May 16 2008'The Happening' R-Rated Trailer, Plus: A Scathing Review!
Collider has an early review of M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening, and from the sounds of it, it's come time we stop taking this guy's calls. Here's a sampling:
"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.If you're dreading the Shyamalan trademark twist-ending, you can breathe a sigh of relief. There's no twist whatsoever. But there's also no ending. I won't ruin it any further by talking about what's not there, but prepare to feel very, very cheated and figure out in advance what consultation you can offer when the person next you confusedly asks, "Is that it?"
With Shyamalan's catalog getting increasingly disappointing with each new addition, it's getting even harder to defend him than it is to defend my everlasting love of Smashing Pumpkins. With both, it's just a lot of, "No, no, no, I know, I know. Yes, their last few were sort of questionable--ignore those. Shut up about Machina/Lady in the Water, OK? Just listen to/watch Mellon Collie/The Sixth Sense. Then you'll get it. What do you mean it doesn't seem all that great? Shut up. I guarantee if you were a teenager when you were exposed to this, you'd be loving it. Shut up. Just shut up."
Oh, and there's a new R-rated trailer under the cut. It proves strangely ineffective after reading that the film is "bad on an epic scale."
Reader Comments
1. delic8 - May 16, 2008 5:01 PM
I could not possibly be less interested in this movie.
Except perhaps to see just how few people see it.
2. santos - May 16, 2008 5:07 PM
i think i'm one of the few people excited for this. people committing mass suicide? awesome.
honestly, the more people hate this dude, the more i love him.
3. emily - May 16, 2008 5:15 PM
Ew.
4. petersoneb - May 16, 2008 5:18 PM
It's almost as if the plot itself is designed to provide an analogy for critics to use when the film bombs.
5. 4rt - May 16, 2008 5:30 PM
spoiler: (raelly dont read if u dont wanna be spoiled)
at the end of the movie it turns out plants thought it was a good idea to release some toxic gas to make humans kill themselves...cuz they are so dang annoying. ANYHOW...there is supposed to be a real scene showing walberg's character gettin freaked out by a little tree and then apologizing to it for being so loud and humany..only to find out its a fake plastic one XD haha oh man...this is gonna SUCK so bad
6. Povguy - May 16, 2008 5:31 PM
How can you comment about this movie after seeing a preview... I don't think a single one of his movies has ever even resembled the preview. It is always like a completely different movie once you get into the theater, and I am always happy about the outcome. Stop beating up M. Night.
7. Plixtle - May 16, 2008 5:37 PM
Well, #6, if he'd stop delivering massive loads of cinematic fail fit to burn our eyes to cinders we'd stop beating him up.
The guy burst onto the scene with a clever film: "Sixth6th Sense". That's it. That's all. Nothing since then has approached it. "Signs" was a joke. "Lady in the Water" was a catastrophe (and doubly insulting because it featured Giamati) and "The Village" was an insult to a child's intelligence - and to think William Hurt had to slog his way through that stilted dialogue in that stilted movie... *shudder*
M. Knight is a one-trick pony that's done it's trick. It's time for the glue factory.
8. menikmati - May 16, 2008 5:38 PM
good pumpkins analogy - Siamese dream + Mellon Collie together far outweigh.. shit, I guess anything theyve done in the past 12 years.. same with anything chris cornell has done since his first solo album. you just made me sad.
9. Morley - May 16, 2008 6:02 PM
While I'm sure this movie's going to suck, I don't really believe the review's sincere. See this recent article about a purposefully crass review of Indy 4:
(You may need to log in.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/10/movies/10indy.html?_r=1
10. Mr. Mason - May 16, 2008 6:41 PM
If #5's spoiler is true, Night's basically making a snuff film for Poison Ivy (which I wouldn't put past him). Come to think of it, there is plant growth about in nearly every scene of violence.
Please, Nickelodeon; it's not too late to take the Avatar franchise back from him before he butchers it onscreen in front of children!
11. dave - May 16, 2008 7:21 PM
I don't always like M. Night's movies (read: the village, lady), I do think he is original and I would love to see him succeed. He doesn't do sequels, he's not doing super hero movies (though his "unbreakable" was way ahead of its time). He's doing original (or trying to be) works that we haven't seen before. If he has success, then the studios will be encouraged to do more original stuff.
Saying that, I don't have a good feeling about this movie. I, too, have heard the spoiler about plants being the culprit of the suicides. That isn't interesting to me, but I'll still see the movie unless it's really REALLY bad.
Night is a good-great director in my opinion, but I think he need to give up the writing. He needs to attach himself to great scripts and concentrate on directing. If Happening bombs, I fear for his future.
12. sanguinivorous - May 17, 2008 7:08 AM
Shyamalan has never made a good film. That's just a fact.
Somebody said "The Sixth Sense" was clever? Not to all the people who'd seen the same plot twist used a million times before in old sci-fi and horror flicks. I knew how it was going to end 5 minutes into the movie. It SUCKED.
There's no irrational hatred. There's no "having it in for the guy". He's just a really shitty film maker.
13. Chris Quan - May 17, 2008 7:21 AM
PTN:
Stop all this hating on Night
Just because hes Indian....Indians are good people
USA has got big problems.....
14. Roger Wu - May 17, 2008 7:26 AM
....yeah
15. Jayesh Patel - May 17, 2008 7:27 AM
WTF?
16. Tetra - May 17, 2008 7:30 AM
#13
Really? The Race card?
Okay, blogs over. Everyone pack up and go home. Nothing to see here.
17. Tetra - May 17, 2008 7:36 AM
No no just kidding I love me some injins....
18. Sarah - May 17, 2008 5:47 PM
You guys seem to be listing all but one of his flicks; Unbreakable.
I thought that was fucking brilliant.
It was a good fucking story, a nice homage to comic book stories, and the mythology behind most of them.
I guess you can either dig M. Night or hate him
I'm not always pleased with the results, but I'm not gonna bitch about it.
There are worse writers and directors out there that I can put that effort into.
19. sanguinivorous - May 18, 2008 5:42 AM
"Unbreakable" was some tedious and godawful shit, too.
And yes, there are many directors/writers out there who are a lot worse, but I personally can't think of any of them who have gotten so much undeserved praise as M. Night.
20. mgroves - May 19, 2008 10:06 AM
M. Night seems so polarizing...
I always seem to enjoy his movies (except Lady in the Water), and that's all that matters to me.
21. pdrunk - May 19, 2008 8:51 PM
I have a porblem with the hating for solely the reason that it's like saying you don't watch television because it's somehow cool to not watch television. Wow, you really got one over me? Yeah, that's right. I'm one of the plebian masses. I bet you don't even know what plebian means. It's just some cool shit you learned from playing D&D or WOW.
I have liked some of M. Night Football's movies. "The Sixth Sense" was good for its time, because people forgot what good old-fashioned sci-fi/suspense is all about. It worked because it was new again and it was a pretty good story with great visuals.
I really liked "Unbreakable" because it nails the idea of what would the coming of age of a superhero (or supervillain) really look like in real life...if of course, this shit happened for real. It works.
"Signs" was not that great. I tried to like it. It had a great setup. Good characters. But...yeah... the whole "Swing away!" thing and the glasses of water and coincidence and...yeah...not happening
Then the rest is a wash for me. "Signs" was decent and "The Lady in the Water" raped my eyeballs.
As for this movie. I am looking forward to it. And the whole argument that if it's the plants killing everyone that's truning people off, I say to you. Really? I mean come on. Hollywood's come up with worse ideas that you've shelled out twice for. Personally, I'm lookin' forward to some killin.' Bring it.
22. William - May 20, 2008 12:52 AM
I like all of his movies.
Everyone keeps saying Lady in the Water was a horrible movie. I thought it was really good. It is a contemporary re-telling of a ancient fairy tale that was well told.
And The Village was awesome. I think it got such a bad rap because everyone was expecting a supernatural twist that never came. After The Sixth Sense, the relatively plausible explanation that was the ending was a pretty good twist on everyone's expectations
People think he sucks because his movies never fit the expectations of those people and most of them are too stupid to like a movie when it isn't what they want it to be.
23. Sam Stone - May 27, 2008 9:46 PM
I'm also happy to wait for 3 weeks to see it before making judgement. Been noticing a few ImprovEverywhere styled re-enactments popping up around the place. This one from Sydney got some classic "shock" reactions:
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=1MXO9TdmZdA