Glass
Universal Pictures | Release Date: January 18, 2019 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
43
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 53 Critic Reviews
Positive:
9
Mixed:
36
Negative:
8
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
60
CNNBrian LowryMay 21, 2019
Proves just clever enough to come out on the right side of a split decision. Read full review
60
The Observer (UK)Simran HansJan 22, 2019
The metaphors are messy (trauma makes people extraordinary?) and the pacing’s off, but it’s fun to see the individual films’ universes crossing over. Read full review
60
Rolling StoneDavid FearJan 17, 2019
Glass is not the flaming flop some folks have already suggested it is, nor is it the movie you want in terms of tying ambitious, highfalutin notions together about how we process our pulp mythos. Read full review
60
Film ThreatChris GoreJan 10, 2019
Glass is not a perfect movie, but it is a consistently entertaining one. Read full review
60
EmpireNick de SemlyenJan 9, 2019
Essentially a Split sequel with an Unbreakable topping, this is weaker than either of those films but still has a decent amount of entertaining and creepy sequences, most of them due to McAvoy’s high-commitment performance. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterJohn DeForeJan 9, 2019
As a trilogy-closer, it's a mixed bag, tying earlier narrative strands together pleasingly while working too hard (and failing) to convince viewers Shyamalan has something uniquely brainy to offer in the overpopulated arena of comics-inspired stories. Read full review
60
Total FilmMatt MaytumJan 9, 2019
Shyamalan concludes his secret trilogy with a film easier to admire than love. McAvoy is terrific again, but Glass doesn’t quite live up to the lofty heights of Unbreakable and Split. Read full review
58
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyJan 9, 2019
Yes, it’s easy to be impressed by the world that Shyamalan has created and now fleshed out, but it would be nice if we were also moved to feel something too. In the end, Glass is more half empty than half full. Read full review
58
The PlaylistRodrigo PerezJan 9, 2019
Ultimately, Glass is a killer concept that suffers from a wobbly execution. Shyamalan nails the intimate stuff, but that third act is just bound to shatter and confound audience expectation. Read full review
55
IGNRosie KnightJan 9, 2019
There are hints of greatness, but Glass is tonally confused and will likely disappoint fans of Unbreakable and Split. Read full review
50
The New York TimesManohla DargisJan 17, 2019
Shyamalan’s talent for primitive scares remains intact in Glass, as does his love for cramming a whole lot of story in one feature. Read full review
50
Original-CinJim SlotekJan 17, 2019
Unfortunately, the director who came in too early for the superhero craze may now be revisiting it too late. The genre now monopolizes the multiplex, and it seems as if everything about comic books and superpowers and misanthropy has already been said. But Shyamalan still says it, in an unfocused movie with some interesting ideas, and so much expositional dialogue in place of action, it’s sometimes more of a lecture than a thriller. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineKeith UhlichJan 17, 2019
M. Night Ghyamalan’s film is aimed at an audience from whom he cringingly craves fealty. Read full review
50
RogerEbert.comBrian TallericoJan 17, 2019
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. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangJan 16, 2019
While Glass is an intermittent showcase for his undeniable filmmaking gifts — his meticulous attention to detail, his shivery command of technique — the movie winds up feeling less like a progression than a dead end. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeTy BurrJan 16, 2019
Glass isn’t a terrible film but neither is it a particularly good one, and it certainly doesn’t stick the landing the way the filmmaker and his hardy fans have probably hoped. It’s by turns intriguing, awkward, inspired, misguided, and very, very talky. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsJan 16, 2019
Way back in “Unbreakable,” Jackson’s Mr. Glass bemoaned how comics superheroes “got chewed up in the commercial machine.” Glass proves it. Read full review
50
USA TodayBrian TruittJan 16, 2019
A befuddling mélange of superpowered showdowns, psychological gaslighting and self-important comic meanderings, it's a finale that doesn’t know what it wants to be. Read full review
50
The Associated PressLindsey BahrJan 16, 2019
For all the hype behind these three characters meeting, and the years it took to get it off the ground, Glass is one big anti-climax. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreJan 16, 2019
It all makes for a somber and self-serious (Shyamalan’s Achilles Heel) popcorn pic that is easy enough to sit through even as its pointlessness grows with every act, and its final act underlines and admits it. Read full review
50
Vanity FairRichard LawsonJan 9, 2019
Glass is simply Shyamalan giving a book report on the basic structure of comic-caper narratives. There’s something endearing about his eagerness to explain these simple things, to show us what he knows. But Glass still suffers for that pedantic self-seriousness. Read full review
50
Screen DailyFionnuala HalliganJan 9, 2019
Despite the pyrotechnics of McAvoy’s performances and Willis’s grounded conviction, there’s just not enough here past the high concept of “what if real people were superheroes?”. Read full review
50
VarietyOwen GleibermanJan 9, 2019
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. Read full review
42
IndieWireDavid EhrlichJan 9, 2019
The trouble with Glass isn’t that its creator sees his own reflection at every turn, or that he goes so far out of his way to contort the film into a clear parable for the many stages of his turbulent career; the trouble with Glass is that its mildly intriguing meta-textual narrative is so much richer and more compelling than the asinine story that Shyamalan tells on its surface. Read full review
40
Paste MagazineWill LeitchJan 23, 2019
This is Shyamalan at his worst, a speechifying, moralizing scold who wants your adoration but doesn’t want to put in the effort, or himself at risk, to earn it. Read full review
40
The New YorkerAnthony LaneJan 21, 2019
You have to admire Shyamalan’s efforts to deconstruct a genre that he evidently loves, yet there is just so little to haunt or to fool us in the result, and a few sharp laughs might have helped his cause. Read full review
40
CineVueChristopher MachellJan 18, 2019
Despite its myriad issues, Glass is often a hoot to watch – particularly once Elijah comes out of his self-induced fugue to wreak havoc on the facility, with Jackson hamming it up with infectious relish, bouncing off the gurning McAvoy. Read full review
40
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternJan 17, 2019
Mr. Shyamalan’s movies have often been turgid in a distinctive way, with overtones of lofty sadness, and dramatized deliberately or violently, but seldom spontaneously. This one follows the pattern, for not so good and worse. It’s a lofty letdown. Read full review
40
The GuardianPeter BradshawJan 17, 2019
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. Read full review
40
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinJan 15, 2019
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. Read full review
40
The TelegraphTim RobeyJan 10, 2019
Intermittently entertaining but also a rum mix of goofy and pretentious, Glass sets far more problems than it successfully solves: tying various loose threads together, Shyamalan can’t restrain himself from adding more. The result’s a lumpy tangle, and the trilogy’s weakest instalment. Read full review
40
Time OutJoshua RothkopfJan 9, 2019
It’s both stupefying and a little sad to realize that this is the movie Shyamalan wanted to make. Read full review
40
SlateSam AdamsJan 9, 2019
It’s also hard not to judge it against the movie it might have been. In 2000, Unbreakable felt like an anomaly, a superhero movie that steered clear of camp and dug into the genre’s bedrock. It could have been thrilling to extend that approach into 2019, where superheroes storm the multiplex on a monthly basis, and there’s no longer a need to laboriously explain the culture behind them. Unfortunately, it seems that laborious explanations are the part Shyamalan likes. He’s the evil mastermind detailing his plot for world domination, knowing that the villain’s monologue is a terrible cliché but unable to resist the urge. Read full review
40
UproxxMike RyanJan 9, 2019
Glass is a fascinating movie. Now, having said that, I should quickly point out that I did not enjoy this movie and I consider it, after a 19-year wait, one of the biggest personal disappointments I’ve ever experienced in a theater. Read full review
40
VoxAlissa WilkinsonJan 9, 2019
It’s a movie ostensibly interested in how comic book stories work, but it has the same problems as a lot of the comic book movies hitting the big screen these days. The big twist: Shyamalan seems to have not learned very much at all from his own movies. Read full review
40
TheWrapMonica CastilloJan 9, 2019
Performances aside, Glass is a pretty mixed bag of exposition-filled dull moments and pedantic dialogue. Read full review
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