Before you start jumping the gun, there's a perfectly legitimate reason for me to own The Happening. I first saw the movie on its opening weekend with a friend of mine, and in the beginning, we were actually intrigued and enthralled by the originality of the storyline. An unknown airborne toxin causes people to lose control of their wits, leading to their eventual suicide. Sounds creepy enough, right? However, one particular scene changed the film from a thriller to a comedy. If you read my post about finding the beauty in bad movies, you'll have seen that clip. At that moment, I literally laughed out loud in the theater, and within the next few minutes, the rest of the audience had joined my chorus of laughter.
This film's screenplay is arguably one of the worst I've ever experienced. It starts out strong enough, but it ultimately starts to spiral out of control. In the beginning, we get an effective thriller that does well to pique our interest, but it slowly turns into a movie that sees our characters running away from the wind. When you're simply bouncing from suicide to suicide, there's really not much for the audience to latch onto, except perhaps the acting performances.
(Un)fortunately, we're given some career-worst performances from both Wahlberg and Deschanel. I could probably go on for hours about the other major supporting roles, but most of the blame for this flick lands on our two leads. To be fair, a lot of the problem lies with how the characters were written, but you'd think that such consistent actors as Mark and Zooey would find a way to make the childishness of their characters seem a little more believable. As it stands now, they're just childish, all the way down to wearing mood rings to show their love for another.
Overall, The Happening truly is a massive joke that Shyamalan probably thinks holds a massive political statement. Unfortunately for him, it quickly turns into a laugh-fest that simply cannot be taken seriously. There's a reason I placed it on my list of favorite "so bad, it's good" films and why it now ranks as the worst film I've ever seen. Sometimes unintentional comedies are the most satisfying.
Unbreakable is a 2000 dramatic mystery film directed by M. Night Shyamalan. The film opens on David Dunn (Bruce Willis), a married man on his way home from New York on a train that derails, killing everyone on-board - except him. Somehow, David walks away from the crash unscathed, causing everyone around him to wonder just how he managed to do so. After leaving a memorial service for all those killed in the crash, David finds a note stuck under his car's windshield asking him how many times he had been sick in his life. The question quickly becomes an obsession, and with the help of his wife Audrey (Robin Wright), David realizes that he had never once been sick in his life. He traces the note to a special art gallery where he meets Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), a man who was born with a type of brittle bone syndrome. After conversing for a little while, Elijah believes that David may be "unbreakable," in that he cannot be injured. He starts to attempt to convince David that the world may need a person like him - a protector, so to speak. David shrugs off the notion, but as time goes by, he starts to wonder whether Elijah may actually be correct.
Now, I watched this film last night but was too tired afterward to write the review, so bear with me if this sounds a little jumbled. I had been meaning to watch this film ever since I watched The Sixth Sense because many people had told me it's actually good Shyamalan fare. And in comparison to some of his recent efforts (i.e., 2008's The Happening and 2010's The Last Airbender), Unbreakable is damn near brilliant. However, compared to the annals of the rest of film history, it simply falls into the "quite good" category. I had a very interesting viewing of this film, considering it's one of the only Shyamalan films I've seen in which I did not know the ultimate twist going into watching it. The Sixth Sense and The Village (which I have yet to watch) were both spoiled for me before I had the chance to see them, so they proved to be a little lackluster (although, the power of The Sixth Sense still ranks it at #142 on my all-time list). That being said, let's get to the actual review of the film...
We actually have a pretty good screenplay, although it literally makes you wait until the very last scene to punch everything home. This seems to be Shyamalan's sole purpose in making film - to make the audience wait until the final moments to garner some resolution. I have to say that I wasn't entirely expecting the final outcome, but as I thought about it as I drifted off to sleep, I realized how obvious it had been. I should have picked up on it a lot sooner, but perhaps I was tired from a long day of movies (in case you didn't notice, check out my other review from yesterday: Insidious; Source Code; Win Win). We've basically got a superhero story on our hands here, but it's not really packaged as such throughout the film. The story really focuses on Dunn's inner struggle as he tries to figure out just what's "wrong" with him. In a way, I guess you can say this is like an origins story of a superhero. The fact that it's all encased within this comic book universe that Elijah so craves makes it all the more dashing. My only real issue with the screenplay was that it moved so slowly that it never lets you properly hook into what's going on. Again, that could've just been me trying to watch it as I slowly succumbed to the wonders of dreamland - maybe I'll have to give this one another view on a fully functional day.
The acting is good, in a very subtle sort of way. I loved Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense, and I wanted desperately to love him here as well, but I came away merely liking the character. However, his collaboration with Shyamalan helped to bring out the actor in Willis, rather than the comedic action junkie we had all grown to know and love. His roles in both The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable are so glaringly different from roles he's taken on in the past that it's a little awkward to see him as such. That doesn't take away the fact that he is a very good actor, though. Aside from Willis, there's really no one else to talk about except Samuel L. Jackson. It took me a little while for his character to grow on me, but eventually, I was able to fall into his warped sense of reality. Jackson plays him well, with an outward subtlety that almost masks the manic energy floating around inside Elijah's skull. It's quite a sight to behold, actually.
I'd also like to take a moment and give credit to James Newton Howard, who composed the score for the film. Although it's not quite as good as his composition for The Sixth Sense, it's still quite good and fits the film very well. Here's a little taste of the score, in case you're curious to hear it:
Overall, I think I'm going to have to go back and watch Unbreakable again in a few weeks. The more I think about the film, the more I like it, but I might want to give it another go just to prove that my feelings are warranted. In a day and age when Shyamalan has become a bit of a laughing stock in Hollywood, everything he does has to be taken with a grain of salt. However, Unbreakable might actually be one of his better films, and although it's not quite reaching The Sixth Sense, it could very easily come close.
The Happening
characters running away from the wind. When you're simply bouncing from suicide to suicide, there's really not much for the audience to latch onto, except perhaps the acting performances.
