I love that M. Night Shyalaman, who likes to think of himself as a genius and the cinematic heir to Steven Spielberg, is in reality now making the world's most expensive student films. All the hallmarks are in The Happening: the overuse of close-ups, the bizarre gaps where characters should have dialogue but don't and have to fill in the dead air with odd facial expressions, the miscast actors who flail around not quite sure of what they should be doing, the jokes that fall flat and the scares that are hilarious. It's quite a bad movie, and only composer James Newton Howard makes it out with his dignity.The thing about M. Night Shyamalan is that he isn't just content to be a storyteller. With the exception of the movie that put him on the map, The Sixth Sense, all of his films want to be mass-entertainment-with-a-message, and he does have consistent themes and ideas in his films. I would like to think that making personal, visually interesting films with thoughtful ideas that can also appeal to a mass audience is pretty much the height of success in film - I give Shyamalan a lot of credit for sticking to his personal vision when he could just make a slick, impersonal thriller every few years and rake in the dough.
The problem is, Shyamalan's ideas are pretentious and his themes are shallow, and he takes them wayyyy too seriously. Unbreakable, which I mostly like, is totally crackpot. Signs was released at just the perfect time to exploit the nation's post-9/11 paranoia and helplessness, pandering to those feelings while pushing an infuriating 'everything happens for a reason' message of blind faith. The Village suggests that modern civilization itself is corrupt and should be abandoned in favor of medievalism; and Lady in the Water promoted infantile egotism in the guise of whimsy.
In a lot of ways, The Happening wants to be as obnoxious as those others (SPOILERS): plants, infuriated by modern life and pollution, conspire to release toxins that drive humans to stop in their tracks and stab themselves, shoot themselves, jump off buildings, and take naps under riding mowers. It's an interesting concept that could have been a fun updating of Day of the Triffids, weighed down by Shyamalan's earnestness and humorlessness. It's a ridiculous premise, and a better director would have acknowledged the ridiculousness instead of making the whole movie a solemn cautionary tale, and the whole thing ends up riding off the rails.
But for all that, I can't find myself hating The Happening nearly as much as Signs or The Village or Lady in the Water. It's too stupid to be hated, and many scenes cross over into so-bad-it's-good territory. My personal favorite (SPOILERS again) is a short bit in a cafe where a woman is watching an online video on her iPhone of a man killing himself by walking into a lions' cage in a zoo and calmly sticking out his hands for the lions to tear off and eat. Ignoring the blatant product placement, the idea that somebody somewhere had the time to go home and upload this video, and the terrible special effects, we're still left with the bizarre idea that nervous lions would just start chewing away instead of pouncing or going for the throat. I mean, has M. Night ever seen a nature program? And this is a before we meet the hot-dog loving plant expert or get to the farmhouse owned by the crazy lady. I could go on, but you get the point: sometimes, there's no point in being angry at a movie, you just go for the ride. I just wish Shyamalan wasn't working so hard to give crazy auteurs a bad name.
(Revision) I want to add that there are scenes and moments in this movie that are totally effective and creepy. The whole opening sequence, starting in Central Park with unseen horrors just out of sight and the cavalcade of jumping construction workers, is terrific, unnerving and bizarre. Later scenes such as what happens to the cop's gun after he shoots himself are brilliantly conceived and executed as well. The problem is that Shyamalan doesn't connect these moments into a more discordant, disturbing larger framework, and the movie as a whole is only sporadically unnerving, and never truly 'scary' to me.
3/10
5 comments:
It's the worst film I've seen all year, including the new Rambo and the new Funny Games. Somehow I found it even worse than Lady in the Water, because at least Paul Giamatti kept that movie vaguely, remotely engaging with his watchable performance in what was largely a nearly unwatchable movie. But there's just nothing to grab onto with The Happening, though I agree that James Newton Howard manages to escape with no loss of dignity.
My new theory on Shyamalan is that after The Sixth Sense, and then especially after Signs, he truly bought into all of his own self-promotion and he forgot how to films that functioned at the level of engrossment. And now he's just a pedantic bore. To quote The Joker, when it comes to his own silly ideas and his delusions of gandeur, why so serious?
"It's too stupid to be hated!!!"
--Jeff McMahon, When the Dead Walk the Earth
Best pullquote of the year so far.
I'll be skipping yet another MNS film.
I liked it more, but I don't think we're far off observationally, because I agree with a lot of what you say. I like the premise, and I just think there are moments of chilling brilliance that makes it more worthwhile, but not quite good. While the lion thing is really, really, really bad, the pistol skittering across the pavement in the traffic jam was tremendous, I thought. And I think there's more humor in this film and Lady in the Water than given credit. The talking to the plant moment, for example, was a nice little moment of relief.
I kind of wish this idea (though not the final product) could be switched in time with Signs. I think it might be stronger material.
Understand, I wouldn't (and didn't) give it a positive review(. But I didn't pan it, either.
The worst movie I've seen this year has been Prom Night, simply because it was so boring. Number two, which I wasn't bored by but hated more, was Cloverfield, followed by the truly lame Savage Grace.
Alexander, you're right - Shyamalan needs to stop thinking that his movies are going to be these vessels of wisdom (a la Lady in the Water) and just get back to the business of giving his audience a good time; that's the only way for him to rebuild the relationship and untarnish his brand.
K. Bowen, I appended my review in response to the effective moments you mentioned.
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