I'm expecting his next movie

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I'm expecting his next movie.
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I knew the film was going to be total crap, however, I went to see it anyway . . . mainly out of curiosity -- to see how bad it was really going to be. I went with garbage pail expectations and that's exactly what I got. I suppose, I'd compare it to slowing down to look at a car crash. Even though it's horrendous, you want to see the carnage. In this case, I wanted to see the failure. And let me tell you -- it certainly met all of my expectations and, surprisingly, generated a lot of laughs.

I can tell a really bad movie, when I see one. And clearly 'The Happening' isn't one of them.
Y'all are just trolling and parroting what the critics are saying. I don't trust the critics anymore (not that I ever trusted them before).

I'm not saying the movie was any good. On the contrary, it was awful! In my previous post I tried to explain why, if compared to other films, this one together with Lady in the Water are his worst ones.

Sorry, it's Shyamalan

I think the critics turn into trolls, whenever they get to review a Night Shyamalan film.

Top 5 for the week:

1) Get Smart
2) The Incredible Hulk
3) Kung Fu Panda
4) The Love Guru
5) The Happening

"Sha na na na Shayamalan." Interesting "Alias". You probably think it´s totally ingenious to make fun of a foreign name. By the way, it is spelled Shyamalan. But details don´t seem to interest you.

steven-that's when producers come in and say no I am not funding your whole vision of a dumb picture.

It was a really good film! (I have no idea what the critics are talking about).

Steven - I can read your posts just fine, thanks. Again, you're implying that if I don't like his movies, I just can't understand their complexity. Nonsense.

M. Knight is still a glorified, pretentious and arrogant B-movie director. Nothing more, nothing less.

Gee, Mr. "Kickass"... If you can´t read the posts correctly, it´s no wonder that you misunderstand "The Happening". Which, by the way, has nothing to do with Global Warming. It deals with our whole relationship with nature. But this discussion leads nowhere. Some people just want to hate this film. So be my guest.

I liked The Happening, and I can't figure out why so many people hate (HATE!) M. Night so much. The Village was an amazing and dead on parable of the Bush administration, yet no one seemed to get it. The Rolling Stone reviewer at the time seemed to get it and said so. Wasn't that you, Peter Travers? Lady in the Water was a kid's fable he wrote for his kid - sorry if it pissed you off so much, peeps. The last time I checked, directors are allowed to make films that they want to, not what audiences expect of them. By the way, The Happening was far more entertaining than that crap put out by Spielberg and Lucas this summer. Throwing a bunch of shit at the screen for two hours does not a movie make. M. Night still knows how to draw you into a story, something Spielberg forgot after Jurassic Park.

I'm not jumping on any anti-Shyamalan bandwagon. I've loathed him since 'Unbreakable', even when people still thought he was great. At the time, I thought 'Unbreakable' was one of the worst movies I'd ever seen.

So, pouring hate on Shyamalan's films will lead us 'down a dangerous path'?? What, to better movies?!

It's people not having any discriminating taste that leads us down a dangerous path.

The whole plants setup is ridiculous because it's an incredibly ham-fisted way of pounding home the global warming message. In the hands of a better director, it might have been compelling, but coming from a post-Lady in the Water Shyamalan, it's just laughable.

1. The trailer gave me some hope that M. Night could deliver on the suspense he provided in "Sixth Sense" and "Unbreakable." Those movies were fascinating on a psychological level. There's always something unexpected and mysterious in an M. Night film. But "The Happening" is laughable and in some scenes, it seemed M. Night was even trying to play the movie for laughs. You get the sense even he realized what nonsense it was.

2. You know you've missed the mark as a suspense film when your audience is laughing out loud at most scenes. If Shyamalan truly intended to make a B-movie, he didn't push it far enough. He's trapped in between farce and a "message" film and the audience is simply left thoroughly bewildered and confused. You can see onscreen that his main players weren't buying into his vision either. How did they keep a straight face throughout this mess?

3. The film will barely register any box office from this point forward. It might gain a second life on DVD but my confidence in M. Night is at an all-time low. We might have a case of a filmmaker who simply peaked too soon, and gave us his best work early on.

Here's my take on Shyamalan: After a debut as brilliant as "The Sixth Sense," you can expect high expectations. But you CAN'T expect to make multiple brilliant movies in a row, unless you're a genius. I think that Shyamalan is a director of good (though sometimes seriously flawed) movies that are ruined in the eyes of some critics and the public because they aren't as nearly as good as "The Sixth Sense." I liked "Unbreakable," "Signs" and even "The Village," despite the fact they represented a continual decline in quality. I didn't even hate "Lady in the Water," which is not to say it's a particularly good movie, but it certainly isn't the worst I've ever seen. And it's easy to forget that Shyamalan has a true gift for image. He is a good filmmaker. He is not, however, a very good writer. That, I think, is his main flaw. His ego doesn't help, either. But anyway, that's my opinion. We shall see what I think of "The Happening" when I finally see it.

It's laughable what lengths people go to on here to defend Shyamalan.

Steven and his rambling 3-point essay - ridiculous. Or insinuating that if you don't like his movies you just aren't smart enough to get them.

He's a B-movie director. That's it. He makes junk food movies. If you like junk food movies, knock yourself out. But he is not a great filmmaker.

It's like he aspires to be in the same league as Hitchcock, Scorsese, Kubrick, Lynch but he's not even in the same orbit.

I will see THE HAPPENING later this week, and if it goes below the No. 3 spot, you will owe me the 5-disc set of THE GODFATHER, Travers. I will hold you to it. If it does, I'll make the trip to the RS offices and personally be your slave for a day. And I live in Venezuela; that's a long way.

I liked it. It's got a lot of suspense and it's not too long. I also agree with many people responding that Night is judged at a different level than other movie makers. People expect much more from him and even you Peter Travers, who I respect more than any other critic in this buisness, seem to expect more out of him. It was a good movie, much better than last year's Spider Man 3. Peace

I'm genuinely surprised, given the message of The Happening, that more of the left-ist media wasn't onboard. Heck, I'm surprised that Hollywood hasn't touted this as the most important movie this year. I'm not surprised that almost nobody liked Lady in the Water; it required a voluntary suspension of hatred from the start, which most American moviegoers, critics especially, refuse to give. Signs, like 6th Sense and Unbreakable, was brilliant, if you had the attention span and the intelligence for it. Shyamalan's movies are defensible at worst, and a few of them are great.

Also, Shyamalan is not to blame for the $10+ admission price; you can thank the criminals running the movie theatres for that.

I actually thought this movie was TERRIBLE. At first I thought it was because the plot was so deep I just didn't get it but then I realized I was trying too hard to understand or force understanding of something that just wasn't supposed to make sense. I was waiting for the trademark twist which never came. In an attempt to maintain his originality he just threw some junk up on the screen that would have done well at Sundance.

Peter,

1. I was interested in "The Happening" because I do like Shyamalan´s movies. Okay, these days this makes me an apologist. Actually, I just try to be fair. And the hate against Shyamalan is definitely a huge backlash that was maybe caused in part by his own overly self-confident remarks. However, he does not deserve it. When people compare him to "hacks" or even "Uwe Boll", it really shows that they don´t know anything about directing or filmmaking. Shyamalan has a distinct style. You don´t have to like it. But you can´t deny it. Was "Lady in the water" successful in getting across its point? Maybe not. (Although on a second viewing I liked it a lot better and understood more about its intentions.) But if the book about Shymalan´s fight with Disney had not been published, "Lady in the water" probably would not have been used as a tool for bashing Shymalan´s whole career. C´mon, every director has made films that were self-indulgend and ultimately not as good as they had wanted them to be. Yes, even Orson Welles. Or look at Robert Altman´s career. At no point these guys have been insulted and crushed by the press like Shymalan has been recently. And don´t get me even started on the people who pour their hate on him on the various movie websites (using the worst expletives I´ve ever read).
Coming back to "The Happening": You say it is not a good movie. Well, that´s your opinion and I respect it because I respect you as a critic. However, I do not agree. While "The Happening" is not perfect, it worked very well for me.

2. So, I didn´t feel massively disappointed. I do feel that the acting choices of Wahlberg and Deschanel were sometimes unsual. Also Shyamalan´s reliance on close-ups irritated me at first. On the other hand, why are people so quick to dismiss this instead of thinking about it? As Shyamalan is employing a very deliberate mise-en-scene, his choices were made for a reason. The close-ups of Wahlberg during scenes in which he was forced to react to the ongoing crisis did help to put him under immense pressure. And the character he played was not the typical hero who always makes the right choices when put under pressure. Thus, the character sometimes came off as passive-aggressive or even weak. But that, I guess, was the point. Now, you can argue that you don´t want to see such human beings in a movie - you only want to see true heroes. Well, I don´t. I prefer human beings with all their faults. Wahlberg actually was very courageous playing a character so far removed from his public persona.

3. Yes, I believe that next weekend "The Happening" will suffer a massive drop. Not because people hate the film but because most horror movies suffer big drops after the first weekend. Combined with the ongoing Shyamalan hate and the typical summer movie frenzy (which makes almost every movie drop more than fifty percent) it will probably lead to a disappointing box office figure.

I have been a big Shaymalan fan for a long time. I thought all of his movies, with the exception of Lady in the Water, have been very good ( the Village and Signs) or great ( Sixth Sense and Unbreakable). His movies can be enjoyed on multiple levels. One can enjoy the twist or one can enjoy the character studies. Often, his movies are more important as studies in fate and faith, than horror/mystery movies.

Although I was somewhat disappointed with this movie ( I actually would have preferred it to have a twist to the rather cliched ending it did have) I did find myself fully engaged and wondering what was going to happen next. I did care about the characters even though I thought Zooey D. was a weak female lead.

I saw it with my free readmission ticket to Regal, but thats not to say I wouldn't have paid for it. I thought the movie was awesome, one of the better theatre experiences I've had in the past couple years. Indiana Jones was one of the worst I have seen, and that took a lot to get me to even go because every theater movie is about some overplayed superhero plot that everyone knows already. Go see the Happening. It was a well done movie and doesn't deserve the shit its taking.

I haven't yet watched this movie, but plan to. I don't understand this tendency for all critics - they can't wait to trash Shaymelan's movies, even before they hit the theatres! They try their best to keep viewers away. Yet most of them have been quite succesful. That should mean something. Of course, it is hard to match Sixth Sense. But all his subsequent movies were quite above average, and very watchable compared to the usual Hollywood fare.

Your correct. But I will say that you review your movies from a hate standpoint. Like most critics, Roger Ebert gave it a three star review for good reason. The movie does get it's audience a scare! I disliked lady in the water, and was disapointed with the village. But I dont go around telling people to stay away from his movies like you do. Or anyones movies for that matter! You should review the film not massacre it!

Night has some obscure, organic talent to film movies. His visual aesthetic and narrative tempo are unmistakably his. Shyamalan at his worst is still worth watching (in my opinion).

As bad as his recent movies have been (including Signs I'm afraid...I mean c'mon the scene where Mel Gibson is talking to his "dying" wife...who was cut in half wedged in to a tree? Sheesh)
...I will always give the director/writer of Sixth Sense and Unbreakable another chance...

OK. So I have a question. Who on this blog saw the instructions on how he wants to hear from people who have SEEN the movie??? Thank you.

The only reason I keep going to see Shyamalan's movies is thinking he can't get any worse. I was wrong. This wasn't a "B-movie," it was just another bad movie by M. Night Shyamalan. I will physically stop my friends and anyone I talk to from seeing this movie.

The biggest red flag for me not wanting to see this film, outside of Shyamalan's track record of making highly disappointing, over-hyped garbage, is the fact that the ads for the film actually had to rely on it being his "first R-Rated" movie to put asses in seats. That's like advertising a Scarlett Johansson movie with the line "Yes, she is going to get naked in this one." Cheap marketing ploys....

The actors sounded as if they were reading cue cards and couldn't quite believe what they were reading but it was better than the first Hulk movie (hate the mixed cartoon/human movies) and much of the rest of the unoriginal regurgitated stories on screen today.

How much it goes to make will be judged solely on the hearts of movie-goers, which is often extremely fickle, and even more-so frivolous a good portion of the time. On that note, I don't think it is going to take in as much as it had this past weekend, but I don't quite think it is going to falter and fall off the map either. Shaymalan has a dedicated fan base that, albeit their frustrations at times, could prove to be the resurrecting force in his commercial floundering, though as transcribed in his films, I think he's just trying to convey a message, something higher than a lust for money, and though it may come across as zealous to some, pompous to others, at least he has a message to spread.

Lady in the Water was a better movie. That should give you an idea about how poor this movie was.