What Just Happened!??!

There he goes again! M. Night Shyamalan has done it again. Just saw The Happening and couldn't help but feel confused by the end of it. Usually when I end up watching a bad film, especially in a movie hall, I am besieged with a horrendous headache and am irritable. This is a sure shot way of finding out if the film was bad. This time around I couldn't figure out if I should have a headache or not. The question that I have been asking myself since I got out of the darkened theater is WHAT JUST HAPPENED?

M. Night Shyamalan comes across as a man who seems to know a thing or two about the things we don't. Anyone who has seen The Sixth Sense would vouch for this. I mean who thought of making a film about a child who reveals to a doctor that he sees dead people? And all this while no one talks to the bloody doctor! But since The Sixth Sense every Shyamalan film has been a let down in one manner or the other. Here is a guy who might have stretched his single rubber-band of an idea a little too far.

The Happening is a film about a paranoid family that is on the run from god knows what, which is killing people in a manner most cinematic. The man and the woman have hit a rough patch in their marriage. I don't blame them for what do you expect if the woman's idea of cheating on her husband is having a tiramisu with someone called joey from work!? The man's best friend keeps making faces and telling him that something is wrong with the woman and the woman can't take it that the man has told their 'secrets' to the world. Come on lady! If you act like a wide-eyed mare every time the camera is on ya, what do you expect the people to make of it! The Happening is about something that no one knows. Methinks if so be the case then maybe the bloody thing isn't happening!!!!!!

In case you are planning to watch the film go with very low expectations. There are really good moments in The Happening but nothing more than that. The best thing about The Happening is that thankfully M. Night Shyamalan isn't acting in it! We are saved for if we could have survived whatever it was killing the people in The Happening and the bad acting by the lead, we wouldn't have survived M. Night in an extended walk on role. (Read my review of The Happening here)

I think Shyamalan should get around making a film out of Life With Pi, something that he was planning to do. This would give him an opportunity to get away from his 'genre' and allow people to see a different shade of him. After all if you believed that being #1 in the field of 1 was a win-win situation then take a closer look.

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