Admittance

Local political debates are always fun. I stayed at the one hosted here at my college for about five minutes - long enough to see the Green Party candidate get thrown out. Good to see the open forum American democratic system at work.

Anyhow.

Admitting you are an M. Night Shyamalan fan to anyone who considers themselves movie-savvy is a bit like admitting you're gay to your absurdly Republican, right-wing, Christian mother, or telling your black girlfriend that you recently decided to become a white supremacist. It doesn't fly. He is one of a collection of public figures who, to borrow the title of an Offspring song, is cool to hate. Shyamalan has joined the ranks of Rob Smith of The Cure and countless others who everyone likes to aim at when they make another movie or release another album.

My interpretation behind such uninhibited dislike is that, despite the fact that lightning never strikes the same place twice, the viewing public seems to affix the task to whoever makes it strike in the first place. The Sixth Sense was great; however, whatever film comes after it (in his case, Unbreakable) is by and large expected to be The Sixth Sense. While it seems that M. Night, and countless others, are intelligent enough to understand that, short of becoming Ahamenatuku*, The Rain God, himself, the task of making movie lightning hit the same target twice in a row is impossible. The catch 22 they inevitably fall into is that "fans" of the first movie don't actually want a new film: they simply want to sit in the dark and watch The Sixth Sense over and over again, and crank on the flamethrowers so hard IMDB's corporate headquarters might burn to the ground when the next film doesn't measure up to the first.

Fine for them: not for someone who, say, actually wants a fucking career.

Which brings me to The Happening. M. Night's latest movie, in a word, was a total dissapointment. Okay, two words, one noun. The acting was campy - I couldn't really figure out of he was aiming for that fifties horror film campy - but it did not work. Plus, far too much emphasis was placed on the fact that it was his first R-rated movie. Some of the suicide scenes were pretty creepy, but a majority was a little to hokey to believe. For example, in the opening, a girl comments that people were clawing at themselves. It makes sense if one's brain is being eaten apart by plant chemicals. Never do we actually see a person actually clawing at themselves. Instead, the chemical doesn't so much induce self-destructive behavior, so much as it makes people think of creative ways to injure themselves. It was a stretch.

The centerpiece to Shyamalan's movies is always the twist. But there really wasn't a twist. The explanation of the Thirty-Seconds-To-Kill-Yourself drug is given in the first five minutes of the film - obviously. Attempts to mislabel it as a terrorist attack are so thin and full of holes that it does not do justice to his normal skill in covering his movies in thick layers of Mystery Cream. Plus, Mark Whalberg? Come right the fuck on.

Admittedly, I'm a fan of M. Night's movies, and my hope is that this film is a fluke - a shock-jock fluke to show that the director is capable of appealing to the bloodlust of modern teenage audiences.

Since they're the only demographic that can actually afford a movie anymore.

*Not an actual God.