The Happening, and why it sucks balls

M. Night Shyamalan's latest flick has hit the screens and apparently nearly everyone thinks its crap. Check out the reviews its getting at Rotten Tomatoes where they think "People drop dead; remain more animated than Wahlberg". Not surprising really - all his movies except the 6th Sense have sucked in my opinion. The latest claim is that his new flick The Happening is a bare faced proponent of Intelligent Design, that lovely religious movement trying to cram the Bible into everyone's science class. But is it?

I'll go on record as saying I've never seen this movie, and I never will. M. Night Shyamalan's ability at writing good screenplays has degraded to such an extent that the endings are no longer unpredictable and subtle, but are more likened to the end to a torturous session on the toilet after 3 solid days of eating bran. His last three films Signs, The Village and Lady in the Water have all been differing degrees of awful - so much so that I ignored Lady in the Water completely after reading a synopsis.

His latest foray in movie crappiness, the Happening, is according to some people a thinly veiled attempt at endorsing ID. But is this all that surprising? It a well know fact that MNS is down with the g.o.d. and a quick look over his past films shows the themes and motivations behind all his screenplays and what they all have in common.


Praying with Anger (1992) - young man returns to home country, finds god and stops riot by preaching.

Wide Awake (1998) - 10 year old boy seeks God, has crisis of faith, finds god again.

The Sixth Sense (1999) - boy sees ghosts, Bruce Willis tries to help him sort out his life. Surprising lack of god.

Unbreakable (2000) - Bruce Willis and Sam Jackson talk a lot, and find out they are super heroes. god had nothing to do with it.

Signs (2002) - In a return to form, MNS has fellow god botherer Mel Gibson as a priest in a crisis of faith save his farm from invading aliens by believing in god.

The Village (2004) - people in olde village terrorised by boogie man (just a man in a suit, much like christianity) find out they are living in big olde theme park because of all the godlessness in the world.

Lady in the Water (2006) - MNS takes peyote, loses his freaking mind and makes a weird film about story monsters coming alive. god does not appear in this film, all though was originally on the billing, and replaced at later stage by nargles from Harry Potter. Kills film critic in movie in vain hope that life imitates art.

The Happening (2008) - MNS hires fellow god botherer Marky Mark to be a science teacher who spouts crap like "evolution is just a theory", and "spontaneous evolution". Turns out everyone is dying in the film because god is mad at us, so he makes the plants turn bad.


Oh well, lets hope he "see's the light" so to speak and makes a better movie next time. I'm not holding my breath.