You can hate on the guy all you want, but, at some point, M. Night Shyamalan was known as the director that gave us "The Sixth Sense" and "Unbreakable." As far as I'm concerned, those two films justify his existence in the cinematic spectrum. "The Village" and "Signs" weren't half-bad either. Of course, following those two films, we got "Lady in the Water," and "The Happening," two unwatchable projects that signaled, maybe, the end of his career as the heir of Hitchcock/Spielberg for millennials.
Ever since those six films, with his signature style stamped all over them, Shyamalan has been dabbling mostly in Hollywood crap that has none of the carefully calibrated voice he created between 1999-2008: "After Earth," and "The Last Airbender" completely crushed his and our souls.
These films greatly affected the latter part of his moviemaking career and enhaced his potential as a has-been filmmaker. Why would a studio trust him with a big project ever again? They technically haven't since "After Earth."
However, all of this seemed to have sparked a fresh new creative freedom in the director that none of us saw coming. He made his most "watchable" film in quite some time with 2015's low-budget creepfest "The Visit," a film that could scare you and, at the same time, have you chuckling to no ends, it was a successful venture into original genre filmmaking.
The real comeback, however, came a year ago with "Split" which had James McAvoy playing a man with dissociative identity disorder, he had 23 personalities with his body chemistry making him switch, at any moment, to another identity. In "Split" this deranged man ended up kidnapping three women (Anya Taylor-Joy, Betty Buckley, Jessica Sula, Haley Lu Richardson) and taking them hostage at his labyrinthine home.
"Split" ended with a major reveal, a connection to his earlier work, more specifically "Unbreakable," which announced, quite possibly, a new phase for the 47-year-old old director.
Here’s the official synopsis for "Glass":
"From Unbreakable, Bruce Willis returns as David Dunn as does Samuel L. Jackson as Elijah Price, known also by his pseudonym Mr. Glass. Joining from Split are James McAvoy, reprising his role as Kevin Wendell Crumb and the multiple identities who reside within, and Anya Taylor-Joy as Casey Cooke, the only captive to survive an encounter with The Beast. Following the conclusion of Split, Glass finds Dunn pursuing Crumb’s superhuman figure of The Beast in a series of escalating encounters, while the shadowy presence of Price emerges as an orchestrator who holds secrets critical to both men. This riveting culmination of his worldwide blockbusters will be produced by Shyamalan and Jason Blum, who also produced the writer/director’s previous two films for Universal. They produce again with Ashwin Rajan and Marc Bienstock, and Steven Schneider, who will executive produce."
“Glass” is set to be released January 18, 2019.