Thursday, June 19, 2008
The Happening
Remember the ending of Poltergeist? Carol Anne is rescued by her parents and then the whole house starts to heave and come apart. Right at that moment the teenage daughter arrives home in a car. She sees the chaos and screams: What's Happening?!?!?
I watched M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening this evening and had to suppress the urge to shout the same thing at the screen. Not because of supernatural events or a convoluted plot. It's just that the film is so shockingly bad.
M. Night Shyamalan has written and directed some terrific films (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs and The Village). It's hard to believe that he wrote and directed this one. Terrible script, mostly horrible acting. And the twist? What actually is happening? No point spoiling it but it just didn't translate into something menacing. There are a few moments of drama here that work, especially at the beginning but they're few and far between. And there are several scenes where the audience laughed because the action on screen was just so bad.
If you're still planning to see The Happening maybe you'll find it more enjoyable than I did, even if only in a perverse way. If you plan to skip it, check out Christopher Orr's movie review. It's laden with spoilers but is much more entertaining than the film itself. Orr makes an interesting comparison to Spielberg's War of the Worlds (a much, much, much superior film). I was also reminded of 28 Eight Weeks Later but only because the two films end in the same locale.
Update: I forgot to mention that like Alfred Hitchcock's trademark cameos, Shyamalan usually makes an appearance in his films. In The Happening he plays Joey a voice on the telephone. Yup, he literally "phoned in" his performance.
I watched M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening this evening and had to suppress the urge to shout the same thing at the screen. Not because of supernatural events or a convoluted plot. It's just that the film is so shockingly bad.
M. Night Shyamalan has written and directed some terrific films (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs and The Village). It's hard to believe that he wrote and directed this one. Terrible script, mostly horrible acting. And the twist? What actually is happening? No point spoiling it but it just didn't translate into something menacing. There are a few moments of drama here that work, especially at the beginning but they're few and far between. And there are several scenes where the audience laughed because the action on screen was just so bad.
If you're still planning to see The Happening maybe you'll find it more enjoyable than I did, even if only in a perverse way. If you plan to skip it, check out Christopher Orr's movie review. It's laden with spoilers but is much more entertaining than the film itself. Orr makes an interesting comparison to Spielberg's War of the Worlds (a much, much, much superior film). I was also reminded of 28 Eight Weeks Later but only because the two films end in the same locale.
Update: I forgot to mention that like Alfred Hitchcock's trademark cameos, Shyamalan usually makes an appearance in his films. In The Happening he plays Joey a voice on the telephone. Yup, he literally "phoned in" his performance.
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