Movie Review: "The Happening"

Manoj Night Shyamalan is back with another movie. But after seeing it on Friday, I'm far than impressed with "The Happening".

To be frank, I think it blows balls.

Not really that happening

I enjoyed Shyamalan's "Sixth Sense", and "Unbreakable". But "The Village" was a bit of a letdown. It was at this point that his famous Unexpected Plot Twist or U.P.T., had ironicly become something the audience would totally expect from a Shyamalan movie. Whatever the U.P.T. would be, people would just shrug it off and say 'oh well...'.

With "Sixth Sense", and "Unbreakable"... the trademark U.P.T. worked well but with further use in his later movies, the masses were already immunized by expectation. Hence, the element of surprise was lost.

As for "The Happening", it had a plot that was rather ridiculous. People in the Eastern United States are suddenly becoming paralyzed and committing suicide for unknown reasons. Terrorist gas/bio attack? Too much emo music? Captain Planet got fed-up with humans?

I won't spoil the plot. I'll just tell you the movie was bad. But I'm not going to write off Shyamalan just like that. Many good directors have been or are at a nadir in their careers... where the movies they spit out are nothing but a bunch of shit. Hopefully he'll be back with better stuff in future.


But not all is bad with "The Happening". The cinematography and camera shots were interesting, being taken from unique angles that somewhat creates a bit of sense of mystery. And the lead actress looked a little bit like Feist... I think...

"One Two Three Four..."

And I was surprised by the director's trademark Unexpected Plot Twist: there was no Unexpected Plot Twist.


Anyway, I came up with some theories why people were suddenly standing dumb and then started killing themselves in the movie:

• Emo music became an airborne virus

• Gas in the USA jumped to $10 per gallon. (Thats $3 a liter)

• Republicans unleashed a disease to clear the East Coast of blue voters

• A result of the dumbing-down effects of television

• They realized they just paid RM10 to see this movie

• Raiders won the Superbowl

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