Defamer
It's been two surprisingly brisk years since M. Night Shyamalan unleashed his last utterly unwatchable labor of love upon us. That would be Lady in the Water—a project Disney would successfully argue was legitimate grounds for divorce, and that would ultimately go on to teach Warner Bros. a valuable lesson about never making movies about swimming pool mermaids hunted by weredogs with grass fur, regardless of how compelling the pitch sounded in the room. During that time, the highly self-regarded auteur and sometimes-actor has been toiling on yet another secretive project: The Happening.
It's been two surprisingly brisk years since M. Night Shyamalan unleashed his last utterly unwatchable labor of love upon us. That would be Lady in the Water—a project Disney would successfully argue was In his intro to an exclusive scene on Yahoo! Movies, the director manages to liken his latest to The Godfather, The Exorcist, The Birds, and the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and describes The Happening as being "the scariest movie that I've ever made." On that last point, we think the director has truly delivered—at least where incredibly bad filmmaking is capable of inducing bloodcurdling terror. Collider.com ran their early review yesterday. Be warned, Manoj Twists are revealed! M. NIGHT SPOILERALERT!
"The Happening" is a terrible, terrible movie. I mean, it's bad on an epic scale. It's so bad that I can't possibly tell you how bad it is without understating the point or making it sound like I'm picking on the film. But let me stress: this is not pent-up Shyamalan aggression or a desire to see him fail. This is bad in a jaw-dropping "they can't really be serious, can they?" kind of way. The closest comparison I can draw is to Neil LaBute's "Wicker Man." [...]The most obvious fault in "The Happening" is the acting — in particular Wahlberg's performance. I'm saying this with no hyperbole, but Wahlberg might very well give the worst performance I've ever seen in anything...I can't help but feel that Shyamalan — intentionally or otherwise — is ultimately to blame for forcing some truly awful line readings.
[THIS IS THE SPOILER PART:] It's plants that are responsible. They've decided to wipe out humanity and release the neuro-toxin as their natural weapon.... What Shyamalan quickly finds, though, is that it's very, very hard to menacingly cut to an evil-looking tree. That doesn't stop him from trying, though, and he inexplicably adds wind as a way of livening up the scenes. When the leaves of a tree start to blow, evil's afoot.
While none of this bodes too well for Fox, or lovers of not-awful cinema, the Pollyanna in us can't help but seek out the silver lining: And we thought of one! At the very least, some pants-pissingly hilarious YouTube mashups are surely just a few months away, giving Nicolas Cage in a bear suit clocking some Texas Polygamist Wife-looking chick a run for its money with a montage prominently featuring Marky Mark going postal on a yellow poplar.
Comments
Originally titled "What's Happening"
Hey Hey Hey
One of the things I dislike about M (aside from the obvious), is that as one of the few "auteurs" of color in Hollywood he has the whitest casts around--that is with the exception of his own masturbatory cameos. Looks like he splashed some color into this flick, but then we return to the larger problem of the movie being a rancid turd.
Someone made an awesome comment at /film that his/her relationship with M. Night Shymalan is like an abusive relationship - "If I love him enough, he'll stop hitting me."
When he said "it's the scariest move I've ever made" he meant it in terms of either how much money it's going to lose or what it's going to do to his career.
It's obvious he has no regard for us, the audience.
@spankhaus: Are you sure that wasn't an episode title for Dr. Phil?
@NoWireHangers: Yeah, he splashed some color around. Unfortunately he's introduced what my friend likes to call "The Leguizamo Factor" into what might be an already bad movie.
@CourageousCoward: Today on Maury: Hack on Your Back? Our addiction counselors are here to help!
I think Marky Mark said it best. "We just have to be alive when it is over."
Ooooooh look out it's an Oak tree! EVOL! (And yes I'm aware of the irony of mocking this seeing as how my avatar is a flower with a shit eating grin)
I'll wait for the DVD to come out.
The last movie I saw in the theaters was The Village. They should have called it The Village Idiots and based it on the morons in the audience.
I cannot hate this man because of The Sixth Sense. How does one explain that kick-ass movie? HUH? It really frustrates me, there has to be some talent, or does it come out once every decade on him.
@disinterested 3rd party: She;s gone to the town of Princeton!
Ed Wood made all of his movies while wearing angora.
He claimed that as a Marine, he was in Pacific island landings & wore his beloved angora.
At least Wood's movies are funny, horrible awful, but funny.
Let's see that pompous, pretentious Shayamalan top that one!
I doubt it says much of anything for Universal, since it's a Fox movie. And I'm sure Fox is okay with it, since pretty much all Fox movies swallow.
@NoWireHangers:
Seriously? What's the breakdown then, percentage-wise, for an acceptable quota of "color," as you put it, in films?
this better have someone in a bear suit punching girls in the vagine
Rumor has it that Shaymalan's next film will be "The Dionsaur and the Hamburger Forest", an orginal folk-tale/spirit vision, inspired by an activity page that M.Night's son half-completed from a Denny's kids menu.
@Greasy Thumb Guzik: Ditto, Plan 9 and Glen or Glenda are still entertaining as hell no matter how awful their scripts and production values were. Many of M. Night's movies have scary moments but they're ruined by shaggy dog story endings.
Gawd, I just remembered "Signs"'s lame-ass climax: Hmmm....space aliens are allergic to water, oh wait! Let's make the girl have a weird habit of leaving half-full glasses of water around the house so that our hero can splash the monster with them!
I haven't seen that many suicides since sitting in the theater during his last movie.
@Jaguares: Pauline Kael once said of somebody, I forget who, that he had "one arrow in his quiver, and he shot it with 'Movie X'"... I think M. Night is a talented director, but as a screenwriter he really only had 1 and 2/3rds of movie in him, ie THE SIXTH SENSE and UNBREAKABLE.
No matter how suckass this movie is, it will be IMPOSSIBLE to beat the scene in LADY IN THE WATER when Paul Giammati curls up on the sofa and sucks his thumb and blows milk through his lips - don't ask - for sheer, WTF, transcendental awfulness.
The larch.
The larch.
The larch.
A parting thought, Seth. MNS should be so lucky as to have Johnny Depp play him in a movie about his life.
I will say that clip does portray an eerily accurate account of SEPTA conductors and how little they give a shit when the trains stop running.
@DexterRiley: I'm not in favor of quotas, I'm simply stating a fact. There are few people of color in his films [fact], which I find to be disappointing [opinion] since he is a minority in a position to make a difference in a whitewashed industry.
[www.backstage.com]
@DexterRiley: Oh, and I almost forgot, that "his movies are stinking turds" part was fact too.
This would have been so much better had the killers been Raj and Rerun.
Fuck. If Mark Wahlberg's acting wasn't so bad, and the score weren't so cheesy, I'll be the first to admit that minus what we just learned of fucking arboreal plots against the world, that clip had the potential to scare the shit out of me.
To M. Night Shyamalalamalanmalan: 28 Days Later.
@Cam/ron:
And why would they invade a planet whose surface is 70% covered with a substance they're allergic to -- where said substance literally falls from the sky?
When u write a horror film, there's two fundamental missteps that can sink you every time. I won't bore you with the details but it seems like the 6th Sense is the only film where M. Night doesn't wander into the quicksand. If they had a 3rd party cut the trailer and this is the best they could come up with, it looks like they're in trouble.
@KingHater: Yeah but those aliens can release poison gas, from their fingertips!
Night's been mining The Sixth Sense for a goddam decade now (and even that overpraised yarn was full of holes). How does he keep getting funded after all the junk he's perpetrated since? Why do the suits like this guy? SOMEBODY EXPLAIN!!!
@Cam/ron:
Yeah but still, they can be killed by a super-soaker, I mean how can you possibly live that down?
@Cam/ron:
Signs really doesn't hold up. At all.
@WGARefugee:
Alright, I'll bite - lay em on me. What are your two pitfalls for horror-writing?
@NoGrumpys: Sequels:
What's Happening Now
This Can't Be Happening
It's Happening One Night
@Sweet Panda Love:
The..............larch
@NoWireHangers:
I'm not sure how you even notice something like that. A movie's gotta be pretty bad for me to sit there and spend time counting the racial inclusion or exclusion. Cinematic affirmative action seems like a slippery slope. I grew up in Suburban Philadelphia where Night sets all his films and it is about as white-bread as he paints it in his movies. Regardless... saying that he should put minorities in simply for the sake of doing so seems to be the flip-side of the same coin. Also... He gave Sam Jackson the [supporting] lead in Unbreakable (not an excuse, simply stating a fact).
@lrubemp: Studios fund him because A-list actors still want to be in his films. He made Bruce Willis relevant again after he spent all his Pulp Fiction capital. Didn't do so bad for Mel Gibson, either (this was before "Passion" and zany anti-Semitism, remember). That's a hard reputation to shake, no matter how many turkeys you drop.
Plus, studios want brands. A Shyamalan film guarantees a minimum audience moreso than, say, an Andrew Adamson film. A Shyamalan film with Mark Wahlberg, or Bruce Willis, or Mel Gibson...well that's a nice short on an expensive bet. And tons of people will go see to prove to themselves that it does indeed suck. Meanwhile, Fox executives have grinded your cash into powder and actually snorted it off the backs of dead Thai hookers (this was in the studio tour, so I know how it happens).
PS. Some dude invited me to lunch at the Fox Commisary about a month ago. Night was the next table with Peter Chernin. Though I would like to say that I lunged at him with a fist of righteous anger, I knew my place and kept my sniveling nose in my Ceasar Salad, thank you very much.
@mcgeorge:
Wow! That Fox Studio tour seems to have much more authentic content than say that "made for tourists" Universal Tram Tour.
@maggiesfarmer:
1. Overpromising and underdelivering on a monster you can't deliver visually. This is a bind you get into when you forget you're not writing a novel.
2. Creating a story where the monster has no relationship to the characters. The result is action adventure, not horror, which means relying on spectacle for thrills. Spectacle gets you traction with the gross-out demographic and is the main way the US achieves product differentiation in foreign markets. I think this is why I find foreign horror films much scarier than domestic ones.
Hope this helps!
@KingHater: Indeed, well at least it scared the shit out of my cousin.
@Sweet Panda Love: Also, don't forget:
- The Turkish little rude plant: a remarkably smutty piece of flora used by the Turks
- The Walking tree of Dahomey (Quercus nicholas parsonus): the legendary walking tree that can achieve speeds of up to 50 miles an hour, especially when it's in a hurry
@WGARefugee:
I totally agree, and M. Sham has done this time and time again. I love monster movies, but only when they have an actual monster. And also, now I want to have your monster babies.
@SugartitsMcFirecrotch: @Tiger_Tanaka: What would you do if the larch came at you armed with a banana? Now that's a horror movie!
Oh, no! Plants taking over the world and me without a gallon of gas, a match and a Home Depot credit card.
But have no fear. We can just call my mom. She can kill any plant in two days, three at the max.
"The Un-Happening: Revenge of the Arborist"
@KingHater: Come on - you're like my dry cleaner - you find the one hole in my favorite shirt and you proceed to rip the shit out of it with your logic/sardonic machine! You're killing us King hater...you're killing us.
@mcgeorge: Wow...nice polite society Nuremberg Defense for not ridding the cineplex of the Night.
[www.intriguing.com]
@SugartitsMcFirecrotch: Well, that was supposed to have the image appear here for all to enjoy . . . whatever happened to that fancy-schmancy new and improved commenter interface with the user-friendly image/video posting capability, hmmmm?!?
Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs. After that for some reason he's become one of the worst writer/directors out there. In the Village, they sent a blind woman into the forest. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. Lady in the Water, awful. This new film? Mark's acting looks terrible and the plot is laughable.
Give him 2 more bad movies and he'll be tied with Uwe Boll.
@Edward Bulwer-Lytton: Well, that and the fact that Chernin is Carrot Top-jacked. I knew where my onion-baked sourdough roll was (deliciously and sinfully) buttered!