The Happening.

"M Night Shyamalan's latest movie, The Happening, is not merely bad," writes the New Republic's Christopher Orr. "It is an astonishment, so idiotic in conception and inept in execution that, after seeing it, one almost wonders whether it was real or imagined.... So rather than write a conventional review explaining why you should or shouldn't see The Happening (trust me, you shouldn't), I'm offering an alternative: A dozen and a half of the most mind-bendingly ridiculous elements of the film, which will enable you to marvel at its anti-genius without sacrificing (and I don't use that term lightly) 90 minutes of your life. As this is intended to be an alternative to seeing the actual film it is, of course, overflowing with spoilers."

Updated through 6/16.

"What a bunch of nonsense - effective nonsense, chilling nonsense, occasionally wrenching nonsense, but nonsense nonetheless," writes Robert Wilonsky in the Voice. "This is what happens when M Night Shyamalan tries to play both John Carpenter (bloody) and Stanley Kubrick (cold-blooded) while writing and directing what the literalist will either dismiss or embrace as the horror-film extension of An Inconvenient Truth, depending upon who the literalist thinks is responsible for, ya know, killing the planet."

For the New York Times' Manohla Dargis, The Happening "turns out to be a divertingly goofy thriller with an animistic bent, moments of shivery and twitchy suspense and a solid lead performance from Mark Wahlberg. Much like Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix in Signs, which this film resembles in mood, effectiveness and flaws, Mr Wahlberg fits into the Shyamalan universe comfortably. He rides the spooky stuff with as much ease as he does the jokes, the manufactured sincerity and cornball messages."

"The former frightmaster's descent from wunderkind to embarrassment has been unusually dramatic and public, thanks not only to the high-profile failures of The Village and Lady in the Water, but also to such bizarre, backfiring ego-stroking endeavors as The Man Who Heard Voices, Michael Bamberger's fawning, sycophantic account of the making of Lady in the Water, and the self-indulgent faux-documentary The Buried Secret of M Night Shyamalan," recounts Nathan Rabin at the AV Club. "Shyamalan should be glad he makes movies primarily in Pennsylvania instead of Hollywood, because under California's 'three strikes' law, he'd be facing hard time in movie jail thanks to his third consecutive disaster, The Happening."

"He still sees dead people, only now they're the best thing in the movie," writes the Washington Post's Stephen Hunter.

"When he's not borrowing liberally from himself, Shyamalan has numerous other sources of inspiration," notes Mary Elizabeth Williams in Salon. "There's an obvious similarity to the 2002 Japanese shocker Suicide Club, right down to the device of people jumping en masse off buildings. There are elements of The Stand and The Invasion. There's even a whole lot in common with the infinitely more awesome Shaun of the Dead, from the way that an apocalypse can bring an estranged couple together to the channel-surfing explanatory postscript. Because this is Shyamalan, however, there is one final compulsory gotcha. I spoil nothing that isn't already quite spoiled when I reveal that even then, the director just reuses a familiar idea."

"What would drive the people of New York, and later the people of the entire Eastern Seaboard, to calmly kill themselves?" asks Carina Chocano in the Los Angeles Times. Rhetorically, of course. "Unfortunately, as the movie unspools, other questions come to mind, such as: What would make Mark Wahlberg give one of the worst performances of his career? What would inspire Shyamalan to miscast a limited actress like Zooey Deschanel in the underwritten role as his dissatisfied wife?"

For the LA CityBeat's Andy Klein, "The Happening is nowhere near the level of his breakthrough, The Sixth Sense, and not quite as good as the subsequent Unbreakable, Signs and The Village, but at least it suggests that the awfulness of Lady in the Water may have been an aberration."

Roger Ebert finds it "oddly touching. It is no doubt too thoughtful for the summer action season, but I appreciate the quietly realistic way Shyamalan finds to tell a story about the possible death of man."

"What is most bizarre are Shyamalan's touches of comedy - bizarre because they appear to indicate that he realises how ridiculous everything is, but they do nothing to mitigate the film's absurdity and implausibility," observes the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw. "His movie lands, decisively, the wrong side of the laugh-with/laugh-at divide."

"Mr Shyamalan has said that he writes B movies with A-list talent, camerawork, and style, but no amount of beautiful faces and quality cinematography can save The Happening from self-destruction," writes Meghan Keane.

"The Happening succeeds when Shyamalan is toying with his audience," writes Marc Lee in the Telegraph. "The film doesn't work, however, when Shyamalan becomes bent on lecturing us."

"It's an entertaining movie, which is half the game, but it's not scary, which it should be," writes Mick LaSalle in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Eugene Novikov at Cinematical: "Why M Night Shyamalan Has Nothing to Apologize For."

"My next movie is called Avatar: The Last Airbender for Paramount," Shymalan tells Time Out. "It's a fantasy, inspired by a Japanese animated series, and has a lot of Hindu and Buddhist philosophy."

Rachel Abramowitz has a long talk with Shyamalan for the Los Angeles Times. More from Eric Kohn at Cinematical.

"It was just a few years ago that M Night Shyamalan was on the cover of Time magazine, which had proclaimed him the 'Next Spielberg,'" notes Noah Forrest at Movie City News. "What happened to the man we all thought would inherit the mantle from the bearded master of spectacle?"

Allyssa Lee has a quick chat with John Leguizamo for the Los Angeles Times.

Earlier: The Visitor at Twitch.

Updates, 6/15: James Rocchi at Cinematical: "It's not that The Happening is bad, as such - although there are a few fairly off moments in it - it's more that I found myself wishing, on more than one occasion, that Shyamalan could forget about plucking the audience's heartstrings and instead just keep going for the jugular. I wanted The Happening's tension at a higher pitch so that I wasn't puzzling over plot holes and questionable character decisions while actually sitting in the theater; The Happening simmers when you want it to boil, smolders when you want it to burn."

"If Romero or Cronenberg were filming this story, they would enjoy earning the R rating that Shyamalan seems to be dutifully working toward with his ever-grosser suicide scenarios," writes Slate's Dana Stevens. "The whole solemn concoction is preposterous and not always in a fun way—even at 99 minutes' running time, the movie provides plenty of opportunities for watch-consultation in the dark. But there's also an efficiently maintained hum of low-level anxiety."

"Here's a movie trivia game I wish I didn't have to play," sighs Time's Richard Corliss. "Is there any major director who has made six consecutive films, each one markedly inferior to the one before? A case can be made that the answer is M Night Shyamalan."

"[T]he shocking thing is how awful it looks," writes the Oregonian's Shawn Levy. "There's a certain creepiness to the premise... but it's executed in bland and remote fashion, with little in the way of compelling suspense, mystery or directorial craft. Think of the worst Spielberg thriller or one of Hitchcock's dull late career works, then make it ugly and fill it with bad performances; voila: The Happening."

Alonso Duralde, writing for MSN, finds The Happening to be "a big snooze, riddled with awful dialogue and unconvincing performances, all underlined by a dreadful score by James Newton Howard, a composer whose vocabulary is missing the phrase 'on the nose.'"

"Shyamalan is far better at setup than payoff, and the Sixth Sense director's latest once and for all cements that reputation," writes Nick Schager in Slant.

Allyssa Lee talks with effects coordinator Steve Cremin for the LAT, where Choire Sicha chats with actress-singer Betty Buckley.

Updates, 6/16: From the latest entry in DK Holm's Directors Project: "[P]erhaps the director Shyamalan most resembles is William Castle."

"The Happening is an unforgivable, shameful, career-shattering embarrassment of a motion picture," rants Michael Tully at Hammer to Nail. "This isn't disposable cinema; it's garbage disposal cinema. Even as a symbol of the Avant-Retarde movement, or as a work of unintentional comedy, or of who knows what else, it remains defiantly inexcusable."

Posted by dwhudson at June 13, 2008 8:04 AM