Film

Glass

The trilogy-closer that swaps spectacle for interrogation: Shyamalan traps his reluctant superhero, supervillain and shapeshifting killer in a psychiatric ward and asks whether any of them are what the movies (and comics) have told us they are. Slower, talkier and more theoretical than a typical January release, it rewards people who saw Unbreakable and Split and are invested in the argument, not the fight scenes.

TMDb rating6.7

If you liked this

Unbreakable2000

The quiet, wintry origin story Glass is finishing — Shyamalan's first and best swing at what a superhero would actually feel like if he existed in the real world.

But Deliberately paced and almost entirely without action; if you came for spectacle, this will feel like watching paint dry beautifully.

Unbreakable poster

Split2017

McAvoy's performance as Kevin's many personalities, in full horror-movie mode, before Glass recontextualizes everything he does here as tragedy.

But It plays fast and loose with dissociative identity disorder for scares, which some viewers find genuinely uncomfortable rather than thrilling.

Split poster

Chronicle2012

Found-footage realism applied to teenagers discovering powers — the same instinct as Unbreakable, that superpowers would mostly just make people's lives messier and sadder.

But The shaky-cam gimmick and low budget will feel small after the polish of the Shyamalan trilogy.

Chronicle poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Three Faces of Eve1957

This is where the pop-culture image of multiple personality disorder actually comes from — Kevin's condition traced back to its origin as sober, sympathetic drama rather than superhero mythology.

Joanne Woodward's Oscar-winning performance as a woman with multiple personalities, decades before Split turned the same condition into horror-movie spectacle.

But Stagey, clinical, and dated in its psychiatry — this is 1950s Hollywood prestige drama, not a thriller.

The Three Faces of Eve poster
More like this (8)

Logan2017

A superhero movie about mortality, obsolescence and what happens when the myth wears out its usefulness — the elegiac note Glass is straining for.

But Brutally violent in a way that's a world away from Shyamalan's restraint; this one earns its R-rating with blood, not ideas.

Logan poster

Watchmen2019

HBO's series treats masked vigilantes as a genuine social and moral problem, with the same interest in institutions, trauma and buried origin stories that runs through Glass.

But Dense, allusive and demanding — you'll want to have seen the source material's world established, or be ready to just trust it.

Watchmen poster

Shutter Island2010

A psychiatric institution, an unreliable protagonist, and a final-act rug-pull about what's real — Scorsese doing his own version of the game Glass plays with Dr. Staple's ward.

But The twist has been so widely discussed that it may land with less force than it should.

Shutter Island poster

Fight Club1999

The definitive cinematic take on a fractured identity hiding a second self, with a structural sleight-of-hand that rhymes with Kevin's twenty-four-personality puzzle.

But Its swagger and nihilism are a very different register from Shyamalan's more mournful, clinical approach to the same idea.

Fight Club poster

Brightburn2019

Takes the Superman origin story and asks what if the chosen one grew up to be a monster — the Beast's menace turned into a full horror movie.

But Nasty and gory in a way that has none of the Trilogy's restraint; it's a B-movie with a mean streak, not a character study.

Brightburn poster

Kick-Ass2010

A street-level, no-superpowers take on ordinary people trying to be heroes, sharing Unbreakable's DNA but played with pulpy, comic-book glee instead of solemnity.

But Its jokey ultraviolence and teenage-boy energy are almost the tonal opposite of everything Shyamalan is doing.

Kick-Ass poster

Crazy, Not Insane2020no page yet

Glass turns dissociative identity into comic-book cosmology; this documentary insists on it as a real, contested clinical phenomenon with real victims and real skeptics.

A real documentary following a forensic psychiatrist's decades-long investigation into whether extreme childhood trauma can split a mind into multiple identities — treating Kevin's exact condition as genuine, unresolved mystery.

But Talking-heads and archival footage rather than drama; slow, sober, and genuinely upsetting in places.

Oldboy2003

Same structural engine as Elijah's puppet-mastery — a patient, theatrical villain who has been writing the story from off-page — but delivered as operatic, unflinching genre violence instead of restrained comic-book philosophy.

A South Korean revenge thriller built around a hidden mastermind who has been orchestrating a man's suffering from the shadows for reasons that reframe everything you've watched.

But Genuinely brutal — a hammer fight, a live-octopus scene, and a final revelation that is much darker than anything Elijah Price gets up to.

Oldboy poster

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Recommended by

Unbreakable, Split