M KNIGHT's The Happening

Ken K said:
Wow, the M Night hating for 5 or so pages has grown tiresome. I had to weed through all that crap for like 4-5 reviews of the actual film? I just wanted to know how my peers liked it.

Anyway, just got back from the theater. Alright, so I'm a bit of an M Night fanboy. I've loved all of his films... I even enjoyed Lady in the Water. Apparently, I'm the only one who did? I even bought the DVD. :tongue:

That said, I thought The Happening had a cool concept, but failed miserably in the execution. Seriously, why did he have to spell out the reveal in Act 1... then reiterate it in Act 2 and 3? It wasn't even a reveal! You can't have a reveal if everyone in the audience already knows what it is. Maybe he wasn't going for a reveal, I don't know. I was just so disappointed when this ended... I started coming up with a mental list of how I would have wrote it/made it. The concept has potential!

Even though I disliked this, I haven't lost faith in M Night. Everyone's allowed to have a stinker. I'll still go see his next films. :)
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Yes, we have to do something about these M. Night haters. :)

To answer your question, Night very well may have been reacting to his critics. Had he waited til the end to reveal the true nature of what was "happening", it might have been construed as a "twist", a moniker I believe he's trying to distance himself from.

I will say this about Night. For a guy who gets blasted a ton, he sure seems to keep an upbeat attitude.
 
c.g._eads said:
Yes, we have to do something about these M. Night haters. :)

To answer your question, Night very well may have been reacting to his critics. Had he waited til the end to reveal the true nature of what was "happening", it might have been construed as a "twist", a moniker I believe he's trying to distance himself from.

I will say this about Night. For a guy who gets blasted a ton, he sure seems to keep an upbeat attitude.
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I'd be upbeat too if my films has grossed 1.6 billion dollars and the studios kept handing me bucketfuls of cash. I think my attitude towards critics would be something along the lines of "BWAHAHAHA!!!"
 
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Let's not be too quick on the B.O. on this film.

It is Rated R and school is out. The Panda film is rocking the house. :P

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Who in their right mind would rather see THE HULK REDUX is a mystery to me.
 
Saw it last night (no pun intended)... And frankly, for someone that liked all his previous films, this one is... disappointing.

Disappointing, because, unlike the others, which had introspective and multi-layered stories with deep characters that organicaly worked for the "whole" of his films, here, this core just feels like an afterthought, disconnected, even. Its an "in your face" movie, with subtlety thrown out of the window.

In one way, It still is a M. Night film: its still wonderfully shot and it provides the thrills. I believe that we all agree on this: M Night knows how to build suspense. (A couple of close ups with wide angles really bring out the strangeness and paranoia sorrounded the event. He uses people looking directly into the camera with great effect. I'm not going into more detail to not spoil anything.). But, this time, where's the depth? Where's the "magic"?

Plot wise, this movie, to me, feels like a Short Film. I felt that the 90 minutes where merelly a vehicle for the "roller coaster ride"- it was as if M. Night did this movie to prove that he could do suspense and create thrills with anything. Well, he did: cheaply, low budget. One could say it was genious, seeing who the killer is. Ok,Point proven. But, again, what's the point? This story is beaten to death. The theme is important, but with Day After Tomorrow, I am Legend, An Inconvennient Truth and the other thousand of Environmental friendly movies out there, what was the point of going into the same topic, if, bottom line, you're trying to say the same thing? Ok, not "the point", but is this story that more effective than the others? I sincerely don't think so. If the intention was to focus on the subtext, such as the analogy between the "big groups" vs "following the masses", it just didn't work as well as in M Night's other films. At least for me.

The humour was out of place- funny, but out of place. It took me out of the film. Some phrases "you cheated on me" felt incredibly "Lucasish". It just doesn't work.

The characters (specially the Demi Moore lookalike girl) was doing a "Blonde role": one dimensional character, in a certain way. Even when she "redeems", you end up not caring for her fate at all... The same goes to Mark Walberg's character, which was nowhere near as interesting as Giamanti's janitor in Lady in the water, for example, or any other lead character of an M Night film to date, and it was not because of the acting, don't get me wrong, but because of the the way it was written.

In the end, there where only two characters worth our attention, IMO. I'll develop this in a later post, since going to it now would just spoil the movie.

I was really disappointed to see how gratuitous was the gore in "The Happening". Not that I do not like gore- I liked Hostel and had a guilty pleasure of enjoying Saw and Saw 2- but here, it was not asked for. You know what? It felt like M Night was trying to appeal to this "Saw"generation. It might work in other movies, but, here, and knowing what M Night can do, it just felt completely out of place. Like I said before, he just threw subtlety out of the window- one of his biggest virtues, IMO.

Conclusion? As a "fan", I cannot help but feel disappointed. This one was the most "soulless" M. Night film I've seen. I can't see that "joy"and "vision" of his previous films in this one. Characters are bland and soulless, story lacks much of his trademark finesse... A passable Summer movie with a slight Auteur touch. An effortless touch, though.


"Fan" message to M Night:


M. Night, if this somehow gets to you:

You don't have to prove anything. DO NOT COMPROMISE on your films, and feel affraid of following your own instincts. This movie felt like the criticism got into you and you just lost direction. Do not compromise the subtext, the flow and the character for cheap thrills.

This (excluding your student and teenage films, of course), IMHO, is your worse film.
 
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as bad as this is doing in America, i foresee it opening well in Japan. The name in and of itself is a common phrase in japanese "Happening" alongside the fact that horror/suspense movies are popular over here. I expect it to do well initially. The American word of mouth may reach here to negatively impact it like it did with The Golden Compass (not that that movie needed much help)
 
Just saw the film. It was just...silly. I'm not outraged, because it was a pretty good unintentional comedy. The dialogue and acting was just...oh man, I don't know...it hurt. But it was funny.
 
I think the horror of the film is the film itself...

This movie is so bad, I think it was supposed to be.

I really do...

I think too highly of M. Night to think he wouldn't have intentionally made this a bad film.
 
Every movie since the sixth sense has gotten worse. He's still trying to remake that thriller ending which he fails at more and more every time.

They look good though, some nice shots and lighting...
 
An interesting review (partial) from the NYT






The knives had been out and sharpened long before M. Night Shyamalan’s latest movie, “The Happening,” opened on Friday. A fine craftsman with aspirations to the canon, this would-be auteur has, in the last few years, experienced a sensational fall from critical and commercial grace, partly through his own doing — by making bad movies and then, even after those movies failed, by continuing to feed his ego publicly — and partly through the entertainment media that, once they smell weakness, will always bite the hand they once slathered in drool.

The signal-to-noise ratio has become so lopsided when it comes to Mr. Shyamalan that “The Happening” was marked for failure even before it had a chance to fail — or succeed. Its worth as a cultural and aesthetic object had been rendered moot, never mind that it turns out to be a divertingly goofy thriller with an animistic bent ...



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http://movies.nytimes.com/person/91479/Mel-Gibson?inline=nyt-per
 
I have now seen the movie. I love the previous Shyamalan movies. lady in the Water was me least favorite, but I enjoyed it. This movie was just horrible. The acting was stilted and stiff. The close ups did not link the other characters into the scene. They revealed everything right at the beginning. No twists, no suspense. I did not like the dialogue and the audio mixing kept letting me hear unimportant dialogue from the extras when we should be focusing on the dialogue of the main characters. *Sigh* I now have named this "The Crappening" The movie that began with so much potential and then died...just like Jumper...
 
i still cant get over the fact he made a film about the wind killing people..............wow.

make sure you dont see anyone walking backwards next time you go to the park.
 
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