Up on The Glass is a 2020 thriller about a wanderer who secretly desires the life and wife of his more affluent friend.
Jack DiMercurio (Chase Fein) isn’t exactly having the best of times, recently losing his job and now wandering about in a rundown pickup truck. Cleaning himself up a bit, he heads to Lake Michigan for a small reunion with his college pals ‘Moze’ (Steve Holm) and Andy (Hunter Cross) at Andy’s lakeside home. Jack’s always been in Andy’s shadow, who has had life delivered on a silver platter, including marrying Liz (Chelsea Kurtz), a girl Jack also had eyes for back in day. However, when the party’s over, and it’s only Andy and Jack, things take a bad turn when buried truths come out. Now Jack’s got a problem, made worse when Liz shows up and his real troubles begin.
If director and co-writer Kevin Del Principe‘s new film Up On the Glass sounds a little familiar, than you’ve no doubt seen Matt Damon‘s The Talented Mr. Ripley. However, beyond the tenuous plot threads that bind them, there’s little else that offers comparison. Under the Glass is an ambitions take on the mold but isn’t as impactful, its limited budget and general malaise holding this back from its sharper points of potential.
It’s not that there isn’t plenty of good ideas on tap, with Jack a solid if somewhat obvious wallflower type who sees everything he should have in the life of his obnoxious and cheating friend Andy. Del Principe takes his time letting that gestate, the first hour of this story nearly entirely conversation driven with long stretches of talking with very little motion, the ‘slow burn’ mentality of it there but not as heated as it feels ready for. This makes for a tested journey to the second act where things finally catch an up beat as Jack deals with a host of consequences spinning out of control.
I’ll avoid saying much more about the details of what happens storywise, though it’s fairly clear where this heads. There’s nothing wrong with that of course, the bones of the tale not what matters but the marrow beneath. It’s here where Up On The Glass flips its two-sided coin. The dialogue that drives these characters is convincing and entirely believable, yet the delivery – especially in the first half – is often less so, where some performances and even character actions don’t strike with the punch you might hope for.
That all said, I don’t want to paint myself into a corner and leave you feeling this isn’t worth a look. Del Principe makes some smart directing choices throughout – he’s patient and wonderfully subtle – more so once the story gets the twist finally on the table and we are at last introduced to Liz, putting her and Jack together in a complex puzzler that genuinely builds some proper tension. Her presence adds a much-need jolt to the setup, giving the film plenty of better opportunities to find its footing.
While nothing about Up On The Glass is fast-paced or even all that energetic, the filmmakers do so purposefully and more so than not, make it work, especially the more it moves forward, leading to a final frame that leaves the last of the heavy lifting to the audience. Whether you’ll find that satisfying or not is probably half the point.