The Happening

Oct 6, 2010 Edit: For some reason my entire review didn't post, leaving out important paragraphs, etc. Fixed now.

Oh my god, what an awful, awful movie!

The Happening, which was written, co-produced and directed by M Night Shyamalan (explains a lot, doesn't it?), is billed as a "thriller", though to call it this seems a fair bit of a stretch.  There's nothing really thrilling about it.  Of course, i don't think this is the kind of movie that lends itself well to categories.  It's not suspenseful, it's not comedic, it's not dramatic - it's pretty much devoid of any kind of entertainment value one could derive from seeing a movie.

I guess if it has to be classified as anything, one could classify it as horror, since i'm literally horrified to know that a movie like this could make $163M!

What, not scary enough?  Well, let me remind you: so long as movies like The Happening continue to be financially successful, Hollywood will keep on making them.

The general plot of The Happening is that some mysterious neurotoxin is being released all across the eastern United States.  The slightest exposure to this neurotoxin causes the victims to engage in deliberate acts of self-harm, like jumping off buildings, cutting their wrists or watching M Night Shaymalan movies, leaving the survivors as soulless automatons, devoid of personality or charisma.

Ok, so the latter isn't really a symptom of the neurotoxin, but it is the unfortunate (and perpetual) condition of our protagonist, high school science teacher Elliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg).  The closest thing poor Elliot Moore ever comes to having an emotion is when he snaps at a bunch of extras for not giving him a moment to think.

You know, i'm starting to see a bit of a pattern with Shyamalan's movies - and i don't mean the whole "twist ending" bit.  This one is much more prevalent and far more insidious.  Remember how Mel Gibson's family acted in Signs?

"Creepy vacant stares and slow paced monotone conversations are the norm..."

Yeah, well... The Happening is exactly the same.  The closest anyone comes to showing emotion is when they go into a zombie-like trance and kill themselves.

The female protagonist (Zooey Deschanel) is even stated to be someone who "doesn't show her emotions", which is pretty convenient for a character in an M Night Shyamalan movie.  Of course, i'm going to give Zooey Deschanel the benefit of the doubt and assume she knows how to emote, but that it's just simply not part of her job description.

(I picture Shyamalan on a directors chair shouting at his actors, "Less emotion! Less!  What are you trying to do?  Bring me to tears?")

Of course if you can somehow look past the incredibly lifeless acting, what you'll get is some of the most impressively bad writing imaginable.  Awe inspiringly bad writing.  I'm talking Hackers bad.

For example, at one point in the movie, Elliot Moore is trying to figure out the cause of the neurotoxin. In order to do this he starts spouting off lines like "isolate the variables" and "design an experiment" to himself in a hushed whisper (because he's a science teacher, remember?).

Um... why? Who does that? Who stands around vocalizing pointless phrases related to their profession in order to help them come to conclusions? Nobody! And that's really the worst part about it, isn't it. The dialogue isn't there to explain what Wahlberg's character is thinking. It's just there to let the audience know that Wahlberg's character is thinking (an alien concept to most, i know).

The worst part is, that's not even the worst part of the movie. There are so many other bad scenes i could waste an entire post just outlining them. But i won't, because that would require me writing out the entire movie scene for scene, followed by a paragraph or two about how stupid it is. Don't get me wrong, i'm sure it would be an improvement on the script. But it still wouldn't be anything anyone would want to read.

Anyways i really don't have anything else i want to say about this movie. Every word i type here is only giving too much credit to a film that should never have been made. But i do want to mention one last thing:

I watched The Happening only recently, but it was originally released in 2008 - Friday the 13th of June, 2008. I'm sure Shyamalan thought this a bit of poignant cleverness on his part, but for the original viewers of the film it'll only serve as a reminder that bad things really can happen on Friday the 13th.

Signs

 I had seen this movie before, but i'm reviewing it only now for two reasons: 1) i've not seen any more recent movie and wanted a review up and 2) i saw Signs recently.

Firstly, since this movie is a good few years old now, i'm going to assume i can spoil the hell out of it.  If you haven't seen the movie by now, likely it's not your interest anyway.

Signs is an M Night Shyamalan movie that's more accurately described as a suspense-horror movie than either one of those separately.  Mel Gibson plays a former Catholic priest who's lost his faith thanks to a random accident that killed his wife 6 months earlier.  Because the real life Mel Gibson is fanatically religious, it's probably a safe guess that his character will "get over" this little loss in faith by the end of the movie.

The movie starts off with the characters finding some crop circles in their corn field and are curious as to the origins of them.  While Mel originally believes it to be the work of rowdy neighbourhood teenagers, he is proven wrong as the real source is slowly revealed to be something considerably more alarming.

Signs utilizes the usual effects of horror movies and there's lots of scary scenes that are derived from shock value - loud noise or unexpected visual just thrown onto the screen.  This is made more pronounced by stillness of the other scenes to the point of complete inaction.  A fine tactic for horror movies, but it only really works as an atmosphere builder when the characters show some signs of life on their own, which the characters of Signs don't.  Creepy vacant stares and slow paced monotone conversations are the norm for Mel Gibson's family.

But atmosphere building is atmosphere building and i can't really fault a film for these methods if they're successful - and Signs is certainly successful at this, if only because the overwhelming calm of the first 20 minutes of the film is so omnipresent.

The most glaring problems of the movie come with the aliens themselves.  There is literally so many idiotic contrivances that slowly stack up it can be hard to maintain any kind of suspension of disbelief.  Like, why are alien transmissions able to be picked up on, of all things, a baby monitor but not the satellites and communication tracking systems of the militaries of the world?  And it's not just "vague static" that's picked up, but a message so clear that even the main characters recognize it as an alien code.  Guess the military should start investing in baby monitor technology or something.

Now, that's just a taste of what's to come.  Once the invasion actually starts, the stupidity level jumps through the roof.  Mel Gibson boards up the windows of his house to prevent the aliens getting in and he and his family hide in the basement, blocking the door.  Of course, this kind of tactic wouldn't work against an invading human, yet somehow these masters of interstellar space travel and cloaking technologies are utterly foiled.

The movie attempts to handwave this by saying the aliens "wouldn't use their own technology" in an invasion because they don't want us going nuclear and spoiling the resources.  This is a huge leap in reasoning and a failure of suspension of disbelief.

Now think about it: just because aliens aren't using technology on us, would we not use it on them?  Put it into perspective: if Iraqi troops were storming Washington DC (and not the other way around), do you think the US would just leave their nuclear arsenal untouched and rely only on conventional arms?  Pft!  Don't make me laugh!  And Iraqis are just "weak ol' humans" after all.

Further, if the aliens can master faster-than-light travel, a marvel human scientists believe is impossible, their technology advantage would so far outstrip our own that it wouldn't be so much a war as a complete and utter curb stomp.  It'd be much more in the aliens interest to end the conflict swiftly with their advanced technology than to let it drag on and increase the risk of nuclear retaliation.

But let's put all of that aside for a moment.  Let's just say that this idiotic handwave of "not wanting nuclear retaliation" makes any kind of sense.  Let's just give M Night Shyamalan the benefit of the doubt.  Ok, you still have aliens on earth being denied entry by what is essentially a locked door.  God damn, man, you don't need advanced technology to overcome that obstacle.  A stone age axe would do!  But instead the aliens pound impotently against the door in increasingly futile attempts.  It's.  Just.  So.  Stupid.

But it gets worse...

Invading a planet and not using your vast technological superiority over them is one level of dumb.  It increases alien casualties and the chance that nations may retaliate nuclearly.  So, how can fighting "hand to hand" be dumber?  What if the planet you're invading and the enemy that you're fighting are composed 70-90% of something you're incredibly weak to?  Yup.  Aliens are weak to water.

Why would a race of aliens weak to the most abundant element on this planet try and invade it?  What if it rains?  We already laugh at Hitler and Napolean's armies dying in Russia's frigid winters.  Can you imagine if an army had to stop fighting because of a little fog or rain or humidity because it might melt their skin?

Further still, human blood, sweat, saliva and other fluids all contain large amounts of water.  For all intents and purposes, we'd be the Ridley Scott Alien to the Signs Aliens!  Do you think humanity would want to invade an acid laden planet of acid inhabited by acid-spewing aliens that bleed acid while armed with nothing but their fists and wits?  Hell no!  That's called being too fucking stupid to live - which i guess the Signs aliens are.

I'm also left to wonder, what the hell resources were these short-bus riding aliens after to begin with?  Not water: it kills them.  Heavy metals are more common around supernovae, which should be easy for them to get to with their space crafts.  They obviously can't use any of the carbon life forms here if water is toxic to them.

The movie makes passing mention that they may have been after humans themselves, but this also makes no sense.  The aliens are vastly superior technologically and physically, easily jumping 2 stories from a standing position.  How the hell could a weak ass human help this kind of species?  We're not even remotely physiologically the same, either, so medical experimentation is out.  There is no reason why these aliens would want to invade earth.  Zero.  This fact alone makes the aliens in this movie more laughable than scary.

*sigh*

The ending is another kind of stupid all together: a story telling stupid.  The aliens, defeated, flee in terror so fast that they leave their wounded behind.  One of their wounded is an alien with the life-altering debilitation of a chopped off finger (courtesy of Mel Gibson).  The alien, livid, apparently, stays behind with the sole intent on seeking vengeance on Gibson's family.

Uh, what?  This makes no sense!  The aliens all look the same to us (as in, the audience).  I'm betting humans all look the same to them.  How would this alien know who and where Mel Gibson is?  But even beyond that, say he did know; is losing a finger so worth vengeance that you will throw your very life away for the mere chance to get even?

Remember, in this aliens eyes, none of this can possibly be sure.  Humans are now killing aliens with water, his buddies are all gone and never coming back, for all he knows Mel Gibson could be dead, dying or lying in hiding with enough rations to live for weeks.  To this alien, it's a complete and total suicide run with a very slim chance of success.  This alien dies of course, but in a much more dramatic way than in the next rain storm.

Shyamalan goes out of his way to make the defeat of the aliens, particularly the last one, seem almost like divine intervention.  Of course, when you're dealing with a species of alien so wrecklessly stupid and self-destructive, it's a wonder you'd need any divine help at all.  Maybe it's only by God's good graces that such a pathologically stupid alien race decided to invade thereby ensuring human victory.  Either way, Gibson's character uses the events as proof that God is real and is assured that his family only survived because of God's will.

We are told that the other human casualties are in the millions which leads one to wonder: why would God spare Gibson's family but kill millions of others?  Did those other people not deserve life, too?  Even in the movies, God's a dick.

Oh well.  I can't really slam this movie all that much.  As far as suspense and quick shock value, it does its job well.  Even watching it a second time i felt a little chill in my body, so Shyamalan must've done something right.

I give this movie 3 failed invasions out of 5.  That's a C+, say.