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Shyamalan hate is the new black!  "The Happening is so bad that I feel compelled to make a spoiler-laden list of its most laughably terrible parts rather than review it."

4 Comments (Add your comments)

BrandonTue, 6/17/08 2:51pm

Is there any filmmaker with a greater gap in quality between trailer and actual film than Shyamalan? His trailers tend to be just creepy and vague enough to let your mind fill in the blanks. I want the movies I imagined in my head! Ehh, I bet I can find 'em on Netflix.

Bee BoyTue, 6/17/08 5:21pm

In this case his concept is certainly viable, but it's kind of a stretch so it would have to be handled perfectly. From the clips I've... experienced (one on Letterman and one on NPR), he seems to be going for a very specific style of acting, and it's not succeeding at all. Wahlberg talks in this slow sort of breathy voice, like a child in a dream state. It's hard to explain, but it seems intentional – I've seen Wahlberg act, and he's not great but he's better than this. (Zooey Deschanel is – of course – perfect.)

Joe MulderWed, 6/18/08 6:50am

I've seen a couple of articles and/or blog posts on the internets that just blatantly give away what goes on in THE HAPPENING, which... why not? Supposedly it's a God-awful movie, and there's plenty of people like us out there who have no plans ever to see it but might be mildly curious to know what the titular (heh: "titular") "happening" is. But not to the degree that we'd bother spending more than a minute or two looking around the internet for a spoiler site, and certainly not to the degree that we'd actually go see the movie. So it's nice to have the mild curiosity satisfied without having to go to any effort.

Bee BoyMon, 6/23/08 10:30am

Yeah, I'm generally pretty intolerant of people who spoil movies under the snarky theory, "hey, the filmmakers have ruined it for you already; what more can I do?" It really should be each person's decision whether or not to have a movie spoiled for him, no matter how staggering the consensus that the movie sucks anyway.

But, yeah, in this case – who cares? Night sort of gave up his right to any protection when he kept basing his movies on increasingly pivotal twists and making those twists increasingly absurd and disappointing as well. If he'd made five more Sixth Senses, it would be a different story. But boy did he ever not do that.

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