A Night to Forget: The Happening

The Happening begins with a parade of suicides. A woman stabs herself in the neck. Construction workers jump off a building. A policeman turns his firearm on himself. Etcetera. Why these deaths are occurring isn’t apparent at the start, yet what is clear is that these people are possessed. So, too, it seems is M Night Shyamalan. His sixth major motion picture is so disastrous that it feels suicidal. And whereas his previous outright flop, Lady In The Water, was an overly ambitious muddled mess, The Happening is just plain lousy. It’s poorly conceived, poorly written, poorly acted and poorly directed. By comparison, it makes the miserable Lady look magnificent.

That The Happening’s utter failure is a major disappointment for this moviegoer will shock no one who read my conversation earlier this week with Cooler friend Hokahey, about the films of Shyamalan. In town this weekend for a visit, Hokahey attended The Happening with me. We figured it was only right to give Shyamalan’s latest film a similar examination. Here’s a transcript:

(Warning: This discussion contains spoilers. Read ahead at your own risk. Or, considering the quality of the movie, don't read ahead at your own risk.)

Jason Bellamy: When we wrapped up our previous discussion on M Night Shyamalan, you said that The Happening would succeed because Shyamalan knows how to get touching performances out of his actors, how to set a memorable mood, how to frame stunning images and how to tell a meaningful story. You’ve now seen The Happening –

Hokahey: And as for my prediction, The Happening proves that Shyamalan has forgotten how to do any of that. Amazingly, he creates a toneless film.

JB: I agree. In fact your list of things that Shymalan has previously done well is like a checklist of the things he got wrong with his latest film. So let me ask you: what’s The Happening’s biggest failure? Is there one?

H: Well, before I get to that let me say that my favorite part of the whole movie was the opening credits, which built some atmosphere with the shots of the sky and fast-motion clouds turning from fluffy white to dark.

JB: In other words you liked the movie right up until it exhibited any writing, acting or plot?

H: Right. And I’d say the biggest failure of the film is the screenplay, because it builds no tension, drama or suspense. It sets up a disaster movie premise and never goes anywhere significant with it.

JB: I agree. The Happening is a movie that could be read a number of different ways. It’s a movie about the environment and our impact on the environment. It’s a movie about how man reacts in a crisis situation. It’s a movie about the unexplainable and random occurrences. And around all of this, theoretically, is the framework of a disaster movie. There are elements of a zombie movie too, and a love story. But it seems to me that The Happening needed to succeed as a disaster movie first and foremost.

H: And it doesn’t succeed at that, because it doesn’t do the things a disaster movie does. Often even B-disaster movies can be very satisfying. They can have poor acting and bad dialogue, but once the disaster begins and there is frantic action the movie delivers. The Happening has poor acting and bad dialogue, but it never delivers on even that basic B-movie level.

JB: And when you’re thinking of B-level disaster movies you’re thinking of …

H: Well, a rather recent movie that you could probably call a top-level disaster movie would be The Day After Tomorrow. That’s a movie that knows what to do. It delivers natural disasters right away, the death toll is high and the stakes are high. It has some expensive special effects, but it’s the story construction, not the effects, that makes the movie an intense experience. As for B-movies, you’ve got a lot of stuff from the 60s, like Earthquake. That movie has a declining Charlton Heston and a bunch of other name performers giving wooden performances and it’s slow to get started, but once the earthquake comes it delivers.

JB: A recent disaster movie I was thinking of as I was watching this was Steven Speilberg’s War Of The Worlds. Once again we have, amidst a grand event, a small story about just a few characters. And there’s a father figure and a helpless young girl. And it begins in the New York area, with shades of 9/11. But whereas War Of The Worlds is dripping with fear and consequence and panic, this movie has none of that.

If the thing Shyamalan is best known for is the big Surprise Ending, which comes from careful plot construction, the second thing he’s known for is being the modern Hitchcock – a master of suspense. His first four movies have moments designed to terrify. So I think what befuddles me most about The Happening is how a filmmaker who has made his living scaring people apparently has no idea how to create characters who are afraid. Am I alone here? Did any of these characters display actual genuine fear?

H: No. There was no fear in the entire movie, from the very beginning. Sometimes it was bad acting, but even more it’s a writing or directing failure because while a lot of situations were weird, they weren’t scary. This is a movie with people on the run from either a massive terrorist attack or some inexplicable natural event and yet there’s no sense of desperation. In War Of The Worlds, which you mentioned earlier, Tom Cruise’s convincing portrayal of fear and his desperation to keep his daughter alive is memorably done. There are no memorable performances in this film.

JB: Right. At the beginning of the movie, for example, the looks on these characters’ faces suggest that they’ve been inconvenienced more than anything. First, there’s an inexplicably calm scene of people evacuating Philadelphia (one character compares getting a train ticket to the Christmas rush to buy a Cabbage Patch doll, but, nope, there’s not even that kind of pandemonium). Then the characters are on the train, and it stops and these people look like they’re trying to be concerned, but it never really works. I’ve seen more emotion on the subway when there’s a 2-minute track delay. And unlike War Of The Worlds or the flashback scenes in I Am Legend, Shyamalan’s scenes are constructed so that the main characters always seem to be the most concerned figures in any room they walk into. There’s no grand panorama of hysteria; it’s just a bunch of people with quizzical looks on their faces.

The irony, perhaps, is that the only character who seems truly worked up over any of the plot’s events is Mark Wahlberg’s Elliot. Both of us were worried about Wahlberg going into this movie: just hearing Wahlberg’s voice whenever the trailer came on I thought he sounded flat and fake. And in the movie, sure enough, he feels flat and fake. And yet he’s the only character who seems to realize the gravity of the situation.

H: If you’re going to pick an actor like Mark Wahlberg, you’ve got to give him some good direction. In this movie he comes off like a poor actor in a movie with a poor screenplay. But, as I said before, disaster movies traditionally have poor acting. That doesn’t mean they can’t work. So there has to be tension.

One thing that I find interesting here is Shyamalan’s use of the horrific image. In The Sixth Sense he went for those cheap, easy scares, with people hanging in the building and the kid with the back of his head shot off. He went away from that in Unbreakable, Signs and The Village, and the subtle stuff is more effective, as it almost always is. But in this movie he returns to the graphic, and the result is horrible. It falls flat. In one scene there’s a lion chewing off someone’s arms in a zoo. First of all, a lion doesn’t even eat that way, but the gross-out scene is empty. All the graphic parts have no tension or suspense or shock to them.

There was one sequence that had a glimmer of suspense, and that’s when the characters realize that smaller groups are less threatening to nature and they look down the ridge and see two groups coming together. They know that’s disaster, and it’s too far away to yell, “Don’t get together.” And the groups get together and it’s disaster –

JB: Yes, it is disaster, and not in the way Shyamalan intended it, because that’s the conflict that ends with the guy lying down in front of the lawnmower.

H: Oh! Gosh. You’re right.

JB: And that moment underlines just how unsuspenseful this movie is, because we watch this tractor drive over a guy and see his body explode, and it’s like, “Oh, OK.” The only interest in these death scenes is the number of ways that Shyamalan comes up with for people to kill themselves. It’s like the concept of Saw, in a way, but for a movie with all this death and supposed gore it’s not visceral, it’s not effectual, it didn’t make my skin crawl. As you said, it’s empty. It’s just there. Lots of movies these days make the mistake of having such a high body count that we don’t care about the action on screen, but if you’re making a disaster movie about human death on a massive scale, we need to feel for the victims, and we don’t here.

H: I was disappointed because I like the central, central, central idea of this movie. I like the concept of nature getting revenge. It’s like The Birds, a movie that is also unexplained but you get the feeling that nature is fighting back. In The Happening, the central kernel of the plot has hope, but it doesn’t move forward intensely enough.

JB: So do you think this movie fails because Shyamalan has too many ideas going or has no idea at all? I’m looking at the finished product and I’m wondering: what’s the germ of this story? Wahlberg’s character, who is a science teacher, tells a story at the beginning about these bees that inexplicably disappeared, which might be due to global warming but might also be some random occurrence. Is that the germ of this story? Is it an environmental hook? Is it a disaster movie hook? Is it a zombie movie hook? Theoretically in here there’s a love story, so is that the hook? Does Shyamalan have no clue where he wants to go here, or was he trying to go in too many directions at once?

H: It’s hard to say. I think he may have been going in too many directions. I think nature’s revenge is the message, but he didn’t go about it effectively. You’re right, he got distracted with other things. Probably Lady In The Water proves that he can get really distracted with unimportant details.

JB: Speaking of Lady In The Water: If you had told me a week ago that The Happening would be not just worse but considerably worse than Lady In The Water, I wouldn’t have believed you. If you had told me that it would be a bigger disappointment than Indiana Jones & The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, which is a masterpiece by comparison, I wouldn’t have believed you. But the even bigger surprise is this: The thing that Shyamalan has always delivered in his movies is a sense of atmosphere, mood and ambiance. Even his worst films in their worst moments have that. But The Happening has all the atmosphere of an airport bathroom stall.

H: Right, there’s no presence.

JB: Yeah. I mean, to what extent does this even feel like an M Night Shyamalan film?

H: It doesn’t at all, and that’s what I felt the absence of right away. From the very beginning, the camera set-ups have no Shyamalan signature. There’s no feel or magic to them. A lot of this stuff feels shoddy and rushed as if he had to have everything on the first take.

JB: I agree with you. And so with this amateurish staging, the only thing that feels like typical Shyamalan is the awkward writing. He’s had elements of that in the past, but previous to this I’ve been able to look past those faults and defend them. We had that conversation about The Village and I pointed out that, no, these characters don’t come across like people in a genuine late-1800s setting, but, guess what: they aren’t. It’s an act. And so the dialogue reflects a misguided modern idea of what the late 1800s looked and sounded like. It’s a play within a play, and it works. In Unbreakable a lot of the dialogue that seems stiff at first we later realize is that way by design to evoke the classic tenets of a comic book. Beyond that, Shyamalan would always write cringe-worthy lines here or there, but the larger film experience was so enriching that you looked past it. Or at least I did. Here there’s nothing larger to get lost in and so all the faults are glaring.

The low point probably – and it’s extremely difficult to identify the low point of this movie – comes in that scene at the diner when the woman taps Elliot on the shoulder to show him that video from the zoo of the lion attack. This guy is standing there next to these lions and he has to coax them into attacking him in the first place, and then he remains perfectly upright as these lions rip his arms off like something out of a Monty Python bit (“It’s only a flesh wound!”). Give me a break!

H: Exactly. So here’s Shyamalan, and he wants to make a shocking scene, and so he strays from reality, having the guy just stand there as his limbs are being torn off his body. If Shyamalan had showed the lions reacting as they really would – they would have jumped on top of the guy and dragged him off somewhere – done as a fleeting image, that would have been much more intense.

JB: It smacks of a desperate filmmaker. Because I guess he thinks this is a cool device, because we’re watching this video on someone’s iPhone. But in the audience we’re watching this smaller movie within our movie. We’re several levels removed: there’s the guy, the people watching the guy who shot the video, the people watching the video of the guy in the diner and then us. I felt totally disconnected.

And all of this leads to one of the worst lines in the film, from the woman watching what should be vomit-inducing video: “Mother of God, what kind of terrorists are these?” I wish I could say that she screams that line like Heston at the end of Soylent Green, but she doesn’t. She says it with the intensity of a woman who has found a hair on her sandwich. So what made me sickest wasn’t the lion attack but the dialogue. And there are several moments like that in this movie:

There’s a terrible scene – and I feel terrible for the actress – where we watch a woman as she listens to her daughter commit suicide on the other end of a cell phone. The staging of the shot is removed and unimaginative: a bunch of people standing around in a circle gawking at this woman while she has a meltdown. It looks like an acting class, like an improv device: “OK, you just listened to your daughter die, what do you do ...?” It’s painful. And then there are all these moments where characters say things that just make no sense. Like in one scene, when they’re at the model home that they don’t yet realize is a model home, Zooey Deschanel’s character is with the little girl and her line is: “This place must have a bathroom.” Well, fucking of course it has a fucking bathroom. It’s a fucking house!

H: Right. What she should be saying is: “I’m going to take her to the bathroom.” And a similar line is at the beginning of the movie, at the construction site. These construction workers hear a crash and they see that someone has fallen off the building. They walk up to him and see that he’s almost certainly dead, and the first part is okay: he radios for help –

JB: Although even that’s pretty nonchalant.

H: And then the guy kneeling there says, “Give him room.” What? Give him room? Why?

JB: I’d forgotten about that one, but, you’re right, that’s horrible. And I’m glad you mentioned that scene, because when all those bodies are raining down from the roof of the construction site it’s an obvious visual allusion to 9/11 and I was wondering, were you gripped by that?

H: With the first crash, I tried. But the sound effect was almost comical. And the people’s reactions were ill-timed. And it just didn’t work.

JB: What I thought of during that scene, and at other moments, was the frog scene from Magnolia. I got the sense watching this movie, “Damn, M Night just watched Magnolia for the first time two years ago and this is his big Stuff Happens movie.” But Magnolia tells an actual story with actual emotion while still playing with the inexplicable. Shyamalan, instead, dives just into that one area and still can’t make it work.

H: Yeah. And in Magnolia those inexplicable events bring people together, and here there’s none of that.

JB: Not successfully anyway. But that leads us to another surprise, which is that the same filmmaker who gave us this straightforward, sweet and yet devastatingly touching love story in The Village comes up empty with this ... this ... I don’t even want to call it a love story: this relationship between Wahlberg’s Elliot and Deschanel’s Alma.

H: It’s the most awkward relationship I’ve seen in a film, ever, that I can think of. They never act like a couple that’s living together.

JB: It really is. One of my pet peeves with movies is when they insert a relationship story into disaster. It happened in Indiana Jones, for example, where somehow amidst all this violence and near-death at the hands of the Russians, Indy immediately falls in love again with Marion Ravenwood, as if no time has passed. You would think they would preoccupied by other things and that love would come later. But lots of movies do this. Yet what The Happening does is one click on the wheel stranger because every time Shyamalan tries to squeeze in the Elliot-Alma subplot it brings what little momentum the movie ever generates to a halt.

H: It’s ridiculous: Alma feels guilty because she went behind her husband’s back and met some guy to have dessert. But it can’t just be dessert, it has to be tiramisu, as if that’s significant.

JB: Well, maybe Night just saw Sleepless In Seattle for the first time, too.

H: Right. And this brings us back to the fact that all this pained dialogue would be inconsequential if Shyamalan delivered on the action and suspense, but he doesn’t.

JB: I agree. My prediction right now is that a lot of the blame is going to be placed on Wahlberg’s shoulders, because he’s in the movie so much and he’s nasally and boring and just not very good. But the kicker is this: he’s all those things consistently.

H: And that’s a puzzler.

JB: That is a puzzler. And it leads me to believe that Wahlberg – and I could say the same thing about Deschanel, who is reduced to giving blue-eyed gazes – gives precisely the performance that Shyamalan was looking for. Because even after Night’s fall from grace with the critically panned Lady In The Water, and to a lesser degree The Village, Shyamalan is still a big name, or was before this monstrosity. The Happening was sold as an M Night Shyamalan movie. So this isn’t a case where some upstart director is working with Jack Nicholson and he hates what he sees in the dailies but his producers won’t axe Nicholson because he’s the box office draw. Wahlberg? Deschanel? Shyamalan could replace that talent if he wanted to if he didn’t like what he was seeing. But he didn’t.

Which is the long way around to saying that I could argue that Wahlberg gives the best performance in the movie. That’s by default a bit, I guess, because there aren’t that many characters in The Happening. But of any of the characters he’s the only one who seems to give a shit. When you think about it, Wahlberg’s performance actually works for the train-wreck dialogue that Shyamalan has written for him. It doesn’t benefit the film, but the performance matches the character as written. So I’ll ask you this: If we have a better actor in that role with those lines, would we have a better movie?

H: No. We’d have a bigger shame. Because Mark Wahlberg, let’s be honest, still gets something out of this: he got to star in a big summer movie. So he’s happy. But if you put a better actor in there it just would have underlined the disappointment.

And here’s a comparison: When Orson Welles got to the end of his career and was just this big fat guy in these throwaway roles, you couldn’t help but remark: “Oh, poor Orson Welles. Look where he’s gone.” And you knew he was eating too much and drinking too much and going down the tubes.

JB: Marlon Brando had that fall.

H: And Errol Flynn, too. Watching this movie I kept thinking about that, like, “Oh God, M Night Shyamalan has lost his mind.” With Lady In The Water you could see some of the same quality of his previous films and you thought, “Oh, it’s just misguided. He’s trying to do too much.” With this film I thought, and not as joke, “He’s gone insane.”

JB: I know what you mean. It’s hard to believe that this is a Shyamalan movie. And going back to Lady, at least that’s pretty to look at. The Happening has no redeeming qualities. Not one. There aren’t 10 consecutive minutes of solid moviemaking in that entire debacle. And so that leads us here:

It’s 2010. Shyamalan releases another movie. Do you see it?

H: I probably do, because I’m curious, and because I’m ever hopeful. And because I’ve gone to movies that I’ve known were going to be bad because I was drawn by one element or another. So, yes, I’ll probably go and see it. But right now, I’m just baffled. I’m baffled.

JB: Me too. I think I’ll see his next movie. But unless the trailer blows my mind and gives me hope, I already know that I’m going to be going into that movie with the lowest of expectations. I’m going to be drawn to that film like I’d be drawn to see Mel Gibson in a room with an open bar, topless women and Jews. Something disastrous is going to happen, and it’s going to be ugly, and I must see. That will be what draws me to the theater next time, and that’s depressing. Because right now I have zero confidence that he’ll ever make a good film again. Even just a good film, not a great one.

When we go back to his previous films, like them or not you have to agree that they were made with passion. You could feel how much Night cared about those stories. Sometimes, perhaps, he willed them to success by his love of the material alone. But I feel no passion in this movie.

H: No, there’s none. And my theory is that as his movies have drawn fewer and fewer people and increasingly negative reviews that people in the industry must be giving him advice to collaborate with another writer or go a different direction and it feels as if he’s pushing forward his way toward destruction.

JB: So let me offer you this: You are the Michael Clayton of moviemaking. You are the fixer. But, as if in an M Night movie, you’ve got some sort of supernatural power. So with a wave of your hand you can change one element of this movie. What do you change?

H: I’d change the direction of the disaster. I’d make it a disaster caused by nature, but it causes humans to kill each other instead of themselves, and once it starts it’s non-stop action and no one is safe. It wouldn’t matter if you had bad acting or bad dialogue, because once the audience was swept up in the intensity of it, the rest is just details.

JB: That would be a good change. If I’m trying to fix this movie, I think I go with a more dynamic presence in the lead role if I can only change one thing. But that’s a contradiction because I think Wahlberg was directed into the performance he delivers here, so maybe that wouldn’t have made a difference. I have to say, if I was drawn to anything in this movie, I was drawn to Wahlberg. So this film seems unsalvageable to me.

You’re probably right that the crux of the problem is in how it approaches its disaster. I mean, can we agree that wind isn’t all that sinister and that it isn’t particularly easy to film? Plants may be the thing fighting the humans, but it’s the wind that these characters are running from. At one point one of the characters even says: “We’ve got to stay ahead of the wind.” I don’t know how that’s done, exactly, but that line pretty much encapsulates the ridiculousness of this whole project.

H: I would have made the vegetation the clear ‘bad guys,’ because that’s worked in the past in The Day Of The Triffids, in an Outer Limits episode with the tumbleweeds and in this year’s The Ruins, with the vines. It can be done and it can be done effectively and he didn’t do it.

JB: So we agree hands down that this is the worst Shyamalan movie ever. So let’s up the ante. Is it the worst movie you’ve seen so far this year?

H: Well, formerly I was calling Indiana Jones the worst movie of the year – but now, definitely, The Happening takes its place – though Indiana Jones is a close second. It’s sad when filmmakers like Spielberg and Shyamalan can’t deliver a decent movie.

JB: What a disaster.

Night Writers: E-mails on M Night Shyamalan

Friday, the sixth major film from writer/director M Night Shyamalan will debut nationwide. The Happening stars Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel in a story about ... well, I’m not quite sure what it’s about. I’ve tried to avoid the trailer and advanced publicity, but I’ll be there Friday night, for whatever is in store, hoping to be taken away like I was by Unbreakable and like I wasn’t by Lady In The Water.

Friend of the blog and frequent Cooler commenter Hokahey will be there, too – in town this weekend for a visit. In anticipation of the opening-night event, I traded e-mails with Hokahey, discussing the highs and lows of the Shyamalan oeuvre. A transcript follows.

If you’re expecting to find two guys who love The Sixth Sense and detest The Village, think again. This is what it looks like when two Shyamalan fans try to assure one another and themselves that The Happening won’t be another Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull.

(This probably goes without saying, but beware: super-duper spoilers ahead for The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, The Village and Lady In The Water! There are NO SPOILERS for The Happening.)


Jason Bellamy: There are only a few days left until M Night Shyamalan’s The Happening debuts and I’m starting to find the title ironic. There was a time not too long ago when Shyamalan was the hot thing – Newsweek called him “the next Spielberg” – and his movies were highly anticipated. They were happenings. But this summer I feel like we’re the only two people on the planet counting down the days until the movie comes out. Maybe I’m doing too good a job of avoiding the advanced publicity and rumor (because if there’s a surprise twist at the end, or if there isn’t, I don’t want to know). Certainly, though, it seems like there’s considerably less hype for this film than there is for The Dark Knight or than there was for the release of Indiana Jones or Sex And The City. Heck, the new Hulk movie is getting more play.

Am I alone here? Are we alone in our excitement? And, you’ve seen the trailer, is “excited” the right word? We’re just days away. What are your emotions about The Happening right now?

Hokahey: When I walked into the local multiplex this winter and saw the huge cardboard stand-up display of the poster – the highway diminishing into the distant dark city, cars overturned or simply stopped, doors open – and I looked up at the top of the poster and saw the name of M Night Shyamalan, I uttered an audible, “All right!” Seeing Shyamalan’s name gave me that warm burst of excitement you feel in anticipation of a cinematic experience that seems made just for you. Really, despite Lady In The Water, I felt as much excitement as if the name at the top of the poster had been Terrence Malick, which would make me jump for joy.

As for the title, it’s nicely terse and in keeping with M Night’s previous titles, but it may be a little tongue-in-cheek – as much as to say, yeah, Lady In The Water bombed, but watch me now. And watch I will (on June 13) because, for me, Shyamalan is a talented filmmaker. I saw the initial preview long enough ago that my memory of it is fuzzy (and I haven’t let myself watch the recent extended preview), but I am very excited – as excited as I was when I saw the name Spielberg on the poster for War Of The Worlds. And whereas the preview for Lady In The Water made me think, “Uh, oh. I’m nervous about this one,” the preview for The Happening seems to display the same mood, tightness of story and focus on strange, unrelated elements (that will all be drawn together in the end) that made M Night’s first four films so satisfying.

JB: It’s interesting that you mention the trailer for Lady In The Water. In anticipation for The Happening, I’ve finally gotten around to reading Michael Bamberger’s The Man Who Heard Voices, about Shyamalan’s trials and tribulations making Lady. In the sixth chapter, there’s a scene where Shyamalan shows a rough cut of Lady’s teaser (to be released during the film’s shooting, months prior to the first real trailer). As the book puts it there’s a “moody piercing violin solo” and “a tenor singing a snippet of a modern opera in Italian.” There are shots of Paul Giamatti’s Cleveland Heep writing in his journal at The Cove, and then the words: “Cleveland Heep’s life is about to change. Forever.” We’ll get to the specifics of Lady later, but reading that passage reminded me of how enticing that teaser was. It had me pumped. And then the trailer came out, which showed more of what was in the end a discombobulated film. And, like you, it made me nervous. Rightfully, it turned out.

Which brings us to The Happening: I had the same reaction you did over the poster, but the trailer has me feeling uneasy. I’ve only seen parts of it, and just once. Since then, I’ve closed my eyes whenever it has come on, and that might be part of the problem. Mark Wahlberg, who I’ve liked in Boogie Nights and Traveller, sounds flat. And there’s some shot of people listening to a radio in a field that looks right out of Signs, and a shot of people on a train that reminded me of Unbreakable. And this is coming off of Lady, which was a disaster. So I guess I can sum it up by saying that I’m nervous. Very nervous. But like a character in a Shyamalan movie, I want to believe.


H: I’m nervous too. But I trust Shyamalan. He knows how to tell a story. He proved that in his first four films. I forgive him for Lady. He incorporated intriguing elements – he just incorporated way too many silly ones. As for the elements in the trailer for The Happening that echo other films: that's M Night's style and that's part of what I like about his films. He likes to tie his films together thematically. For example, his first three films include the father figure who has lost faith in himself who must renew that faith by saving others. If anything makes me nervous about The Happening, it's Mark Wahlberg, so I agree with you there. He's just not an actor with much presence; he's not even a Dennis Quaid – who isn’t a great actor but at least succeeds in exuding some passionate presence.

But back to the trailer: it seemed to throw out a bunch of random weird things going on that intrigued me and that gave me the hope of their coming together in a meaningful and suspenseful or surprising ending, which I don't even want to speculate on right now.

JB: Ah, yes, the patented Shyamalan Surprise Ending. That’s the perfect segue to begin discussing his films, starting with the ultimate surprise-ender The Sixth Sense. First of all, how did you come to that movie? Did you see some movie called The Sixth Sense about a kid who sees dead people, or did you see The Must-See Movie With A Surprise Ending That Everyone Is Talking About?


H: My experience with The Sixth Sense was this: I had seen the preview and it looked intriguing. I went opening night – before the buzz and later the hype. The surprise ending was one of those pure, emotional, thrilling cinematic experiences that only happen when they happen by surprise, like the Statue of Liberty at the end of Planet Of The Apes. Again, I was totally taken by surprise, but it wasn't just the surprise ending that thrilled me, it was the great filmmaking, the tight storytelling, Bruce Willis' performance, and that new name I didn't know how to pronounce (Shyamalan), and the promise of more films by this new and thrilling writer/director.

JB: That had to be a cool experience, to be so completely stunned by the movie. My experience was that I almost passed on The Sixth Sense. I’ve always liked Bruce Willis, but the whole “I see dead people” thing wasn’t a turn-on. Eventually though, more and more people were talking about it, and some friends wanted to see it. One of my friends told me there was “some surprise ending.” So we go and I’m watching the movie, and I’m digging it, and it occurs to me as we’re nearing the end that there was some sort of surprise in store.

When the scene happens late between Cole (Haley Joel Osment) and his mom (Toni Collette), when he tells her that he can see his dead grandmother, I think I convinced myself that was it, that was the big surprise. I remember thinking, “Well, I don’t know that I’d call that a ‘surprise ending,’ but it’s a nice touch. Good movie.” And then The Surprise happened. And I was blown away. Here I’d gone into the movie expecting a surprise and it still surprised me. That’s impressive.

Like you, I admire the tight storytelling and Willis’ performance, and the surprise offered that extra wrinkle that made the movie extra-special. Still, I thought the Oscar nomination for Best Picture was nonsense. It’s a fun movie, a heartfelt movie and the surprise makes it narrowly unforgettable, but without the surprise it’s simply a very good movie, not great.


H: Yes, in this case the integrity of the surprise isn’t ruined by knowing to expect a surprise. When Malcolm's wedding ring rolls onto floor that's a chilling, memorable moment. Yet, I like the fact that Shyamalan gives us satisfying climaxes in addition to The Surprise. We have Cole helping the little murdered girl show her father how she was killed – also a very enthralling moment – and, as you said, we have Cole's revelations to his mother during the traffic jam – also very chilling. The Surprise, then, is the frosting on the cake and the mark of a clever storyteller.

The Oscar nomination for Best Picture came from the hype, and I agree it was silly. It's a well-made film, but it resorts to trite, graphic shockers (the bloody bicyclist; the boy with the back of his head shot off; the hanging corpses) that were unnecessary in the midst of such a gripping, well-developed tone.

JB: I agree, and maybe that’s why I never feel the urge to go back to The Sixth Sense. As I think about it, Willis’ surprising performance (not cocky or tough like his famous Die Hard persona) was the biggest thrill for me as the movie was unfolding. It’s a performance that would have brought me back to The Sixth Sense. But then Shyamalan made Unbreakable, featuring what I think is an even stronger Willis performance in an even stronger film.

H: Right. I enjoyed The Sixth Sense. Then along came Unbreakable, starring Willis once again, and I felt I had viewed a much more significant contribution from M Night. In Sense, Willis goes for the deliberately subtle, quiet delivery so that he comes off as the antithesis of his action movie persona, but in Unbreakable a touching sensitivity and sincerity come through. We feel him struggle inside with his turmoil. "You're not doing what you're supposed to be doing," says Elijah (Samuel L Jackson), a statement that might haunt many audience members unsatisfied with their lot.


One of Willis' best moments comes during the breakfast sequence after his first experience as the Guardian: Joseph sits down with his orange juice. Ever notice the exaggerated sounds of unscrewing the cap, pouring the juice, screwing the cap back on – as though drawing our attention to what comes next? Without a word, David slides the newspaper over to his son so that Joseph can read the article. We see a minimalist still life of the juice glass, the edge of a plate, just the corner of the newspaper. When Joseph looks up from the paper, David says softly, “You were right.” It is a very quiet sequence, but powerfully touching.

What's your favorite Bruce Willis moment in this film?

JB: It has to be the weight-lifting scene. It’s a marvelous bit of simple, visual storytelling (something Shyamalan would get away from in Lady In The Water), and it’s magical. In an otherwise subdued yet nuanced performance (even when he becomes the Guardian he’s restrained), it’s the only time that a flash of Willis’ spunk shines through. In the scene, David first scolds his son for putting on too much weight, but then they start adding weight until David has successfully pressed it all. “What else can we use?” David says, just a hint of a glimmer in his eye.


Otherwise, Willis is so soft and inward, often uncomfortable. On the surface, it’s a bit of misdirection by Shyamalan: making David Dunn look like anything but a hero. But to watch the movie again, knowing David’s fate, is to see the sadness that he mentions, the emptiness, the result of him not doing what “he’s supposed to be doing,” an assessment that we don’t appreciate the gravity of until the end. Willis also shines early on in that uncomfortable scene on the train when he hits on a woman and it goes badly. And I adore the vulnerability he brings to the scenes with a terrific Robin Wright Penn as his estranged wife; you can really feel the distance that has grown between them as well as the love that’s there underneath it all.

Put it all together and Unbreakable is my favorite Shyamalan picture. It’s a movie that works better, or at least on a deeper level, the second time you see it, because you can appreciate all the allusions to the excessive do-gooderness of comic book heroes (little things, like David warning his son to step back during the weight-lifting scene so he doesn’t get hurt).

Also, it’s worth noting that what was arguably Willis’ finest moment as David didn’t make the finished film. Most of the time the deleted scenes you find on DVDs are a predictable waste, but Unbreakable has two deleted scenes that are powerful: one of Elijah as a child at a carnival, another of David crying in the shower. I’m not arguing with Shyamalan’s decision to cut either scene, because leaner is usually better. But I’m surprised at the latter cut: I can’t imagine there are too many directors brave enough to ask a tough-guy A-list actor to go to that place and then not use the footage.

Anyway, in Unbreakable Shyamalan takes the superhero origin story, which is always the best element, and spreads it out over an entire film (without us realizing what we’re watching) and makes it a very human story. When you think about it, David is a Christ figure, not as a martyr, obviously, but as an uncomfortable savior. He doesn’t want to shirk his responsibility and yet he’s doubtful that he could be so important. His destiny is a burden. As terrifying as it is for him to believe that he has this power, it’s just as terrifying to imagine giving himself up to that belief and finding out it isn’t true, that he’s just ordinary after all.



H: I love the Willis moments you mentioned. As a matter of fact, re-watching Unbreakable recently I was surprised that the film doesn’t begin with the train sequence. It begins with Elijah's birth – which is appropriate, but for me the film begins on the train, when we learn so much about David in a fairly silent sequence. We see his loneliness. We see that he likes kids. We see that he is considering being unfaithful to his wife, but then, when it doesn't work out, he puts the ring back on his finger. Ah, interesting – the ring – an important symbol in The Sixth Sense.

As far as considering the film as a whole, I think Unbreakable is M Night's best film. As you say, the whole superhero story is played out so originally. Forget Superman, Spider-Man, Batman, Iron Man – Unbreakable is my favorite superhero movie because it's about a real man with real vulnerabilities, yet with convincing super powers played out in the real world. David testing out his telepathic powers in the train station and then saving the two girls only to be thrown down onto the pool cover – his battle with the water, and then his confrontation with the killer, holding onto him with his Herculean strength and enduring a pounding against the wall – what wonderfully gripping sequences those are!

Without a doubt, Unbreakable is Shyamalan's best film. My favorite? The Village, for many reasons, but mostly because of the world that M Night creates that we are convinced is an isolated village in the 1800s surrounded by a monster-infested wood.

JB: Well, you were convinced that it was an isolated village in the 1800s. Supposedly many people saw through that farce a little too soon. But we’ll get to The Village and the backlash against the Shyamalan surprise endings in a bit. First we need to discuss Signs.

For me, coming off Unbreakable, Signs was a letdown. I liked aspects of it, scenes, but on the whole it didn’t give me much to sink my teeth into. I detested the ending with the awkward alien and I thought the “surprise,” to the degree there was one, seemed forced and wasn’t fulfilling. But you’re a fan of Signs. Defend it.


H: Yes, I'm a fan. It's Shyamalan's most gripping film. (It's my third favorite after The Village and Unbreakable.) I appreciate it for its take on the alien invasion genre from a single family's point of view, as well as for two very memorable moments:

1. Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix) is watching the television in a closet. The news channel shows a video clip that captures a glimpse of an alien. The scene is a birthday party in Brazil. The children in the foreground shriek hysterically as they point to the dense palmettos outside in the courtyard. The video captures typically shaky images. The kids shift to another window. With a jolt from the musical score, the alien emerges from the foliage, looks toward the camera and then passes out of sight. Merrill jolts in shock. This fleeting view of the alien is masterfully edited – not too long a glimpse, not too brief – just what is needed to create the effect. This is a totally convincing, fleeting image from another realm, one of the best moments in all of M Night's films.

2. The family has survived the harrowing appearance of the alien in the coal chute in the cellar. Back upstairs the next morning it seems like the aliens have gone. Then Graham wheels the TV into the living room and we see the alien reflected in the screen – and the stage is set for the surprise, which involves all the pieces coming together: Bo’s glasses of water; Merrill’s strength as a batter; Morgan’s asthma; and, during all this, the sudden cut to the flashback of Graham's wife’s last words: “Tell Graham to see… and tell Merrill to swing away.” Yes, indeed, Merrill, swing away! And there’s a tone of joyous triumph to the musical score and the slow-motion breaking of the glasses and splashing of the water that makes this the most emotional of Shyamalan's first three Surprise Endings.

JB: I have to disagree with you there. The most emotional ending is from The Sixth Sense, when Willis’ Malcolm finds out he’s been dead all this time – which also puts his wife’s actions into tragic perspective. For me, Signs is the Shyamalan screenplay that’s trying too hard plot-twist-wise. I completely agree with you that the initial alien sighting (via the news) is masterful, and I loved them boarding up the house and retreating to the cellar (though I wish the entire sequence would have played out with just the sounds of aliens, rather than the one reaching through the coal chute). Another scene I respect is the one of Mel Gibson’s Graham having his first encounter with the alien locked in the kitchen. And I’m always a fan of alien encounters near corn fields. That said, none of the scenes I just described make me want to see the film again. However, with the caveat that I haven’t seen this movie in years, I’ll throw Signs this bone: I think it includes my favorite (read: least annoying) Shyamalan cameo, with him playing that catatonic doctor ready to hightail it out of town.

H: Well, I guess it's just how the film hits you, or not. I find myself going back to Signs more than The Sixth Sense. Haley Joel irritates me after a while. But I do agree Sense is very well made. In re-watching the first four films over a period of four nights recently, I found myself gripped by Signs. The acting is good – M Night's cameo is creepy, especially when we see him fleetingly in the town – Phoenix as Merrill is an interesting character (wayward and purposeless, like David Dunn in Unbreakable). I enjoy the boarding up, siege sequences reminiscent of The Birds. And it's hard to describe, but the ending comes together in such a joyfully chilling way – with the flashback thrown in (a risky interruption but a successful one, I think).

As for Night's appearances in his films, his appearance in Signs is more of a role (integral to the plot) than a cameo. I like his appearance in Unbreakable as the drug pusher; it's brief. Then, in The Village, he is very irritating as the head of the conservation area security; he's hardly necessary and he's sitting there reading his newspaper while the guard goes into the refrigerator and picks out bottles of penicillin. Lucky thing he was so engrossed in his newspaper! Silly and needless. Of course, in Lady he plays too much of a role and he's not a great actor. He needs to stick to writing and directing.


JB: Silly and needless, that’s the perfect way to describe Shyamalan’s appearance at the end of The Village. Now, I happen to love that film: I saw it three times in the theater and I never tire of watching it ... until the final quarter. My problem with The Village’s conclusion isn’t the standard objection lobbed at the film (which I’ll get to in a second), it’s two scenes: the clumsy, slow-motion attack in the woods and every single second that Shyamalan is on screen.

The first complaint is minor: it’s a stylistic thing. In the forest attack Shyamalan is trying to play with us, trying to convince us that maybe monsters really do exist out there in the woods (after William Hurt’s character has already revealed the charade), and by altering speeds and moving the camera he brings an alien quality to what is a human in a costume. Fine. But like the shots of the green thing in Signs, it smacks of a director who is uncomfortable with his own visuals, as if he’s embarrassed that he’s trying to make This Thing scary. Yeah, I know, it’s what we don’t see that terrifies (The Village is all about the fear of the unseen and unknown), but at some point you’ve got to stand by your monsters, right?

As for the Shyamalan appearance: His acting in The Village is stiff and forced and the entire scene is, what were those words you used? Silly and needless. That’s exactly right. What a waste! The newspaper headlines of real-world horror are like Spielberg at his overly-overt worst. The only useful part of the scene is the line of dialogue explaining that planes aren’t allowed to fly over the compound, but along the way we get the worst, most unjustifiable dialogue in the film (“Don’t have conversations?” Conversations? Who talks like that?). Yet Shyamalan keeps the scene in all its misery because he’s in it, I guess. That’s the only justification.

Having said all that, you are one of the few people I know who love The Village like I do. In his 1-star review, Roger Ebert called it “a colossal miscalculation, a movie based on a premise that cannot support it, a premise so transparent it would be laughable were the movie not so deadly solemn.” He was hardly alone. I know several people who watched the movie and found it both boring and, here’s the kicker, “obvious.” They determined quickly that the late-1800s setting was a hoax. What mystifies me, though, is this: even knowing the secret of The Village, I find it to be one of Shyamalan’s most engrossing pictures. I know you’re with me on this, so this won’t make for good debate, but what’s your take on The Village and its backlash?

H: My first viewing of The Village was on opening day in a suburban theater in California. When the end came, two beefy guys in wife-beaters got up and said, "That movie sucked." A poor boy who had seen the movie with his parents had to listen to his mother bitch all the way down the aisle as she exited, with things like, "That was so disappointing... I'll never go to the movies again." But the boy bravely said to his mom, "But don't you see..." and he went on to try to articulate some of the themes.

I think the big disappointment came because viewers were expecting monsters and blood. I was expecting monsters too. But when they didn't come – when I realized the monsters were us and our violent society that the villagers were hiding from – I loved it. Even without the Surprise or Not-So-Surprising Ending, I love this film.


There's so much to this film beyond its surprise. It's a touching story of true love's dedication. Phoenix and Bryce Dallas Howard give great performances. I love the very-removed otherworldly atmosphere of the village, complete with people speaking without contractions. I think the atmosphere is the film's triumph. I love Ivy's surrealistic journey through Covington Wood, with the memorable images of the rain turning to splinters of ice on the bushes; that overhead shot of the rain falling on the tarpaulin; the field of berries of "the bad color;" the trees entangled in briers; the muddy sink hole. And I love the musical score – the best of James Newton Howard's Shyamalan scores – with Hilary Hahn's haunting, melancholy violin strains.

For me, the ending isn’t disappointing. It's chilling. The voiceover explaining the loss of loved ones to violence. And then the final shot (there are many finely executed shots in this film) of Lucius lying in his bed, the door open to the outside, and then Ivy appears in the frame. "I am back, Lucius." Beautiful. Even the credits, with the music and the spooky old photographs, is wonderfully done.

As I said before, M Night is terrible in his cameo. As for the appearance of the "monster." That certainly could have been executed better. But the paradoxically colorful, almost artistic image of Noah lying amidst fur, feather, and bones at the bottom of the pit is memorable. For its acting, story, cinematography, musical score – despite its shortcomings here and there – The Village is a masterpiece.

JB: Wow. Masterpiece is a big word, and I hesitate to use it. But I will say this: those who say that The Village’s surprise isn’t a surprise at all are full of it. I don’t doubt that some folks deduced the secret in advance of its unveiling, and I’m sure their dissatisfaction is nothing short of sincere. But here’s the catch: the secret of The Village is obvious only to those looking for it. Reverse this film’s release with The Sixth Sense and no one would have seen The Village’s secret coming, and I bet quite a few people would have gotten to the bottom of The Sixth Sense, because they’d be looking for a riddle.

Now, let me be clear here: I think The Sixth Sense better executes its plot twist and that its twist is more rewarding. The Village wouldn’t have been the phenomenon that Sense was if Shyamalan made that his first film. However, Sense is also far more reliant on its surprise.

Thus the timing of this conversation is appropriate given all the attention swirling around Ken Tucker’s recent ‘I don’t care about spoilers’ comments in Entertainment Weekly (“I spoil if I must – and I sleep just fine”). As I see it, Tucker’s take is absurd. He thinks that it’s impossible to write thoughtful reviews while protecting spoilers and that he, as the critic, should be allowed to watch a TV show or a movie without having crucial plot points revealed ahead of time, though the average review-reading audience needs to “grow up” and accept their surprises-revealed fate. That’s bogus. If a film’s ending is so crucial that it must be detailed in a review – and sometimes it is – all that’s required is a simple parenthetical spoiler warning so people don’t stumble upon it accidentally. Then everybody wins. (An aside in favor of revealing spoilers: I remember all too well that Million Dollar Baby received heaps of disproportionate praise in large part because critics were so careful to protect its secrets that they didn’t dive into the truckload of faults in the movie’s latter half. But I digress.)

Here, though, is an area where I agree with Tucker: “The very fact that a plot twist becomes the most sacred bit of information, the key to enjoyment, doesn’t speak well for audiences’ appreciation of the performances, the direction, and other elements that make a show (or movie) worth pondering.”

Often, that’s quite right. People who went into The Village looking for the twist were cheating the movie and thus cheating themselves. Then again, Shyamalan is partly to blame for this. If his first three films informed audiences that his only worthwhile storytelling device was clever deception, moviegoers had every right to go into The Village hoping to be rewarded with a blow-your-socks-off finale, the same way people going into a Saw movie expect to see vile, bloody acts.


My view of Shyamalan echoes yours: the atmosphere or ambiance he creates is what entices me, not the twists, and I agree that The Village does the best job of that. As you said, the Hilary Hahn-powered score is a crucial ingredient (along with Richard Deakins’ lusciously muddy cinematography), and the interesting bit of trivia there is that Hahn wasn’t brought on until late in the process (according to the making-of extra on the DVD). I can’t imagine The Village without its score, nor can I imagine the score without Hahn.

Still, at the heart of this film is that terrific love story, with Howard’s Ivy and Phoenix’s Lucius. Some of the film’s acting is showy – I like Adrien Brody’s twitchy portrayal, but I have no argument for anyone who doesn’t – and that might be why this is about the only movie in which I can tolerate William Hurt: because Hurt, as the leader of the clan, a pompous college professor who masterminded the entire scheme, plays a character playing a character. That contraction-free dialogue isn’t meant to be an accurate representation of history but a reflection of the village elders’ ideas of what that era’s speech should sound like. It’s all an act. That’s why the tombstone at the beginning of the film with a late-1800s date on it isn’t a lie to the audience, as some have complained, it’s an element of the role-playing these characters have committed their lives to. Is it a cheat? Maybe a little. But no more than Cole failing to tell Malcolm that he’s dead right from the very start in The Sixth Sense.


Anyway, on top of the wonderful scenes or images you mentioned, I give you Ivy and Lucius on the porch; the two scenes where Lucius emerges from outside the frame to take Ivy’s hand; and, of course, “Do your very best not to scream.” What a straightforward and chilling line, bursting with suspense! I believe that The Village would be at least Shyamalan’s masterpiece if not for the flatness of the scenes on the other side of the wall.

H: Yes, Shyamalan ruined it by bringing himself into it. But, for me, I was so satisfied by what I had experienced before the wall that I forgive him this slip-up. Nevertheless, the film comes back to the village. Look at that closing shot: the elders in the room with Lucius, lying head to the bottom of the frame, with the door open. We can see this very believable world still going on outside. The news has spread: Ivy has returned. She killed a creature (Noah) and it leads to the elders reinstating their commitment to the village. Then Ivy walks in, and by that time I've forgotten all about M Night and his newspaper.


As you suggest, there is so much more to his films than the Surprise Endings. Look at each of the four movies we have discussed, and consider the suspenseful sequences that precede the endings, consider the acting, the framing of memorable images, the use of musical score. (The frantic score during the "Merrill, swing away" sequence in Signs is what helps capture the emotion for me and makes it my favorite ending.) As for spoilers, I simply won't read a review of a film until after I have seen the movie. I've had my experience spoiled too many times. Would a spoiler have changed my appreciation of M Night's first four films? Not much. I still would have been chilled by the ring rolling on the floor; shocked by the flashbacks elicited by Elijah's climactic line, "This is where we shake hands;" churned up emotionally by Merrill's bat-swinging triumph; touched by the voiceover, "My sister didn't live past her twenty-first birthday..."

Shyamalan has tried very hard to deliver the Surprise Ending to his fans, but, as Tucker suggests, they are unfaithful fans to be disappointed with the whole movie if the ending isn’t surprising. I'm going into The Happening not expecting a Surprise Ending. Who says M Night can't diverge from his formula? If there's a surprise I'll be happy, but if there isn't, there'll be a lot to enjoy as the story is told – that is, if he doesn't go wacky and wayward as he did in Lady In The Water.

JB: See, I don’t think that’s what Tucker is suggesting. Yes, he’s looking down his nose at people who only care about the plot twists, but even more he’s disparaging the art. He’s suggesting that if the TV show 24, to use his example, is only as good as its “I didn’t see that coming” twists, then it’s not very good. As someone who saw the first season of 24 and got nothing out of it, I’m in agreement with that argument. So, that being said, maybe Shyamalan’s following has only loved him for the Surprise Ending all along. Maybe none of the rest has really registered. Tucker would suggest that if The Sixth Sense is only a “great” film because of its conclusion then it ain’t great, and I agree.

But let’s move on and get to Lady, because that movie isn’t great in any respect. In my review at the time, I called it “a movie without grace, intrigue or common sense,” and I said it is “so muddled that it feels unplanned.” Having just read The Man Who Heard Voices, I can say with certainty that Lady was far from unplanned, but the book makes it clear that Lady was a muddled project from the very start. Shyamalan thought he was making his ET, inspired from a bedtime story he told his kids, but the result is something that feels like a mermaid version of “Dungeons & Dragons.” There are funny names and funny rules and talk, talk, talk, with no effect except to leave us tired of the characters.


At least once in the book, Shyamalan expresses that audiences don’t know what to expect from him anymore – and this was before Lady. That seems to be what Shyamalan thinks The Village did for him: he made a love story about people rather than a picture about the supernatural. The audience didn’t appreciate it. And then Lady came along and – wow – try as I might I find nothing to hold on to except for the setting (the eerie apartment complex called The Cove) and Paul Giamatti’s determined performance.

I know you liked this movie more than I did (which is to say somewhat), but here’s a question for you: Based on audience reaction to The Village (unfair though we think it was) and the rightful disaster that is Lady, should Shyamalan be returning to his supernatural roots (which appears to be the case in The Happening) or should he have gone even farther away from his comfort zone? There was a time when people thought Spielberg could only make popcorn movies, and for a while they were right (The Color Purple, surprisingly deep though it was for Spielberg at the time, isn’t all that mature in retrospect).

I guess what I’m asking you is this: Is Lady a sign that Shyamalan can only make films in his pigeonhole?

H: That's a good question. But what's his pigeonhole? The supernatural? What I like about Shyamalan’s first four films is that, yes, there is a supernatural base, but they are distinctly different in many ways: ghost story; superhero movie; alien invasion movie; fake monsters/real love story (to be followed by mermaid morass). These are the backdrops, but then you get stories that reflect significant topics: man struggling with loss of life, identity, faith; the endurance of love; the violence in our society.

I enjoy the films for the sci-fi sort of elements, but I don't label them that way. I think they are unique. I'm already seeing The Happening as a different contribution; it seems to be M Night's take on the disaster movie, or maybe another sort of genre – I have a hunch, but out of respect for not revealing spoilers, I won't say a word about it. So, except for trying to deliver the Big Surprise his audience now expects, I see his films as diverse. That's one of his big attractions for me.


As for Lady In The Water … You can do very fanciful things with mermaids and water – check out John Sayles' The Secret Of Roan Inish as an example. But there was no wonder in the water imagery (that scene in the underwater mermaid midden was a ridiculous borrowing from The Little Mermaid). One of M Night's many mistakes was taking Story out of the water. Keep her in the water! Keep her vulnerable! I was disappointed by this film. I feel Giamatti was doing his best but he's M Night's weakest lead. Yet I found things to like, including the echoes of his previous films: the main character suffering a loss; the different pieces of the puzzle that need to be solved in order to save Story; the creature in the tall grass. And I admire some of the images he captured. After Cleveland has made his emotional farewell to Story, we see the blurry image of the eagle swooping down and carrying her away from under the shimmering surface of the water. It’s a wonderful shot!

Does Lady In The Water prove that M Night can only do – or try to do – one sort of film? I don't think so. I know that he is fascinated by elements of horror and whimsy, and themes of love and the dark side of humanity, and he likes to revisit them. In Lady he just tried to fit in too many plot elements that didn't come together into a satisfying whole. With The Happening, I'm hoping for a tighter, more streamlined story. Could M Night go mainstream and make a love story or a character-driven story without the supernatural elements? I'm sure he could. Look at many of his well-staged sequences that could fit into movies that have nothing to do with the supernatural: Malcolm coming to the restaurant late; David lifting weights or having breakfast with his son; Graham overcoming his contempt for religion to embrace his children and brother; a girl setting out into a hostile wilderness in order to save the young man she loves.

JB: Good points. Going back to Ebert’s pan of The Village, one of the things he notes is that Shyamalan is “a director of considerable skill who evokes stories out of moods.” Maybe that’s Shyamalan’s pigeonhole, and so far it’s been rooted in the mysterious and fantastical. And that’s fine. Alfred Hitchcock made tremendous suspense pictures, and I don’t fault him for never making a war epic. (And it’s worth remembering that Hitch had quite a few misses scattered between his hits.) Still, every one of Shyamalan’s films so far has dealt in some way or another with belief and faith and the supernatural (even if it’s just the perception of the supernatural). I wonder how long he can keep that up, how many times he can tell that story with those repeated moods, before we start to feel like we’ve seen it all before.

We can be sure that The Happening will bring newness in at least one way: it’s Shyamalan’s first R-rated picture. There’s a voice in my head that wonders if that’s a sign of desperation rather than vision, as if Shyamalan is saying, “You think I can’t scare you? Watch this!” But if The Happening does well, Lady will seem like a misstep and maybe some people will start to look at The Village with fresh eyes (though I doubt it, because I’m not ready to bring fresh eyes to Signs). In any case, win or lose, I think his next film has to leave the supernatural in the garage if he wants to stay relevant and continue to draw Spielberg comparisons. Shyamalan needs his The Color Purple if for no other reason than to make people appreciate his future fantasies.


OK. So, we’ve looked over his films, and The Happening is about to happen. To wrap things up, complete these two sentences:

The Happening will succeed because ...

But it’ll be an uphill battle if ...

H: First, I agree with that quote by Ebert, but I feel each of M Night's first four films has a different mood. Interesting thing about Spielberg: he created his non-sci-fi masterpiece with Schindler's List, but I rate Jaws and War Of The Worlds among his tightest, best films. A lot of his ventures elsewhere have not been as memorable. But that's a debate for another time. So ...

The Happening will succeed because Shyamalan knows how to get touching performances out of his actors, he knows how to set a memorable mood, he knows how to frame stunning images, and he knows how to tell a meaningful story.

But it'll be an uphill battle if he appears in the film longer than 30 seconds (hey, stay behind the camera this time!) or if the film has anything to do with mermaids.

Here's hoping that Friday, June 13, brings M Night Shyamalan lots of good luck!

JB: I agree with you on the cameo and the mermaids.

I’ll go at my own questions this way:

The Happening will succeed because Shyamalan, after the impressive string of successes that was his first four films, needed to test his limits, like David Dunn, to figure out what they were. Lady In The Water was that test, and it proved that, like the Unbreakable hero, Shyamalan has limits (and should stay away from swimming pools). Having failed last time, he’ll bring his A-game.

But it’ll be an uphill battle if Mark Wahlberg’s performance is as flaccid as Dirk Diggler in Boogie Nights’ famous mirror scene. Truth be told: I’m secretly hoping that Wahlberg is actually going to be the first to go, ala Janet Leigh in Psycho. Now that would be a surprise!

See you Friday, Hokahey!

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Cooler readers: What are your thoughts on M Night Shyamalan?

A Filmmaker Drowning: Lady In The Water

[Just a few days away from M Night Shyamalan’s The Happening, The Cooler offers a review of the filmmaker’s previous effort, written upon the film’s release in the author’s pre-blog era.]

A day after it had opened nationwide, and with more than an hour of the 110-minute movie remaining, the entire audience watching Lady In The Water at a well-attended Saturday afternoon showing in Washington, D.C., got up and walked out of the theater in unison, me among them. We were, I think it’s safe to say, disgusted. Some of us, I guess, because a pleasurable movie-going experience had been interrupted by a fire alarm that forced the evacuation of the entire multiplex. But most of us – at least me – because a second trip to the cinema would be required to finish a film that’s hardly worth watching in the first place.

The fifth original creation from writer/director M Night Shyamalan, Lady In The Water is an utter disaster, a truly awful film by any standards, but especially by his. It is a movie without grace, intrigue or common sense. It is poorly realized and shoddily written. Shocking me like he never has before, the imaginative Shyamalan, who since 1999’s watershed The Sixth Sense has dazzled audiences with intricate surprise endings, has managed to make a movie so muddled that it feels unplanned, as if the director made it up as he went along.

That might not be far from the truth. According to reports, Lady In The Water is inspired by a bedtime story that Shyamalan created for his daughters. It tells the tale of Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti), who as the manager of an apartment complex called The Cove discovers a sea nymph living in the swimming pool. Her name is Story (Bryce Dallas Howard), and her ashen skin and matted golden locks make her look like the missing link between Daryl Hannah’s mermaid in Splash and Samara from The Ring. She is naked, as sea nymphs tend to be, but dons one of Cleveland’s “beautiful” button-up shirts after dragging the stuttering building manager back to his poolside bungalow when a fall renders him unconscious.

Needless to say, we don’t actually see the dragging episode. This is a PG-13 film; besides, the sight of an unclothed Howard struggling to tow a portly Giamatti across a pool deck would certainly fit the Seinfeldian definition of “bad naked.” Still, in Lady In The Water we see too much. Chiefly, we witness a filmmaker running out of ideas. As Cleveland looks to solve the mystery that is Story, Shyamalan seems to be scrambling for answers. He decides to hide them in an old Asian woman who grew up hearing a bedtime story about sea nymphs, which in this case are called narfs. It’s key that the old woman is apparently the only non-English speaker at The Cove, because the language barrier forces Cleveland to spend the whole movie learning what I’m about to tell you in a few sentences.

Story, like all narfs, is from the Blue World. She has risen from the depths to make contact with a specific someone who will get a “pins and needles” feeling inspiring him to change the course of his life and, with it, that of humankind. But Story has a limited window to do this. She’s being hunted by a wolf-like creature with grassy fur and red eyes called a scrunt, and she’s not getting much help from the peacekeeping monkey-like creatures called tartutics. To get back to the Blue World, Story has to be safely away from the scrunt so that she can be picked up by a giant eagle-like creature called an, um, eagle. She also has to be mostly alone, but she can be assisted by human guardians empowered to help her.

Of course, the humans meant to assist Story don’t know that they’re so empowered, and Story doesn’t know who they are. Or, if she does, strict Blue World rules don’t allow her to say so, which is odd considering Story’s penchant for telling people their futures. Get someone alone, and Story is like a drunken palm-reader. Or maybe drugged is a better word. Sedated. Howard plays Story with the same empty stare she used as the blind Ivy Walker in Shyamalan’s previous movie, The Village, only without the enrapturing verve. Story is so lacking in personality that she’s virtually comatose. She speaks in monotone as if possessed. And if she’d had the misfortune of popping up in a Georgetown pool, folks wouldn’t be looking for a giant eagle, they’d be gathering for an exorcism.

Which might not be a bad idea for Shyamalan, because this film makes you wonder what’s happened to him. Like his surprise endings or not, Shyamalan has always been positively Spielbergian in his ability to blend reality and make-believe. Yet somehow the film in which he dives deepest into fantasy is the one most deficient of magic. Lady In The Water deals in Shyamalan’s usual themes of fate and the extraordinary abilities of ordinary people, but the thrill is gone. Nowhere is there a scene even approaching the wondrousness of the weight-lifting sequence from Unbreakable, for example, where Bruce Willis’ David Dunn so memorably tests his limits.

Beyond Giamatti’s brave and impassioned performance amidst a doomed voyage, there’s nothing memorable here. But there’s plenty to forget. Like the way Cleveland is forced to go about his investigation into Story entirely illogically to serve Shyamalan’s tenuous plot exposition. With the cranky Asian woman, Cleveland is initially all too pleased to let translation inconveniences keep him from interrogating The Cove’s only resident narf expert. Meanwhile, with Story, Cleveland makes inquiries that would be totally inane if they weren’t completely divine, like following up Story’s revelation that she’s there to meet a writer by asking, “Is he writing something important?” Or returning from Story’s underwater lair and wondering if the cracks in the walls are there by design, to allow the room to collapse.

In that last case, Shyamalan is on damage control, hoping to repair loopholes that naysayers will all too eagerly try to identify. No film deserves such scrutiny, but it’s sad to see that Shyamalan has lost his nerve. Fantasies needn’t bend to earthly laws. They must only remain faithful to their own rules. Lady In The Water spends its entirety trying to draft its constitution and establish its boundaries, but the world created here is constantly under construction. Built on a foundation of mud, it isn’t Story’s lair that collapses on itself, it’s Shyamalan’s film.

Chic Flick: Sex And The City

I am a smoking hot female who goes to Star Trek conventions. I am a black guy who quotes Seinfeld. I am a nun who has all of Eli Roth’s torture-porn flicks on DVD and watches them, you guessed it, religiously. Or I might as well be. Because I, Jason Bellamy, am a straight guy who likes Sex And The City, and – according to some reviews and recent blog chatter – that makes me as unusual as a photo of Matthew McConaughey with his shirt on.

I find this strange. After all, Sex the movie is based on a TV series that thrived for six seasons on HBO and now can be caught in (significantly edited) syndication on TBS. Yes, the show’s audience initially was limited to those with expanded cable, but with an evening air-time its potential viewership was far more diverse than that of a daytime soap, normally the domain of the stay-at-home mom. Men had ample opportunity to become fans of the show, and presumably some of us did. Why wouldn’t we? Here was a show about four attractive females who were often obsessed with sex and talked about it frequently and frankly. Sex was like the aforementioned Seinfeld, except from an R-rated and female perspective, with some nudity thrown in for good measure. What was not to like?

Admittedly, I’m speaking from marginal experience. As one of those without HBO, my exposure to the show during its 1998-2004 run was limited to a few peeks here and there – maybe seeing two episodes start-to-finish in hotel rooms while traveling. Sacrilegious though it is, I’ve seen more of Sex in its sliced-diced-and-dubbed format on TBS, finding the show to be agreeable background accompaniment to household chores. Clearly the show never overwhelmed me to the point of becoming must-see entertainment, yet I always found it entertaining.

Apparently some, though, found the show to be a chore. Over at Scanners, Jim Emerson said he had “no objection” to the new movie, but only after offering: “sadly, nobody has enough money to pay me to go see Sex and the City.” That’s a pretty heavy statement, and it echoed Roger Ebert, who more or less disclosed that he reviewed the film only as a job requirement. In message boards and comments sections across the blogosphere, many defended Sex and were elated about the film, yet at least as many regarded the movie with a lack of fondness usually reserved for a colonoscopy.

That not everyone finds Sex to be their cup of tea is no problem for me. There’s a new Adam Sandler movie out this week and, no, I won’t be seeing it. We all have our own tastes. In her Sex review, the Washington Post’s Ann Hornaday put it this way: “Think of the clothes, shoes and accessories simply as the movie's version of Iron Man's robot suit, Speed Racer's cars or Indiana Jones’s fedora and bullwhip. And judge not others' escapist fetishes lest ye be judged.” Indeed. But about those clothes, shoes and accessories: As much as Sex’s couture obsession may characterize the series, I’ve never found the fashion to be the brand’s dominant characteristic. That’s why Hornaday’s take is so astute. True, Indiana Jones wouldn’t be Indiana Jones without the whip, yet the whip doesn’t make the man.

Try explaining that though to the New York Post’s Lou Lumenick, who admitted that his screening of Sex enjoyed an “ecstatic” response and yet still concluded that heterosexual males will be “bored by the movie’s endless fashion montages, shameless product placements, lethally slow pacing and utterly predictable plot.” Hmm. Seems to me, those same words could apply to last year’s Transformers, but even though the target audience for that Michael Bay film was obviously young men, I don’t remember a lot of reviews pronouncing unequivocally that women would be bored. And I wonder: Could a female critic be so forward to say, as Ebert and Emerson did with Sex, “I am not the person to review this movie,” and still keep her job? I doubt it.

I’m skeptical about the last part because, as we know, movies are predominantly made by men, about men and for men. I’m not going to spend any time getting into a moral debate about that here, I’m just acknowledging the truth. And so in my mind that’s part of what makes Sex so interesting. I can’t speak with great detail about the show, but in the film the male characters are as undeveloped as the sperm they carry. Chris Noth’s coveted Mr. Big is, in the words of Ebert, “so unreal, he verges on the surreal.” Quite true. In my limited exposure to the character I’ve never understood Carrie’s fascination with him (is “Big” a reference to what I think it is?), unless it’s his insistence on wearing collared attire at all times, even to bed. Then there’s Evan Handler’s Harry, a bald bubble of cheeriness and affection. And Jason Lewis’ Smith, all smiles and sex appeal. David Eigenberg’s Steve is granted a few whiny emotions, but other than that these men are … well, like objects, props, scenery. Now, where have we seen that before?

Oh, that’s right, it happens to women in movies all the time. That’s why it’s nice to see men put in the corner for a change. Sex bashers often say that they don’t know people who dress like Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) or who are guided through life by their vagina like Samantha (Kim Cattrall). Or they criticize the characters for their self-absorption, their penchant for partying and their materialism. Fine. But I don’t remember hearing such complaints about the gangsters in Martin Scorsese or Quentin Tarantino movies. Characters achieve genuineness based on whether they fit into their world of reality, not ours. I find myself drawn to Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) because they have such a good time together, not because I admire them or their fashions (honestly, I didn’t know what the fuck a “Manolo” was until seemingly every critic felt the need to mention Carrie’s obsession with the designer shoes).

All of that said, I think Sex’s good times are better delivered in small doses. At 148 minutes, Sex the movie is overlong, particularly as an addendum to the TV series. In your average film, Carrie’s entire relationship with Big would carry out over two hours. Here, instead, we get just one unusually long chapter. Likewise, Sex struggles in the way that many TV adaptations and even TV series finales do: there’s too much pressure on its plot. Each joke seems as if it needs to be extra witty or hilarious. After six seasons of setting high expectations, it’s hard for Sex to succeed against itself.

But as someone with an arm’s-length understanding of the series, it suited me just fine. The writing is indeed obvious in places and the hilarity only minor, yet the characters win out: Carrie’s heart, Miranda’s cantankerousness, Charlotte’s wide-eyed princessness and Samantha’s lasciviousness. I would have enjoyed seeing more range and complexity from the latter two characters – the inexplicable addition of another female character to the story, Jennifer Hudson’s Louise, makes that impossible – just like I would have preferred a more profound plot, perhaps specifically dealing with the characters outgrowing their lavish lifestyles. But these are quibbles.

I never once checked my watch during Sex, and not just because I was worried I’d miss Carrie prancing around in her underwear (just for women, my ass). That’s a lot more than I can say for the latest Indiana Jones flick, which is just as superficial but with far less charm. Is Sex a cultural breakthrough? Some people, including feminists, sure hope not. But we’ve been cheering less-than-refined men for years, and I’m up for something new. Underneath it all, the best thing about Sex is that it doesn’t care whether I, the straight male, like it or not. I find that confidence sexy.

The Schlong Way Around: Forgetting Sarah Marshall

I have a bone to pick with Jason Segel’s penis. Or maybe with Judd Apatow’s. I’m not quite sure which. Confident as I am in my heterosexuality and comfortable as I am with the human body, I didn’t give either dangling member detailed examination when the filmmakers’ went all Harvey Keitel in Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, respectively. Thus, I couldn’t identify those flaccid suspects in a lineup of cinematic criminals. (By contrast, an aside: Remember when DVD players first came out and actually touted the fuzz-free pause of DVD over VHS as a reason to upgrade? How many copies of Basic Instinct do you think that advertising strategy sold?) That said, the audaciousness of those recent genitalia exhibitions is largely to blame for what until recently was my firm resistance toward watching what turns out to be the funniest movie of the year. And that has me pissed.

Truth be told, the problem isn’t with either penis per se but with the cockeyed reactions they inspired from the entertainment media, critics included. Segel’s awkward full-frontal display in Forgetting was a topic of such considerable buzz that it became the nudity equivalent of Samuel L Jackson’s one-liners in Snakes On A Plane – notorious before the film even reached theaters. Meanwhile, few writers could discuss Segel’s Full Monty without also referencing Apatow’s twig-and-berries cameo in Walk Hard late last year. This was to some degree understandable: Apatow produced both films and had recently vowed to include a penis shot in all his future movies. Yet on the whole this penispalooza turned out to be misleading. In the rush to demonstrate Apatow’s influence, many critics spent so much time focusing on the similarities between Forgetting and other Apatow-touched films that they failed to note the significant differences – differences that allow Forgetting to succeed.

I imagine this was meant to be complimentary; for better or worse, due to genius or lack of competition, Apatow is comedy’s current golden boy. The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, which he wrote and directed, were both critical and box-office triumphs, as was Superbad, which Apatow produced. Not to mention that, yes, Segel is from the Apatow troupe (like Superbad co-writer Seth Rogan). And, yes, Forgetting, like those other films, is about a less-than-Clooneyesque-looking guy stuck in some form of arrested development who, at one point or another, tries to land himself an attractive woman. All true. But …

1) Segel’s Peter Bretter isn’t a loser. Sure, he likes to laze around his apartment in sweatpants eating Froot Loops from a large mixing bowl. Sure, his Gandalf impression indicates that he enjoyed Lord Of The Rings. Yes, as already mentioned, he doesn’t look like a candidate for People Magazine’s annual “most beautiful” list. And he cries like a girl when his heart is broken after a 5-year relationship ends in betrayal. And he isn’t smooth with the ladies. And he likes puppets. But this is the worst we can say about him. At the same time, Peter has a paying Hollywood job, plays an instrument, aspires to better things (though, yes, admittedly “better things” does include vampire puppets), is secure with his girlfriend’s public career and is willing to wear (without complaint) the goofy hats or man-purses that his girlfriend gives him as gifts.

Compare that to Steve Carell’s titular character in Virgin. Andy is sweet and well-meaning, which is why the film is endearing and why Catherine Keener’s Trish sees something in him from the very start. But Andy’s house is filled with action figures, and he’s so clueless about the opposite sex that he imagines that a breast feels like a “bag of sand.” Then there’s Rogan’s Ben from Knocked Up. Here’s a guy who prefers the company of his pink eye-infected, knuckle-dragging friends to spending time with the super-hot, super-understanding Alison (Katherine Heigl). Here’s a guy who has no job whatsoever, except to catalog nudity in movies for a planned subscription website, which means he’s both slacking and stupid: he’d rather watch naked women on TV than get frisky with the flesh-and-blood babe next to him. Andy may be a diamond in the rough, but Ben is an inconsiderate slob. I have no explanation as to why Alison, or any living creature advanced enough to be able to make tools, would want to spend time with him, which is precisely why Knocked Up doesn’t work. In relation to these Apatow creations certainly, if not also society as a whole, Peter is a catch.

2) Segel’s film is better written. Forgetting may not win any screenplay awards, and it isn’t a comedy classic to be revered by future generations, but it’s leaner and more consistent than Apatow’s latest screenplays. Virgin on the page really isn’t all that funny (save the brilliant joke about David Caruso in Jade). Instead, the film is carried by Carell’s performance, highlighted by the wordless scene in which Andy stares with astonishment at the model of a woman’s reproductive organs. Knocked Up, meanwhile, has some amusing jokes about marriage, as seen through the characters played by Leslie Mann and Paul Rudd, but otherwise it’s little more than crude gross-out humor.

As far as I’m concerned, the way to evaluate a comedy is not by its best joke but by its worst ones, and with Apatow’s films it’s hard to tell one from the other. In Virgin, for example, there’s a lengthy and unnecessary “You know how I know you’re gay?” debate between Rogan’s Cal and Rudd’s David. Apatow must think it’s hilarious for all the attention he gives it, and yet each barb sounds like the unpolished material of an opening-act comedian. Take this one: “You know how I know you’re gay? You have a rainbow bumper sticker on your car that says, ‘I love it when balls are in my face.’” Quality stuff, eh? Perhaps not as witty as this observation from Knocked Up: “You look like Babe Ruth’s gay brother: Gabe Ruth.” Priceless, no? I’m not sure about you, but I like my comedies to tell better jokes than your average wasted frat boy. And don’t even get me started on Knocked Up’s tripping-on-mushrooms Vegas episode – a spectacularly stupid scene that scrapes the bottom of the comedy barrel in a pathetic attempt for cheap laughs.

By contrast, Forgetting’s worst joke is actually Peter’s much-discussed bit of full-frontal nudity at the start of the film. True, the male anatomy is a joke from God that never stops being funny, but in the end it’s just a lazy sight gag that offers nothing more than shock-value snickers (which explains why the laughter is tempered when the audience knows what to expect). On the other hand, Forgetting’s best joke isn’t a one-liner at all. It’s a character: Russell Brand’s scene-stealing Aldous Snow, the self-absorbed, sex-obsessed British rocker who screws Peter’s girl out from under him. Aldous doesn’t say funny things so much as he is a funny persona, and so in this respect Forgetting follows the format of Superbad (written by Rogan and Evan Goldberg): it creates entertaining and individualistic personalities to enjoy, rather than distributing mediocre one-liners at random amongst undeveloped joke-spewing drones (all of Andy’s friends in Virgin; any male character in Knocked Up).

Another supporting character of note is Peter’s love interest, Rachel, played with spunk and poise by Mila Kunis. Whereas Knocked Up never satisfactorily explains how Alison tolerates Ben’s presence, Peter’s relationship with Rachel makes sense. Is she more attractive than him? Absolutely. But Peter is hardly ugly, and on top of that he has experience dating beautiful women. More importantly, though, Peter is an open book to Rachel, who seems attracted to his emotional vulnerability. Kunis plays Rachel like the kind of girl who has heard all the polished lines before and enjoys discovering sincerity, even in an imperfect package. Should Peter count himself as lucky to land Rachel? Sure. But the reverse is true too, which is more than you can say for Ben and Alison.

Having said all of this, don’t get me wrong: Forgetting Sarah Marshall is far from perfect, and some of its best jokes are crass and plain silly. Still, at least it’s memorable for all the right reasons, and Segel’s penis isn’t one of them – not that you’d get that impression from all the press it inspired. Do I wish for a day when cinema is so packed with penises that we don’t notice them anymore? Well, no. I can’t say I’d go that far. But it would be nice if we could all look beyond the penises when they present themselves. Maybe that would convince shock-dependent writers like Apatow to try a little harder. Maybe that would remind Segel that he’s at his best writing characters who bare their imperfect emotions, not their imperfect bodies. Maybe that would ensure that worthy comedies aren’t reduced by critics to a single absurdity. Forgetting turned out to offer a much more impressive package than I’d been led to believe. I’m glad I saw it.