted Reviews delivered right to your inbox.

The Best AR Smart Glasses of 2024

Project a private theater-sized screen or virtual workspace over your real-world surroundings.

Gear-obsessed editors choose every product we review. We may earn commission if you buy from a link. Why Trust Us?

Smart glasses are wearable technology that project digital content directly into your field of view. You look through them instead of at a screen—freeing up your hands to interact with AR objects in the environment. Apple’s $3,499 Vision Pro headset won’t be available until early next year and hasn’t quite achieved a lightweight glasses form factor ideal for everyday use. In the meantime display manufacturers like TCL and Xreal have already created affordable AR smart glasses that you can buy today. These sub $500 headsets can be used for everyday tasks like projecting a virtual private theater screen or multi-monitor setup for work. All of this squeezed into a gadget that slides into your pocket. I’ve spent the past month working, watching, and gaming with the best models you can buy right now. Here’s how they held up.

What To Look For

Display technology is the most important factor of smart glasses. You’d be better off sticking with a screen if you can’t make out text, if the image is too dim, or if the narrow field of view makes it too hard to focus on content. Modern smart glasses use birdbath optics, which position the picture downward then reflect the visuals close to the wearer’s eye for a rich, full HD projection that seems to appear several feet in front of you. Paired with micro OLED displays for each eye, this creates rich a vibrant image that frees you from the size limitations of physical screens and pops from your surroundings. If you choose to look outside of this guide you’ll want to make sure any alternatives have at least a 1080p resolution and 45 degree field of view.

Next, you want to ensure the fit is comfortable enough for extended use. An easy way to gauge this is to look for smart glasses with plenty of adjustability. Take note of different arm heights, the number of nose bridges included, and whether or not there is built-in diopter tuning for nearsightedness. A proper fit ensures there’s minimal (or no) blur and you won’t lose any corners of your content. Modern smart glasses have come a long way from bulky and nerdy prototypes like Google Glass. Take into account if you like the design to find a pair that fits with your sense of fashion.

XREAL Air AR Glasses

The Xreal (formerly Nreal) Air are the most feature-packed AR glasses available. In addition to projecting a a private 130-inch theater screen, they’re capable of running a full AR operating system on the go. This spatial computing interface is called Nebula. It is home to a suite of apps including Microsoft Office for work, virtual desktops for PC or Mac, and a variety of indie games in the AR Lab. The Air’s picture quality comes close to our top performer (the Rokid Max, below) but isn’t as smooth when gaming due to their lower 60-hertz refresh rate. Still, they excel in value as they are the most affordable pair with the most expansive feature set.

Rokid’s Max AR glasses project a large 215-inch screen six meters ahead of you. They lack the multitasking chops of the Xreal Nebula workspace and its AR ecosystem consists of basic web apps. However, they make up for it with the best big-screen mode in our test pool—they have the highest refresh rate and most vibrant picture.

There are plenty of customization options on the Rokid Max. Everything from the angle of the arms to a physical myopia correction dial on the top is adjustable. That makes it easier to share them with other people without them needing contacts or glasses. Other glasses require you to get prescription lenses fitted to your eyesight. Rokid’s headset is streamlined out of the box—simply attach the pieces to find the perfect fit, plug the Max into a USB-C device, and the screen docks into the center of your view from a distance. The experience is straightforward and instantly creates a sharp theater-sized picture. While ideal for gaming it also magnified my Mac screen, but this view isn’t as useful as the Xreal remote desktop. Its AR workspace looks much like the original iPhone’s layout down to the app icons but it feels a bit laggy and lacks the multitasking of the Airs above.

Where it clearly excels from the competition is in creating a massive, immersive virtual display. The latest blockbuster games like “Elden Ring” benefit from the silky smooth 120-hertz refresh rate. Motions like rolls and jumps feel more fluid than on the Xreal or TCL glasses (below). Aiming crosshairs in FPS games feels snappier, and the brighter 600 nits gives lush foliage and color variations in sand noticeably more pop. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the higher refresh rate had no discernible impact on the battery life of my Steam Deck or laptop (these devices did run slightly warmer after an hour or so). There was, however, noticeably less image ghosting of trails left behind on fast moving objects, like when driving vehicles at high speeds in racing games.

The glasses’ oval design casts the widest field of view to maximize immersion and block distractions from your peripheral vision. On nights when my partner wanted to watch the bedroom TV, I slid these on and played “The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom” on a 200-inch screen while laying down. The screen shakes with your head so if you experience turbulence on a plane (I experienced a slight jitter on a bus and train) you will see the screen wobble a bit. Despite this, it still has superior image quality. Rokid’s Max is the best-looking virtual screen for games and movies for those who need the most immersive experience possible.

TCL NXTWEAR S RayNeo XR Glasses

Although the TCL NXTWEAR S smart glasses aren’t as vibrant, their comfort is unmatched thanks to their sleek finish which runs cool and TÜV Low Blue Light eye protection. These are perfect for binging movies or marathon gaming sessions. TCL nailed the basics in ways its rivals above don’t, so they’re much easier to use. For example, you don’t have to forcefully snap the front sunglass shade over the frame because there is a slick magnetic attachment system to instantly pop off or swap out blockers. Although it sounds minor, the inclusion of physical buttons makes it so much easier to adjust volume and brightness, or enter 3D movie mode, rather than gamble on a touch sensitive panel or multifunctional wheel. The NXTWEAR S is also the only pair to use a Pogo USB connector. Much like Apple’s MagSafe system, this wire disconnects easily to reduce wire strain and improve convenience when traveling.

While it’s picture is equally as sharp as the others at 1080p, the limited brightness and refresh rate is especially noticeable compared to the Rokid Max while gaming. I needed to pay more attention to spot the torches of distant enemies and better anticipate an enemy attack in “Elden Ring.” However I preferred watching movies on the TCL, as these are shot at under 30 FPS and the dimmer screen felt more lifelike with less strain on my eyes—an actor’s five o’clock shadow or pimple were just as sharp. TCL’s speakers created the best bass and most immersive 3D sound. You can even pair an additional device to them over Bluetooth so you can listen to your phone simultaneously.

Keep in mind that the glasses’ wayfarer design is narrower than the rounded shapes of the other two glasses, so you end up seeing more of your surroundings in your peripheral vision. I prefer this while I travel as it looks the most “normal” of the bunch (think a square pair of Ray-Bans) and is more compact. However, if you’re sitting in a busy room, this higher level of awareness can be distracting. These have the highest quality feel to them and are backed by the biggest of all three companies. But, if you want a multi-window virtual workspace or will primarily be using these at home, then the other two models fill more of your vision and offer computing capabilities that the NXTWEAR S lacks.

Hunter Fenollol, our resident expert of all things consumer tech, from smart home to VR gaming headsets, has years of knowledge creating product explainers, in-depth reviews, and buying guides to help you get the most from the latest electronics. Throughout college, he covered and reviewed the latest gadget releases for sites like Tom’s Guide, Laptop Magazine, and CNN Underscored. If he’s not elbow-deep in the latest hardware, you can find Hunter at one of Long Island’s many beaches, in Manhattan, or gambling away his paycheck. 

.css-cuqpxl:before{padding-right:0.3125rem;content:'//';display:inline;} Best Product Reviews of 2024 .css-xtujxj:before{padding-left:0.3125rem;content:'//';display:inline;}

The Best Outdoor Daybeds for Lounging in Style

Discounted Gas and Electric Chainsaws for Spring

The Best Memorial Day Lawn Mower Sales 2024

Take Up to 41% Off Editor-Favorite Grills

The Best Memorial Day TV Sales to Shop Now

The 5 Best Water Storage Containers

The Best Bladeless Fans for 2024

Save 25% on Goal Zero Portable Power Stations

The Best Memorial Day Generator Sales 2024

The Best Air Conditioners We Tested and Recommend

The 7 Best Self-Propelled Lawn Mowers

• Fairs & Events
• Watch & Listen
• Editorial Content
• Frieze Magazine
• Issue Archive
• Frieze New Writers

From Katrin Hornek’s post-apocalyptic wasteground to  Kristof Santy’s majestic magnifications of the mundane, here are our latest cohort’s top spring exhibitions 

• Frieze London
• Frieze Masters
• Frieze Los Angeles
• Frieze New York
• Frieze Seoul
• Frieze Viewing Room
• EXPO CHICAGO
• The Armory Show
• No. 9 Cork Street
• Exhibitions
• Visitor Information
• Gallery Applications
• Event Space Hire
• Frieze 91 Events
• Shows to See
• Find a Gallery

This month, three exhibitions open in Frieze's Mayfair space, including a solo show by Rameshwar Broota, an artist-led reflection on Edward Burra and Fathi Hassan's response to The Sunderland Collection

• Collaborations

‘Love Lies Bleeding’ Is a Sketchy Nod to Queer Cinema

Rose glass’s queer romance, starring kristen stewart and katy m. o’brian, is a full of sex and violence but lacks the kind of punch to go beyond the tropes it tries to subvert.

Love Lies Bleeding (2024), directed by Rose Glass, is a film about a queer romance that goes horribly, murderously wrong. Set against the backdrop of a violently homophobic 1980s US, the film reimagines queerness in society at that time, exploring how violence infiltrates all areas of the relationship between the central protagonists: Lou (Kristen Stewart) and Jackie (Katy M. O’Brian). Glass’s movie builds upon the tradition of the 1990s independent filmmaking that B. Ruby Rich called the ‘New Queer Cinema’ in a landmark 1992 essay in the Village Voice . What the film says about current feelings around queer communities, however, feels woefully unclear at present.

‘Where do you want it?’ Lou asks her soon-to-be lover the bodybuilder Jackie, as she prepares to inject steroids into the musclewoman’s glutes. The two met at the gym Lou manages. As Jackie, homeless and new to town, is preparing for a bodybuilding competition in Las Vegas, Lou offers her assistance in the form of stolen steroid injections. The chemicals eventually precipitate Jackie’s mental deterioration, which culminates in a murderous rampage, yet here the interaction is portrayed as an innocent, intimate moment. The steroids also have a transformative effect on the film itself, acting as the distorting force for the hyper-disturbing, sensorily bombastic remaining hour. What begins as a story of two outcasts told in the style of a romantic comedy – complete with cheerful montage scenes – ends up descending into chaos due to the abusive actions of Lou’s brother-in-law JJ (Dave Franco), who regularly attacks his wife, Lou’s sister. Fuelled by love and rage, catalysed by the steroids, Jackie takes justice into her own hands and murders JJ.

Lou and Jackie’s relationship seems to be the kindling that sets old tensions alight. With Lou’s estranged father, the head of a powerful crime family, the two women find themselves in a situation larger than the two of them, to which they respond by enacting crazed violence on others, seemingly without agency or impulse control. The result feels like a lame attempt to subvert the portrayal of lesbians as deviant defective characters, prone to isolation and dangerous behaviour, without quite making the constructivist link to the conditions of the society informing their identities.

The harm perpetrated by the male characters in Love Lies Bleeding mirrors the violence of 1980s society, as well as the reductive expectations under which queer women were forced to labour. In the scenes after JJ’s murder, her father Lou Sr. (Ed Harris) offers protection on the conditions that Lou re-enter the criminal fold and fall in line.  Instead Lou tries to implicate her father and expose his past, leading to him putting out a hit on her and kidnapping Jackie to manipulate her. It’s clear that Glass seems to want to convey a kind of anti-establishment sentiment, but the film doesn’t quite bear its weight, mainly due to the lack of introspection on the part of any of the characters, who seem beguiled by forces unclear to them and the viewer.

In her writing on the new queer cinema, Rich describes a cinema whose queerness is intentional, ‘no more arbitrary than [its] aesthetics,’ but which is neither reducible to its queerness nor posing as some kind of universal story beyond the queer. While the new queer cinema sought to de-essentialize the queer subject, recent queer crime films such as Love Lies Bleeding, as well as Bottoms (2023) and Drive Away Dolls (2024) don’t seem to have the same preoccupations, relying on stereotypes and borrowed imagery. In Love Lies Bleeding we are given no clear indication as to whether Jackie and Lou’s behaviour is rooted in conscious, active rebellion or is instinctual and uncontained. They evoke classic tropes, moving in together immediately and aiming to control and own one another, with Lou lying to Jackie about stealing the steroids and also locking Jackie in a house at one point, while Jackie lies to Lou about sleeping with JJ. There is no clear acknowledgment of these problematic behaviours, nor a sense of why the two would be drawn to each other, except for their position as queer outsiders. Their attraction feels born out of their mutual need for escape.

I left the theatre thinking about the sinister effect created by Glass’s direction. It made me reflect on queerness in life more broadly. The experiences of the film’s queer characters are marked by fear and darkness, defined by a ubiquitous sense of threat; the film underlines the paramount importance of safeguarding queer people and queer identities in the present moment. Festivals such as last year’s ‘Be Gay Do Crime’ at the BFI celebrate violent queer cinema, as did a similar series at the Nitehawk cinema in Brooklyn the year before. In doing so they remind us of the mostly male directorial lineage of the genre; I wonder whether this film, along with others such as Bottoms and Drive Away Dolls, does much to contribute or speak to the queer experience of today, despite all three being spearheaded by women. Though she tells a queer femme story, I found myself wishing that Glass would offer a clear commentary on the trope of the butch femme, offering us more opportunity to reflect on whether she is the victim of society’s expectations of women like her, or the monster we all fear.

Main image: Rose Glass, Love Lies Bleeding (detail), 2024, film still. Courtesy: A24

Lydia Popplewell is a writer based in London.

Love Lies Bleeding

Film review, lydia popplewell.

At this year’s Berlinale, the queen of electroclash proves why she’s still a badass raconteur of the crass and libidinous

For the latest Auschwitz drama, sound designer Johnnie Burn discusses working with Jonathan Glazer to reveal how ordinary people can quickly become accustomed to horror

From Jonathan Glazer's triumphant Cannes debut to the first Sudanese production to be honoured by the festival, here are six films to keep an eye out for this year

At Modern Art Oxford, the artist’s monumental new film examines 15 judges working in England and Wales 

The former starlet’s return to the screen is just a reminder of how far she has fallen from favour

The auteur inverts Hollywood genre tropes in an alien invasion romp that questions what we see and believe

Gessica Généus’s feature film debut tells a touching story about a young woman’s struggle to find hope in a country full of despair and violence

A new play by Gillian Solvo highlights the lives of those who survived the devastating fire

On the occasion of the artist’s exhibition at Spike Island, his former collaborator dissects the 1992 sculptural installation

Despite a vague curatorial approach, ‘After Rain’ offers visitors and locals alike a chance to reflect on the Kingdom’s big plans for the region

How an ‘ethical, comprehensive and critical overhaul’ of the institution’s problematic collection is busting the myth of the italiani brava gente

© FRIEZE 2020 Cookie Settings | Do Not Sell My Personal Information

• 2023 Exhibitors
• 2024 Exhibitors