Dir.: M. Night Shyamalan

Arguably Shyamalan's most accomplished work. An absolutely amazing original screenplay (any anti-Shyamalan can consider this a personal attack, and a dare to ever write something this brilliant) and one of the most influential films of comtemporary cinema.

Underrated. First, for being a Shyamalan film in the first place. And second, for being released only a year after The Sixth Sense.

Another living proof of Shyamalan's natural gifts as a filmmaker. Technically close to perfection, gripping, thoughtful and even beautiful. From the opening credits, dominated by an intriguing score by James Newton Howard, it draws you in, holding you in expectation as Shyamalan peels his story. Will become a favourite for any Alien-obsessed mind.

The kind of film that wasn't made to be accepted, or even understood by masses. A powerful tale of isolationism, desire for innocence, hope, and fear of the unknown. An absolutely breathtaking performance by Bryce Dallas Howard and Adrien Brody's best since The Pianist. Shyamalan is the kind of filmmaker that doesn't make films with what the critics or audiences will think on his mind. Unfortunely, we live in a sad time when Hollywood is more interested in remakes and sequels than in original films. You can talk all you want, but Shyamalan continues to tell new stories, his own stories. And he's really good. Deal with that however you want but don't, just don't call The Village a bad film.

If you remember that Lady in the Water is based on a bed-time story that Shyamalan used to tell his kids, you might eventually understand why it isn't exacly filled with believability or narrative accuracy. Maybe that's because... uhm, it wasn't supposed to? While everyone ('professional' and amateur crtitics) are trashing what he does, Mr. Shyamalan is really worried and concerned with what you think... yes, he is. He even created a caricatured character of a film critic, that's how concerned he is. Lady in the Water isn't a masterpiece, so what? It is, however, a work of true originality and vision. A page of this film's script has more value than all of the 'thumbs down' reviews about it and its writers put together.

"Can this really be happening?"

M. Night Shyamalan and his ego have been spending too much time together. I think they should see other people. The Happening, for all intents and purposes, succeeds at one and only one thing: it proves what even the biggest supporters of the director (such as myself) have been fearing for the last few years: the man has burned out, completely losing touch with what makes a good film.



People across the North-Eastern seaboard mysteriously start killing themselves. School teacher friends Elliot (Mark Wahlberg) and Julian (John Leguizamo), along with Elliot's wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel) and Julian's daughter Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez), try to escape from the big cities where these events are taking place. Is it a terrorist chemical attack? Or something else? A few years ago Shyamalan would maybe have been able to do something interesting with this concept. From the very beginning, The Happening feels schizophrenic, not sure whether it wants to show the full scale of the disaster or if it wants to stay with the group of main characters (like Signs). The film finally settles on the more restricted approach, but this ends up being frustrating, due to the fact that the seed of actually seeing the carnage happen was planted early on.

Shyamalan's direction is never uninteresting, so we get some impressive sequences in the beginning and later on (like the car crash), but something is missing. We never really connect with the characters like we did in his earlier films, despite numerous attempts to get us to like them. The only actor to give an all-around good performance is, surprisingly, John Leguizamo. I've never considered Mark Wahlberg a great actor, for me he's always been effective at best, and that's exactly what he's here. Zooey Deschanel spends the film staring into the distance with those dreamy blue eyes of hers and acting annoying. Which is a shame. They aren't helped by the filming style, which is filled with weird full-on close-ups that allow us to admire the asymmetry of the actors' faces in all of its awkward glory. In one sequence, when Wahlberg's character has to quickly analyse a situation, this technique becomes almost laughable.

As for the so-called "twist," well, I won't give it away, but it's as lame as we all have been expecting and it's handled in a really preachy way. Remember the line at the end of The Day After Tomorrow when the astronauts go "wow, see how clean that sky is"? We constantly get forehead-slap-inducing scenes like that one, stuff that would make even the most ardent hippies say, "dude, put the bong down."

It's funny that The Happening was flagrantly advertised as Shyamalan's "first R-rated film." Some may think it means that the famous director is finally free from a creative point of view. Nothing is further from the truth. The real reason why the advertising team boasted about the R rating is much simpler: that's really all they got. And, disappointingly, for a film that was sold on how extrrrreeeme it is, it doesn't even deliver on the gore. The violent moments are less gory than what we saw in the recently-released red band trailer. In the end, the violence feels more like a gimmick than anything. Despite a few shocking moments in the beginning (with one long shot of people throwing themselves off a building), the potential sense of terror that could've been created with the more graphic violence is never really taken advantage of.

The majority of the film's third act suffers from the same problem that already started to rear its ugly head in The Village (a film I enjoyed and defended a lot): artificial scares. I won't go into details, but I'll just say it involves an old lady. Scenes with her character are just used for cheap jump moments that have nothing to do with the main storyline. Much like in The Village, when Shyamalan attempted to once again scare us with the monsters despite their true non-threatening nature having already been revealed. It's extremely lazy filmmaking and just goes to show that Shyamalan was clueless about how to develop the main storyline, so he started going off on tangents like this. I don't particularly dislike the scenes since they have that charming B-weirdness that only this director is capable of, but they do feel like they're from another film.

What we've got here is a filmmaker who has lost his way, much like the Coen bros circa 2004. I've always been one of the man's main supporters, but I must admit that I'm truly puzzled with what he tried to accomplish with this film. Some scenes here and there carry the necessary impact he is so famous for delivering, but, all in all, The Happening is just a really ineffective film. In almost every way. The man needs a really long break. And hopefully in a few years - he's only 38, after all - he'll be back with a bang in the form of his own No Country for Old Men. Let's hope so, for the sake of cinema itself.