Tuesday, 1 July 2008
Nope, this is not a review for a comedy film called the 'Crappening', it is actually a review for a comically bad horror movie 'the Happening' from world renowned director M. Night Shyamalan of Sixth Sense fame.
Everyone knows this story. In 1999 the world was Shyamalan's oyster after releasing his work of genius the Sixth Sense, earning him massive critical acclaim. Since then, M. Night has released a series of increasingly poor movies, first the decent Unbreakable, the slightly better Signs, and then nose diving with the Village and the Lady in the Water (both awful). However he has now officially hit rock bottom.
Normally I don't give spoilers away in my review, but in this case I think I will make an exception, you'll thank me later when you don't waste your time or money on this crap. This is a movie about killer trees. Not just trees, trees and grass and bushes, all communicating with each other, every plant in the the North East of America has just decided to start excreting a toxic nerve agent. What's more, it's specifically targeting groups of a certain size, getting smaller and smaller as the movie goes on. This is really stupid. In fact so many things about this film are so stupid that I will actually invent a brand new word to describe them, 'Shyamalatarded'.
So let's go through the various absurdities in this movie. The nerve agent itself, somehow gets people to kill themselves by removing inhibitions. Completely unscientific and at times looks really really Shyamalatarded. Then we are told that all plants of all different species shapes and sizes are able to talk to each other, and able to teach each other how to make this toxin and co-ordinate their battle plans for how to kill us, complete shyamalatardation. There was the manner in which the plants all systematically target increasingly smaller groups of people, and the fact that every single plant over a large area of land has somehow evolved simultaneously to produce this toxin, and the pretentious, arrogant way in which the film simply dismisses these bizarre occurrences as 'an act of nature that we will never understand'... it is all very shyamalatarded. It reads like an amateur b-movie script, except unlike recent action comedy snakes on a plane, this is completely unintentional, and that makes it all the more cringeworthy.
My favorite scene is one where the main heroes are in a field and realize that the surrounding trees are about to release the toxin, so they run, and try to outrun the wind blowing behind them. In fact there is a whole chase scene here where the people are running away from the slowly advancing wind-front, which can be seen blowing through the grass. SO stupid, it's like a joke. I honestly can't believe anyone put that in a movie, i think even six year olds know that people can't outrun wind. The people I was at the cinema with will note how i literally sunk back into my seat and covered my eyes at this scene, so painful was it.
God what an abomination. What an awful movie. Why God why. M. Night, you're a good director, but I think you should give up with writing, this reads like a script a four year old would write.
Top this all off with really awful acting that feels like every scene was done with just one rushed take, and you have yourself one of the worst movies in what has been frankly a very very poor summer of movies (the Hulk also sucks, and Indie was hardly a classic). The fact that Hancock appears to be the highlight speaks volumes.
