Is M. Night Shyamalan Serious With The Happening?
M. Night Shyamalan has fallen a long way since his debut, The Sixth Sense. He was moving along nicely with Unbreakable, Signs before falling slightly with The Village. Then he hit the wall with Lady in the Water according to most critics. If you look at his career on RottenTomatoes.com it really tells the tale.
The Sixth Sense had an 84% approval rating. Unbreakable had 68% and then Signs jumped back up to 74%. The Village dropped down to 43% before Lady in the Water bottomed Mr. Shyamalan out at a horrendous 24%. Bottomed out, that is, until Shyamalan’s latest, The Happening starring Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel brings him to an all-new low of 20%.
So, exactly how bad is The Happening? The answer to that question depends. It depends, because I have a theory.
But first, The Happening really was that bad. It seemed disjointed. The performances were uneven and bad. It was tough, if not impossible, to feel anything for the characters. The development was nonexistent. Wahlberg and Deschanel are a married couple that has lost their spark. We are not quite sure why. We never really find out. All the strife that these characters have between them seems false at best, as if it was a horribly planted storyline used just to augment a standard sci-fi, bio-thriller storyline that serves as the base for The Happening.
Trust me. It was bad. This is where my theory comes in.
I think M. Night Shyamalan was mocking the concept of the summer movie. I know this is an outlandish claim, but follow with me for a second.
Mark Wahlberg seemed almost to be doing an impression of his character from Boogie Nights. Of course he was doing so with a different character - a high school science teacher - but the style and mannerisms of the Dirk Diggler character. He was sweet, innocent and seemed almost a little dumb or simple. I truly think it had to be a put-on. I have seen Mark Wahlberg act, and this wasn’t him trying to act well.
It didn’t stop with Mark Wahlberg. The tertiary characters in the movie seemed like cliched plants. It seemed as if Shyamalan was putting characters in to try and reference other over-the-top shlock-fests that pepper our movie screens every summer. The crazy old lady was a cross-reference between Tim Robbins’ character in War of the Worlds and the old lady who led the rebellion in Stephen King’s The Mist. The military policeman who was so innocent that he replaced his curses with “cheese and crackers” was impossible to believe as a real attempt at characterization.
That is the conclusion I came to. The Happening had to be a parody of summer movies. M. Night Shyamalan is defending himself against critics who have tried to sink him in his last two films. I get the feeling that Shyamalan feels punished for trying something new and different. His response? You want a typical movie? Shyamalan seems to be saying, “Fine. I will take all those awful, conventional things that people flock to see every summer and I will make a mockery of them.”
Either that, or Shyamalan has made the world’s largest, steaming, heaping pile of garbage and dragged Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel along with him for the ride. Unless your last name is Shyamalan, there probably is no way of knowing for sure. As of now, I will just assume Shyamalan is purposefully sending a message to critics.
The only other alternative is to contribute to that minuscule 20% approval rating from RottenTomatoes.com.
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5 Responses to “Is M. Night Shyamalan Serious With The Happening?”
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the best review I heard (from a friend):
“the people dying was cool, other than that it was like the opera”
not sure what that means… but whatev.
it is also possible that Shah-muh-lahn just ran out of ideas and is recycling the old garbage that he’s watched in the past.
No clue what he intended, but I’ve seen no evidence that Mr. Shamalamadingdong had more than one good movie in him.
…which is one more than I have, but still…
The Happening was bad. Like, really bad. I don’t think he meant it as a statement or as a symbolic type thing either. The only thing I can think is that MNS was purposely vague, in order to create a mysterious type-minimalist movie (like if Raymond Carver made movies or something).
Other than that, I really don’t fucking know…
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