The Happening

I watched M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening this weekend. I watched it on the top floor of a suburban shopping mall near where I live. I came out of the theatre, came to the ledge across from the concession stand and happened to look down. There was a clear drop to the basement, may be 80 feet. I wanted to throw myself down it. May be the movie is kind of like an Escher painting, and the people in it are killing themselves because they just watched the movie themselves. May be.

And I was expecting to like the movie. I am a simple minded person when it comes to movies. I am easily pleased. I liked Om Shanti Om, for crying out loud! And I like Mr. Shyamalan. I have not seen “Praying with Anger”, his first film. But I saw “Wide Awake”, a movie in the exact same format of the “Sixth Sense”, a kind of precursor to the things to come. Of course, like most of the rest of humanity, I watched and was blown away by the Sixth Sense. And then came “Unbreakable”. I liked the John Mclane styled Bruce Willis and the comic book styled message that Nature is usually such that it produces both extremes of any parameter space. Nothing to be blown way by, but I was happy.

Then came the Shyamalan movie that I like best, “Signs”. The thing in the movie about two possible world views, a) everything is just a sequence of random events versus b) everything is part of a grand preordained plan, resonated with me. And the way the dilemma was resolved for Mel Gibson was beautiful. I don’t agree with the conclusion, but I liked it. And of course Joaquin Phoenix and the little Ms Sunshine Abigail Breslin were so good in it.

And then started the plummet down. “The Village” was alright I think. I remember not being bored during the movie. But that’s about it. I can’t remember anything else, apart from facts like “The Happy Days”-kid-turned-director-of-beautiful-mind’s daughter was the heroine or some such trivia. Unmemorable but not bad, for my unsophisticated tastes. But Lady in the Water? What the heck was that about? It left me irritated. And now this, The Happening leaving me with the feeling that I should kill myself for having spent 7 dollars and 2 hours of my life on it. May be its time Mr. Shyamalan stopped making movies. Or may be its time I stopped watching them. May be.