Mr. Guy reviews M. Night Shyamalan's "The Happening"

Pulp Free Rating:

Story: B

Execution: B

Soundtrack: A

Special Effects: C

Overall Impact: B+

So, M. Night Shyamalan releases his first film in two years and it happens to be his first R rated effort. Next thing you know, the film comes out and everyone and their mom is in line to pan it off the bat. If you are breathing, than you have probably heard the boo birds singing already. The fortunate thing is if you are reading this blog, you are an intelligent individual that likes their news pulp free. That's where I come in. How did it measure up? Let's check it out...

The plot of the film is effective in it's simplistic nature: Something in the air is causing everyone in the world to suddenly kill themselves by the first available method. For the most part the dialogue is well written and free of any ridiculously bad lines. There are some pointless avenues of conversation that lead to dead ends which seem to have been written for the simple point of putting words to the feeling of paranoia that mounts in the film as time goes on.

Execution was interesting, consisting of a vast majority of success versus a couple of miscues along the way. Leads Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel perform excellently as young couple whose marriage is just hitting the rocks as the most horrific event in mankind's short history takes place. John Leguizamo turns in another great, albeit short, performance as a distraught husband whose wife is lost amongst the hoards of half-crazed city dwellers and Ashlyn Sanchez plays his daughter with believable sincerity. With that being said, the lead acting was well cast and performed. The casting of extras, on the other hand, is what stops this category from being a home run.

Jeremy Strong plays an absolutely obnoxious National Guard private who trys (and fails) to organize a group of scared civilians. His performance directions had to include the words "channel a young Dustin Diamond" somewhere within. I was waiting for Mark-Paul Gosselaar to walk into frame and suggest some well planned but totally retarded plan to conquer Bayside once and for all.

Fig. I - Jeremy Strong

Fig. II - Samuel "Screech" Powers

Shabby casting aside, the score for the film is excellent. The retro string-heavy vibe gives the film it's true feel of paranoia. The piece of music over the intro credits in particular is very spot on in it's oddly frightening feel.

Ahhh, special effects. They can make or waste a film quickly if done right or wrong. In this case, I had to go with a C. Some of the effects were apt, the look and feel of the bodies raining down form the roof of the construction site were spot on.

There were a couple of instances where I was downright unhappy with the effects, though. For instance, there is a sequence where a police officer shoots himself in the head with his service weapon and it falls to the street. The camera is at street level so you see the weapon fall and shortly afterwards the officers body falls to the ground. His face lands toward the camera and all you see is a small, deep red hole in his forehead that eventually begins to ooze blood slowly. Seriously? First of all shooting yourself in the forehead, while being ascetically pleasing to the camera, in terribly inconvenient compared to the side of the head. Hold on a second, if he were to do that, wouldn't we see a lot more gore? Like some brains perhaps? Shyamalan was scared of the contact, straight up.

There is another laughable scene where a scared civilian watches a video sent via email to her (conveniently placed) iPhone. The scene involves a bystander filming an obviously suicidal young fellow in a lion cage at a zoo. The man proceeds to walk over to a lioness and wave his hand across it's nose, as if trying to provoke the animal. In a few seconds, the lioness begins to play with the guy's arm and eventually "rips" it off. I use the term "rips" loosely because it appears more as if the lioness actually performed the first inter species magic show where she magically made the arm disappear amidst a veil of downright shitty CG "blood". The bystander, unable to watch for a few seconds, waves the camera away but soon enough it's right back, just in time for another horrible CG arm "ripping". Fucking amateur. I know kids at school who could have made that scene look far better for a lot less money. Hell, they would have done it for free on a lunch break. It seems like Shyamalan was trying to re-create his famous alien video scene from Signs. Go fish...

Fig. III - "What is this? Amateur Hour?!?!?"

Conclusion...

The film was enjoyable. Everyone pans it but I'm convinced that these people are self-righteous pricks who have forgotten the difference between good film making and blockbuster film making. This misconception is fueled by the issue that sometimes they are the same thing, but are only totally dependent on each other for validation. Had Shyamalan done his best to make another The Sixth Sense critics would have panned him for being unoriginal. The truth is that critics have preserved The Sixth Sense in carbonite as the late 90's blueprint for scares and box office dollars. Were anyone to tread on this sacred land they would be criticized for doing so, even the creator of said blueprint. If my career ever got to that point I would do exactly what Shyamalan did: make the film I wanted to make.

The only crime Shyamalan is guilty of is not fully committing to the genre he chose by trying to skirt the gore in exchange for a wider audience. He tried to make a modern horror-thriller and just would up with an enjoyable film afterwards. He could have done worse.

If I was Shyamalan my next film would be "The Sixth Sense 2: The Return of Critical Approval" and I would cast the now 20 year old Haley Joel Osment as the same character he played in the original film. I would have him walk on his knees and act like the 11 year old he was when he made the first film. There would be no less than 25 "twists" that would be sprinkled throughout the film, basically undermining the very basis of the films plot. It would be two hours long and be an almost shot for shot remake of the first but with the scenes everyone loved from the first movie extended to an incredibly awkward length and sometimes just looped a few times. I would then insert my directors cameo at the very end. As the car carrying Osment drives past all of the houses where he hears "dead people", the car would slow down and stop with a shot of myself on the sidewalk with both hands flipping the bird. Two cameras, both on massive cranes, would crane in on each of my hands and the screen would split so you could see them both. My hands would then fill the screen for exactly 10 minutes, all the while the words "Fuck You All" would be repeated in every language over and over again by Dewayne Staats. The film would then become a commercial slot for every strange late night product ever, including massive praise for the amazing "Sham-Wow". You getting this, camera guy?