Eimer's Best Netflix Reviews - The Happening

Look, I enjoyed THE RUINS. I thought it was interesting to have nature finally fighting back against mankind. I could even suspend my disbelief in to believe that Jordy Verrill was, in fact, slowly turning into a plant in the CREEEPSHOW vignette.

However with this film, I tried and tried and tried to suspend my disbelief and roll with this movie.

I just couldn’t.

The acting, the direction and the stupid, stupid script didn’t enthrall me one bit during its 90-minute run. And that bums me out because I was hoping M. Night would finally get his shit together and hit one out of the park like he did with UNBREAKABLE and THE SIXTH SENSE.

I’m now convinced that’s not going to happen unless he starts more collaboration and less dictatorship with his movies. Now when I see the words WRITTEN, PRODUCED & DIRECTED BY M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN at the beginning of a movie, I’m going to groan. And the really sucky thing about this movie is that it had potential to be a really cool horror movie. But it just turned into dumb.

From the wind blowing in the wrong direction of the jet stream to the old lady in the small town, to the wind blowing and more wind blowing to signify some type of Jason Voorhees character is on the hunt of packs of people (Which begs the question how many is too many? And I didn’t know nature could count?) this movie is so ludicrous that it’s not even worth talking about anymore.

Okay one more thing. In the extras section of the DVD, there’s an anatomy of a scene production where, it appears M. Night spent about three-to-four days shooting this one scene where a jeep rams into a tree and bodies are thrown from the vehicle. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a cool scene. But, as I was watching this production I was thinking to myself that M. Night should have focused more time tinkering with his terrible script than trying to film a cool scene for the masses.

In a nutshell, that’s what bothers me about this film and his last film LADY IN THE WATER…plenty of tree bark, but no bite.

GRADE: F-

What's HAPPENING M. Night Shyamalan?

Hey there, just came across the movie trailer for M. Night Shyamalan's new flick The Happening due in theaters this June. Check it out right here:



Doesn't look too shabby. Reminds me of two Stephen King books Cell and The Stand mixed with some sort of Jesus-themed Armageddon type shit. It even seems like this movie could probably serve as a prequel to Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

Harry Knowles of Aint-It-Cool-News raved about The Happening screenplay in an older post. However, keep in mind that Knowles' geek-love of directors, movies and screenplays has sometimes gotten in the way of obvious bad work.

But, knowing that crazy Shamalamadingdong, I'm sure there will be some sort of crazy twist ending.

Speaking of twist endings, it seems like all of his movies have sort of hit a downhill slant on the 'coolness' factor after his first two major films; The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Signs and The Village. I thought they were both great ideas. However, I think he was trying too hard to put his patented crazy, twist ending into those films. I mean, The Village had almost three different possible twist endings to choose from even before the movie ended.

To add to that, there's been rumors that he stole the idea for The Village from the novel Running Out of Time by Margaret Peterson Haddix.

That said, I'm happy to see him back in the drama game after the horrific The Lady in the Water. That movie sucked so bad, my penis hurt after watching it.

So, I'm curious, what do you guys think about M. Night and the new trailer?