Monday, November 3, 2008

m night shamalyan

At least I hope I spelled that correctly.

We just got done watching The Happening, his latest movie. OK, so we're slow. Movie theaters, although they tend to have nice air conditioning, often lack comfortable seating. The popcorn and sodas are expensive, and they don't pause the movie when you need to run to the potty. So we have a pretty extensive collection of movies on DVD, including - as of Sunday - The Happening.

The movie was sold in a 2-pack, with the newest version of Planet of the Apes, for about $15. To me, this was not an auspicious beginning. The movie hasn't really been out all THAT long. Still, we like M Night's other movies, and own them, and if one is to be wrong about these things, $15 is not too high a price to pay. Heck, we'll probably even watch Planet of the Apes some day.

So, since we have all been wanting to see it, we plugged it in and fired up the DVD player and sat around in the comfy chairs. Now, for a movie about a lot of people dying, which everyone who has seen even one commercial or trailer for this movie knows is IN the movie, it is not an incredibly violent movie. OK, the everyone is killing themselves scenes are not the easiest parts of a film I've watched, either, but the suggestion of gore is really as effective as the actual fake blood spattering the camera lens is any day. For a "horror" movie, there is a lot more story, and a lot less gore than you might think. I suspect that is why this movie did not do as well as some of his others, in general. The story is a reasonably good one, loosely a romance, with nature as the killer villian... at least, probably... and if you like his movies, you'll probably like this one. If you are looking for non-stop blood curdling death, you probably will be disappointed. If you're not looking for that, you may want to close your eyes now and then...

2 comments:

Fran said...

I'm a big M. Night fan (I'm not tryin' his last name, no way) and while we haven't seen this one, someday we will. He's got a deft hand with implied darkness that I really enjoy.

And if that's the new remake of Planet, I saw part of it and it's not as bad as I thought it was gonna be. I missed the beginning, saw about the last half, and it may get me yelled at, but I do think Mark Wahlburg can act.

Dina said...

Yeah, I've seen this (yes it is the newer version) of Planet before...

Mark Wahlburg did fine in his part, and John Leguezamo was also in it, and I like him... but there was a lot of the female lead in close-up wide open big blue eyes. It seemed to be what she used for every emotion... (She was Dorothy in The Tin Man - I think they did a lot of that in THAT show too)