Monday, June 16, 2008

The Happening

The less you know about movies like this before seeing them the better, so I shall not get into too much detail and spoil what little entertainment this movie may afford. Let me just say this: M. Night Shyamalan is the king of let-downs. It's like he has these quite original and admittedly intriguing ideas and maybe even a message and a half that he could probably slip past us in between the screams and the scares, and he knows how he wants to see about two-thirds of the movie go ... then he just figures no one will notice if he has no plan for the last third.

Remember in Signs, when Mel and Joaquin are trapped in the basement with adorable Abigail and asthmatic Rory and the aliens are upstairs and trying to get in through the coal chute and Joaquin says they have to turn out the flashlights to save the batteries so the foursome are sitting there in the dark and you're thinking "Aw, man, this is awesome and scary and how in the world are they going to get out this predicament!" Remember that? And then remember how they got out of it? The aliens left. Just left. For some reason aliens who can't stand water saw a planet that was composed of about 75% of the stuff and they thought what the hey, let's just land here anyway. Up until the moment they decided they shouldn't have, and then they just left. And don't say "Hey! One stayed!" Because big frickin whoop one stayed. MNS put the whole damn planet in jeopardy and then hoarked up a big ol' spit ball of deus ex machina to get them out of the jeopardy like we wouldn't even notice that's what he did.

The Happening is kind of like that. Except with truly flagrant video and unnaturally beefed up audio of absolutely disgusting acts of suicide. Verdict: Movie Rental if You Must

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