jesse
@ June 15, 2008


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About a month ago, I commented on the impending ridiculousness that is the new M. Night Shyamalan movie, where people say things like "There appears to be an event happening" and "I'm a teacher!" and stand around motionless in parks for no apparent reason.  But then I saw a commercial where a man lay down in front of a thresher, and another man fed himself to lions in a zoo, and it made me laugh.  And I thought to myself, "Hey, this looks kind of like the Final Destination movies...  I like those... and the Suze likes these kinds of movies, maybe this will be one I could tolerate and I could earn some Suze points..."

Well, here's the good part: I have found a movie that can be summarized without words, but with a single image:

mark-wahlberg-happening-stare.jpgNow, stare at that image for the next 90 minutes. Study the creases of Marky Mark's furrowed brow, and the blankness of his stare.  Make his confusion your confusion.  Make his flared nostrils your flared nostrils. Also...

Begin spoiler alert:

The grass is trying to kill him. 

Hahaha, funny joke.  No, not funny! That's the plot of the movie.  Grass and trees and shit make everyone kill themselves for some reason.  I'm sure M. thought he was making some deep commentary on global warming and environmentalism, and Lord knows he isn't the first to try and fail

There's no crazy twist ending to talk about afterwards, no interesting deaths that weren't spoiled in the commercials, and no nudity.  It's Mark Wahlberg, staring at you with a furrowed brow in a Pennsylvania field for 90 minutes while the grass tries to kill him.

End of spoiler. 

If you skipped over the spoilers, go back and read them, and save yourself the trouble of seeing this movie. 

PPS: afterwards, Suzi and I were in a store in the mall, and she said a little too loudly as we discussed the movie: "you should blog about it!" and I wanted to kill myself.  So there's that. 

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The movie was clearly about terrorism. And I'm not saying that in a good way.

I mean, from the construction worker saying "9/11" in the beginning to the commentator pointing out that the event started happening on a Tuesday morning. And of course the not so subtle news reports indicating that it's a terrorist attack, and the shots of the idiotic American populace who immediately believe the news.

This movie was infuriating. How about that timely use of slow motion?

What pissed me off more than anything, I think, was the MNS's decision to frame the events in that of a scientific explanation. The reason that his best work (I refuse to use the word masterpiece, he's not Hitch and never will be) to date, Unbreakable, worked so well is that it *didn't* try and explain itself. Also the reason I felt Stranger than Fiction worked, granted that is clearly not an MNS film. Too much happened in it.

Granted, at least now if someone tells me that they'll pay me 1 cent the first day, two cents the second, four the third, etc etc etc for a month I'll know to take their offer. Thanks to MNS for giving me enough time to do the math in my head when nothing was happening in The Happening after that bit of knowledge.

On second thought, the slow motion shot is what pissed me off the most.

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