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For those trying to figure out why "The Happening"
isn't, the answer as they say is blowing in the wind. M.
Night Shyamalan's tried to take a harder edge with this
film earning it an "R" rating to attract the teens but what
Shyamalan failed to do was create a scary film. By the end
of "The Happening" you'll find yourself laughing at the
bad dialogue, bad acting and bad almost absurd sequences
involving gore. "The Sixth Sense" showed tremendous promise
and while "Unbreakable" didn't advance that promise much,
it did demonstrate a director who was confident enough to
handle a complex film that departed from traditional formulas.
After that Shyamalan fell into the very pit of formulas
he was trying to avoid with each succeeding film sinking
further and further into the quicksand of mediocrity. ***
"The Happening" steps into Hitchcock territory but
trips within the first ten minutes of the film losing its
balance often amid clunky dialogue that is totally unconvincing.
When a mysterious toxin is released in their city high school
teacher Elliot Moore, his distant wife Alma (Mark Wahlberg
who once again resorts to using his out-of-breath acting
style that is supposed to convey confusion and tension and
the normally good Zooey Deschanel), their friend math teacher
Julian (John Leguizamo) and his daughter Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez)
all decide to take the train to Pennsylvania until this
terrorist attack blows over. The toxin causes those effected
to lose their sense of direction, talk nonsense and kill
themselves. Their train mysteriously stops in the middle
of nowhere as the railroad loses all contact with the outside
world. ***
The film certainly has its chilling moments for example
the first ten minutes are both visually arresting and disturbing
as we see people in Central Park mysteriously all stop at
once as if frozen and then seem some of them walk backwards
or talk nonsense as they kill themselves. The second and
even more disturbing scene involves a construction site
where as their colleagues watch in horror the men on the
top floor jump mindlessly to their deaths. From there the
film quickly becomes a silly thriller where people are running
from the wind quite literally and unseen forces. It's clear
that Shyamalan visualized the most visually startling scenes
and then came up with a storyline to go with it (which isn't
a bad thing--that's how Hitchcock dreamed up "North by Northwest"
but at least he worked with screenwriters to come up with
a credible story to back it up) but, unlike "The Birds",
Shyamalan doesn't really come up with something visually
striking enough to make a threatening impression. Trees
moving in the breeze playing the role of the boogeyman just
doesn't work here and the use of grass rolling in the wind
likewise. He also comes forward with an explanation that
while not necessarily completely silly is revealed too soon
into the film. While Hitchcock did the same thing with both
"Psycho" and "The Birds" he was dealing with a far less
sophisticated and jaded audience at the time AND he kept
these explanations or theories to himself until the third
act or epilogue of the films. Shyamalan's disclosure is
just silly. Having exhausted "The Twilight Zone" twist in
his films "The Sixth Sense", "Unbreakable" and "The Village",
he reveals everything up front. That would be fine if the
performances were strong and the dialogue wasn't some of
the worst that I've heard in any major Hollywood film this
year but "The Happening" manages to underwhelm after a chilling
opening on just about every level. Heck, there's one gore
sequence that just looks amateurish like it was pulled from
a grade Z horror movie. One thing that Shyamalan doesn't
do well is sequences involving gore. ---
Image & Sound:
It's not hard to figure out what happened with this
awful looking studio screener that Fox sent out. I just
can't figure it out. Fox is cheap when it comes to all the
WRONG things. Why not just sent a regular DVD or at the
very least a dual layer beta version DVD-R that will handle
the visual information just like the final version might.
Colors look fine but whenever there is action pixilation
is just about everywhere. Clarity and detail look fine in
static scenes but look awful in scenes involving any sort
of action. All I can say is that Fox needs to reevaluate
their preview discs for critics since they look cheap, give
no idea as to what the final product will truly look like,
damage their reputation and end up costing them more money
in the long run. ***
Audio sounds just fine because it is rarely compromised
in the studio burned single layer DVD-R discs. It's effectively
used. ---
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