M. Night Shyamalan has gained a cult following since his Oscar-nominated flick “The Sixth Sense,” by maximizing on twist-and-turns and in-your-face culminations, not only on the works which merit an anthology box set, but also by catching the viewing public unawares with what he has in store for them next.
Moviegoers who watch a Syamalan have polarized reactions, and these make him stand out in league with Woody Allen or Monty Python. It’s either you love him or hate him, enough to post a rave or rant blog post, and fuel his fame or notoriety even more. His latest offering “The Happening” wasn’t well received as it should be, but those who are still hung up over “The Sixth Sense” should know by now that Shyamalan is attempting not to be a sellout, dishing out a la carte movies which are forgotten as soon as the curtains close in. Shyamalan is taking a potshot at longevity by targeting his audience in the same way the unseen villain in “The Happening” targets its victims: in smaller and smaller groups.
There are two things which are rather new to this film. For one thing, his penchant for eschewing explicit violence for the sake of topnotch storytelling has been done away with here. Cameras take up-close shots of people hitting the pavement from a five-storey jump, and a woman stabbing her neck with a hair stick; a man being sucked under a lawn mower, and another getting thrown through the windshield and into the ground with a sickening thud. That’s something new in Shyamalan’s world. Gory and effective, it set the viewer’s paranoia and expectations on a solid foundation. It rolls on over into a letdown of sorts though, as the filmmaker throws in another twist – the lack of it. If you’re intent on watching the film for its mind-blowing culmination, well, you’re in for a disappointing surprise.
All of the trademark elements are remain – vignette scenes, sellable actors, and that eerie somber mood which resembles that of a desolated county in the eye of a storm. The filmmaker’s knack for doing cameo appearance is also alive and well in this movie. There’s much to be said about the acting though; John Leguizamo and Mark Wahlberg were hard-sell teachers, and the former’s brief lines on percentages and probabilities were downright bad. Zooey Deschanel was either wide-eyed or glassy-eyed for the most part, and it seemed that she was deliberately used as the relief mechanism for the otherwise morbid backdrop.
It seems that Shyamalan has pulled another backslide in his career with this one. But the reaction to “Unbreakable” was initially disappointing as well, and only now, after years of distillation in the memories of those who were disappointed, that the Shyamalan vision is making its mark. Viewers of “The Happening” will either feel that they’ve been suckered in into a half-baked rehash version of “Signs” or will at least be contented with the way it was told – in anticlimactic fashion. Either way, his niche has been established, and people can’t help but anticipate what he’ll pull off next.
