The problem with M. Night's movies...

[Dixon Carter Lee]

Just watched "The Happening." Not bad. Creepy. A lot like "Signs", but not quite as good.

But I'm getting tired of people battling the mystical forces of nature and winning by "waiting it out". Eventually the "event" is over, and we all go back to our lives humbled. Too passive.

Fuck that. I want Roy Scheider aiming a rifle at a scuba tank in the shark's mouth and saying "Smile you son of a bitch!"

If M. Night were to remake Jaws it would end like it did in the fucking book, with the shark "getting tired" and finally dying. Lousy.

 

[Luk]

That's the reason I liked Unbreakable. It was a little off the M. Night beaten path.

 

[RoryN]

I thought The Happening was total crap. It felt like a sub-rate film student movie, where there's no budget for anything other than showing people standing very still (which, here, means they're about to die), and the need to put a relationship on the rocks as a plot centerpiece rather than something off to the side. Totally agree on the passive approach to the danger as well.

I'm not saying there isn't merit in his other films. DiVinyls is a good band with lots of great music. They're still one-hit wonders, though.

(Wikipedia says Christina Amphlett has MS. Shit.)

 

[Dixon Carter Lee]

Imagine the men on the Orca sitting around, worried about the shark, and instead of that great story about the USS Indianapolis we get Quint confessing to Hooper that the other night he and Brody went out for Tiramisu.

 

[Worm]

I thought it was awesome up to the point where the survivors all met up at the crossroads then it went downhill fast. Run from the wind aghaghaghagh.

 

[Alt]

It wasn't very good tiramasu. I think the cream went off.

 

[Mr. Show]

The Happening was a terrible, awful, horrible film.

Mark Wahlberg is a science teacher?

They're running from... the wind?

John Leguizamo hands off his only daughter to Mark Wahlberg, so he can go find his probably dead wife, and probably die, thus leaving her an orphan?

The wind? The plants are angry? Run! The grass is moving!

Oh wait... it's over now. Okay.

 

[RoryN]

Titles of horror films:

Night of the Living Dead
Nightmare on Elm Street
Poltergeist
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre


...

..."The Happening"?

Horrors! Run, everyone! There's...something happening!

 

[Mr. Show]

Titles of horror films:

Night of the Living Dead
Nightmare on Elm Street
Poltergeist
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre


...

..."The Happening"?

Sounds like Michael Jackson's follow up to Captain EO.

 

[joystick2]

I liked What's Happening.

 

[ljiowa]

I loved both Unbreakable and Signs, because the characters were deep enough where you could identify with them and root for them. I never felt that way with The Happening.

I think with M. Night, if he doesn't hit the sweet spot with character development, the movie fails - because the plots are just too implausible unless you believe in the characters. There's no suspension of disbelief if the people aren't "real."

 

[mypoliticalalt]

The commercials are the

best.

 

[phrodeau]

Imagine the men on the Orca sitting around, worried about the shark, and instead of that great story about the USS Indianapolis we get Quint confessing to Hooper that the other night he and Brody went out for Tiramisu.

Well, the book did have that side plot of Hooper screwing Brody's wife.

 

[Lavared]

Disappointing movie, at best.

Also, I don't want to be preached to during a horror movie. I want to be scared. Take away the oh-humans-are-so-bad-and-we-deserve-anything-we-get factor and make me jump in my seat or, at the very least, get really, really tense as I did watching Signs.

 

[Lavared]

And that horrible ending! Run outside to show your love (taking the child along which is horribly selfish) and *ding* it's all over. You're safe now and can go back to normal. There aren't even scads of dead bodies lying around to cause cholera.

 

[HB1965]

The last three have been disappointing. After Signs I expected better. The mocumentary on the SciFi Channel forThe Village was better than the movie.