I really enjoyed "The Sixth Sense"! "Signs" was stupendous! I even thoroughly enjoyed "Unbreakable".
I just watched "The Happening" tonight. Thankfully, I didn't have to pay to see it. I'm not against paying to see good movies - I own over 750 retail DVDs.
I was looking for something online - some critic from a reputable source who might have penned the words to help me describe the feelings I had after watching this movie. In my opinion, he's been on a downhill ride to the end of his career ever since "The Village" came out.
I found the following review, which I started to like... but I wasn't sharing the optimism that the writer was expressing towards the end of the piece.
QUOTE
Posted by Sean Stangland on Sat, 06/14/2008 - 12:49
The reviews are in, and there seems to be a national consensus: Film critics and Internet geeks have decided that M. Night Shyamalan's career is over.
With the notable local exceptions of our man Dann and Roger Ebert, the film geeks just loathe "The Happening," Shyamalan's new throwback to '50s B-movies where the horror on the screen is delivered with a heavy-handed message about the horrors in real life. In the '50s, it was nuclear power and Communism; in "The Happening," it's global warming and pollution.
I think the film was clearly intended on that level, and works as a fun homage to those B-movies. It's not anywhere near Shyamalan's best work, but it's certainly better than "Lady in the Water," and perhaps more satisfying than "The Village," which fell apart in the final minutes not because of the twist, but because of how the twist was presented.
The reviews are in, and there seems to be a national consensus: Film critics and Internet geeks have decided that M. Night Shyamalan's career is over.
With the notable local exceptions of our man Dann and Roger Ebert, the film geeks just loathe "The Happening," Shyamalan's new throwback to '50s B-movies where the horror on the screen is delivered with a heavy-handed message about the horrors in real life. In the '50s, it was nuclear power and Communism; in "The Happening," it's global warming and pollution.
I think the film was clearly intended on that level, and works as a fun homage to those B-movies. It's not anywhere near Shyamalan's best work, but it's certainly better than "Lady in the Water," and perhaps more satisfying than "The Village," which fell apart in the final minutes not because of the twist, but because of how the twist was presented.
• "I try to see what's on the screen, not what's gone before, and the movie I saw was truly, mysteriously awful. Unless, of course, it was meant to be a parody of such nature-lashing-out thrillers as "The Birds." But parodies are supposed to be funny, and the only laughs I heard were bad ones." -- Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal
• "You feel like you're not watching the end of the world but the end of a career." -- Ty Burr, Boston Globe
• "It's a sorry enough spectacle to make admirers of 'The Sixth Sense' wonder if they didn't overrate that movie, and the director's whole oeuvre. Is Shyamalan a sham?" -- Richard Corliss, Time
• "This is the kind of movie that kills careers; it certain [sic] murdered my spirit for most of a day." -- Steve Prokopy, aka Capone, aintitcool.com
• "The scene in which (Zooey Deschanel) finds herself confronting a relentlessly ringing phone may be the single worst thing that anyone has ever done on screen." -- Peter Sobczynski, efilmcritic.com
• "What it turns out to be is a cinematic disaster of 'MST3K' proportions we haven’t seen from the likes of a major studio since, maybe ever." -- Erik Childress, efilmcritic.com
Read the full article here: http://blogs.dailyherald.com/node/182
I don't listen to critics most of the time as I like to judge things for myself. I typically don't watch movie trailers (I don't watch "broadcast" TV) as I like to be surprised by what I am about to watch.
But I think even I could do better than this movie.
I need to start writing. I have some good ideas.
