Guess How I Know It's Summer?

I know it's summertime because I've seen two movies at the theaters in the past month and both of them have sucked. Before, it was The Strangers, which has been poorly accepted by critics (myself included), and slightly better accepted by audiences, judging by its IMDb score and the oddly long legs of the flick.

Tonight, it was M. Knight Shyamalan's latest blockbuster powerhouse of crap, The Happening. Somehow, critics think even more poorly of The Happening than of The Strangers. That's not to say that The Happening was good, just better than The Strangers. By definition, everything is better than The Strangers.

The Happening has some genuinely funny moments, like when Mark Wahlberg talks to a plastic tree, and also some unintentionally funny moments that ruin the movie. Also taking hand in making this one a bomb: poorly written characters. These characters, like in every other Shyamalan film, have a personal struggle to make it through which they are concerned about even through the overt problem of the entire northeast United States committing gruesome suicide. Needless to say, just like in every other Shyamalan movie, they manage to overcome this internal struggle. The characters are all cartoon characatures with a small selection of emotions that don't allow for nuance.

Also, like in every Shyamalan movie, I guessed the plot "twist" six minutes into the movie. Granted, The Happening's "plot twist" feels less like a condescending self-affirmation on the level of Stuart Smalley than, say, The Sixth Sense, or The Village.

Receiving the theme of The Happening is like being slapped across the face with a tuna. Yes, we should live every day as if it were our last. Of course, love conquers all. And we may never know every single reason for nature's actions. Duh. We've had this pressed on us since we can remember.

There are a handful of scenes where Shyamalan attempts to create art, like the shot I kept hearing about where a pistol changes hands a few times, that fall flat on their faces. It makes Shyamalan look like a guy who only wishes he could be pretentious.

The acting here is pretty bad, though not awful, and certainly not the fault of the actors. They were given a pretty crappy script. Shyamalan can't write, and he basically gave each character one or two basic emotions and absolutely no tension. There's hardly any conflict here, and that's what drives characters' actions.

Our favorite director whose first name is "M" has basically taken other movies that came before and mixed them together to create something decidedly not new. More specifically, The Happening is kinda like The Last Man On Earth meets The Poseidon Adventure. His Netflix account should be revoked unless he starts renting better movies. A good one for him to watch would be the German Funny Games, which I watched recently in response to The Strangers. He'll pick up a few methods of handling suspense and horror and even paranoia, which is something he obviously tried to make central here, and failed.

All in all, this is probably worth watching if you rent it, or better yet, if your friend rents it and invites you over. Shyamalan probably has another Unbreakable in him, but I firmly believe that he should stop writing his movies and just stick to the direction. That said, even The Happening had a handful of shots that made me laugh due to their overdone cliche methodologies.

The Happening is just not happening.