The Happening

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

Word from others' whose film opinions I trust have said Hitchcock would be proud.

Haven't seen this one yet.

[grady]

Originally Posted by jOHN rODRIGUEZ

Word from others' whose film opinions I trust have said Hitchcock would be proud.

Haven't seen this one yet.

The mention of Hitchcock in the same breathe as Shamalamadingdong, while I can understand some making the complimentary comparison, seems a bit too overreaching and lazy. Steven Spielberg seems like a more apt unit of comparison when looking at filmmakers, whether contemporary or past eras.

Proceed with caution into this new film, this is coming from a viewer who isn't fond of Shalamadingdong's previous work, the one exception being Unbreakable.

[Stephen]

It's pretty bad. The start is pretty spooky (the builders scene was actually scary I thought) but the final 30 minutes are categorically dogshit.

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

Originally Posted by Stephen

... but the final 30 minutes are categorically dogshit.

Is that not a rule with most horror films? I think it's some kind of movie making rule for certain people in the audience who have a hard time understanding it's not real. (BB what are you doing with my smiley??!!???)

[BrotherLovesDub]

http://www.tnr.com/booksarts/story.h...8-cf7e74bcd835

[grady]

Originally Posted by BrotherLovesDub

http://www.tnr.com/booksarts/story.h...8-cf7e74bcd835

That was one of the harsher, blow by blow reviews out there vivisecting the film.

I've been waiting for Anthony Lane from the New Yorker to chime in. His negative reviews can be really entertaining to read when he really doesn't like a film.

[potatobroth]

I just got a laugh from Ron Bennington of the Ron and Fez show on XM as he described how poor this movie was.

[Stephen]

Originally Posted by jOHN rODRIGUEZ

Is that not a rule with most horror films? I think it's some kind of movie making rule for certain people in the audience who have a hard time understanding it's not real. (BB what are you doing with my smiley??!!???)

Granted, perhaps. But this goes way beyond. It's pretty bad.

[IsiliRunite]

Pearl-Harbor-Bad.

and I miss you.

[grady]

Originally Posted by IsiliRunite

Pearl-Harbor-Bad.

and I miss you.

Ooh...Pearl Harbor. Please allow me to digress for a couple moments.

The first time I tried to watch that I left half way through the film due to a nauseating headache when I was still working full time as a projectionist. On the drive home with my girlfriend at the time I pulled the car over and vomited in the middle of traffic.

I'm not really sure what came over me but I always attributed my illness to the film, both for comic effect but also Michael Bay's schizophrenic editing technique, that while working for an action film, didn't work for this type of historical dramatization. When watching both Bad Boys 2 and Transformers, despite sitting in the back two rows of the auditorium, I still felt waves of disorientation and the eventual Michael Bay headache. I've always attributed this to his ultra fast and unnecessarily quick cutting.

I finished screening the film a couple days later after there was projector mishap and I had to oversee the projectionist splicing job.

That was truly one of the more god awful films I've ever seen. Not Transformers bad, but bad in the Michael Bay-action-director-trying-to-be-serious bad.