The Happening - A look at the Razzies

While scouring the Net and meandering through the various nominees for the Oscars this February, I happened to come across the list of candidates for the less-than-prestigious Razzies. As per usual with a frequent torrent-(ab)user like yours truly, I often downloaded the newest axxo-releases if they garnered enough seeders. Can you start to see the connection here? Yeah, so I managed to get hold of some movies that would likely join the other C- action flicks and lame teenage comedies you would usually find in the 1.99$ bin of the local gas station. By now I've learned to preselect my download choices more meticulously, with movies it's not always the best technique not to judge the book/movie by its cover (as in title). Coming back to the nominees, I totally agree with Disaster movie (very fitting decorum for a wonderfully nauseating waste of 90 minutes) being there; the sheer mention of Mr. Hilton's devilishly ugly pampered daughter as an "actress" in a movie that isn't xxx-rated warned me ante bellum to keep as far away from The Hottie and the Nottie as I possibly could (which reminds me, how in the hell is this white trash-hopeful ugliest-of-all-ducklings one-woman all-you-can-eat brothel be elected as one of the most beautiful people in the world? People, please, where are your eyes? Do you know how to friggin' use them at all?) I know absolutely nothing about a flick called In the Name of the King (unless Jessica Biel, Eva Longoria or someone of this magnitude has even a small cameo in it - which I honestly doubt - I won't bother to see it). As for the Love Guru, well.. I've seen worse (ruminations of an overhyped and seriously overrated Golden Compass come to mind), at least it was partly enjoyable, I'm not a big fan of Mike Myers' antics. But it had enough scenes with Jessica Alba and someone named Meagan Good in it, so I got a fair deal out of it (no, I don't like Jessica Simpson, and never will, she is NOT that beautiful, trust me on that).
Now, the last one on the top-five I was a bit bothered by. A movie that offered a horrifyingly thrilling concept, which was duly ruined to pieces by a totally uninspired, dry and salty cast: The Happening, Shyamalan's latest journey into the deep thriller genre. The storyboard looked great: a mysterious substance is submitted into the biosphere, spreading via thin air, eliminating the human instinct for survival and self-preservation, culminating in the individual's lust for suicide. Sounds terrifying, doesn't it? It is, and the first 2-3 minutes of the movie really awed me and kept me glued to the screen - after those first few minutes, I had to pause the movie and catch myself. Why? Because you don't always need a good-sounding monologue delivered by James Earl Jones (notwithstanding, I'm still a fan of his) to create the atmosphere of a changed world. You just take two women sitting on a park bench in Central Park, a sudden absence of ambient sound and a totally unexpected, grisly insertion of a knitting-pin in her neck artery - no, not one of your Sunday serial killers roaming the park premises, she done it upon herself, as you might say. Next scene: construction site. Men in hard hats snickering in a huddled group. A body falls into some debris near them, one of the other workers. Total bedlam engulfs his colleagues, and another body falls behind them. I always loved that one point in a movie when you have a character actor you would never recognize in any other film, regardless of their name or the size of their paycheck, manage a facial expression that just sticks in your mind for ever and ever (worthy mentions: prison guard on bus in Con Air after seeing the tape recorder fall from inside pocket of mistaken paroler; freshly slaughtered Navy seal hanging upside down through the manhole in the washroom after the shootout scene in The Rock; some of the more talented extras in catastrophe movies who are told to look awestruck when seeing the alien spacecraft/creature/tidal wave/uncommon sight) - in this movie, this was one of the construction workers, who after hearing the third or fourth body fall from the sky, looks up and sees more and more of his colleagues simply walk off the ledge many floors higher. I would greatly recommend getting this movie just for that first 2-3 minutes of film.
Why only that? Well, the concept of the movie might be great, but the casting people must have had a bad day, collecting around them an ensemble cast whose only purpose is to ruin the movie from that point forward. Marky Mark Wahlberg is seriously trying to lose his "good vibrations" fame, but he does nothing more than oversell the panicked scientist guy, making his role worthless. Enrolling John Leguizamo as another profit-puller didn't work out, he turned out to portray a character who does something (or in the plural) completely unnatural - who would leave their young daughter behind to enter a disease-ridden area and search for an estranged wife, especially if he hasn't the faintest idea as to her location? At least he exited nicely, that death scene was nicely played out, especially with them going through the haunted town - now there was another scene that could have been done a lot better, if they wouldn't have played out the archetypical Hollywood portrayal of the horrified young white woman who screams her head off when seeing a dead body. Seriously, what is it with those roles? You would think that in today's world, with all the hype on women also being tough, independent and kickass, there goes some typical white-collar single lady and ruins it all (sorry, not meant to be sexist, but I hate female roles whose sole intention is to permanently damage my eardrums with their high-pitched sirens when they see a drop of blood, just not damn realistic). Anyway, in that scene there were three people, plus one Leguizamo and one Banshee riding in the car, and you cut to a still with them looking out the side window, showing abandoned vehicles and road repair trucks, and a curiously large amount of ladders around, all propped up. The camera pans lower, and you see a long line of people hung on the branches of trees, obviously also victims of the toxin they breathed in. Very alarming scene, cinematically great portrayal, but that screaming b*tch spoiled it for me - you can't enjoy a nicely played out mass suicide scene whilst scrambling for the volume dial.
Okay, another thing that bugged me, the female lead. Why, why, why, oh why do you always have to have a romantic relationship in a catastrophe movie, thriller, action, horror, or any of the like? I know love is all around, but I can't see myself scrambling to ask out that girl leaking blood from her forearm when Godzilla is chasing after me. How to make a corny scary movie 101: take 5-6 people who don't know each other, with an equal ratio of male and female, and by the 76th minute, have each one fornicate with at least two others. Even better if you have two of the girls do each other, and you'll be a class A success if the killer knocks in one of the pairs while they are rolling around under the covers, even though their best friend was killed in the last scene. It worked in slasher cult classics like Scream and I know what you did last summer, but it's not a golden rule, it doesn't have to be followed in every and each film. So, even though The Happening peaked in its first few minutes, and was lost with a badly scripted leadthrough to the last half hour (although I have to agree that killing off those two juniors by the weird farmhouse patrons was quite unexpected and in my humble opinion a bit too extreme in movie standards), it totally killed the viewing pleasure when Marky Mark and that actress (whose name I won't even bother to look up) tried to connect with each other sentimentally. The end of the movie was a bit lame that way, bringing in the old hermit lady who hated everyone else (gosh, I wonder why she offered room and board for some strangers if she was a misanthrope?) dug the movie deeper than it was buried at this point. I'm also a fan of a good cliffhanger-like short scene before or after the final credits, but this one with the virus spreading over to France was totally random, and I didn't get caught on. If I had to grade it, I would give an A for original idea, C- for sidetracking the main storyline, D-- for cast, B+ for effects and visual. I've only watched The Sixth Sense a few years ago, and don't recall any other Shyamalan movies I might have seen (although I have Lady in the water downloaded somewhere), but I do hope that he'll keep coming up with good main ideas, and please, stick to that, don't sidetrack to make the movie more popular - and if possible, don't assign leading-man hopefuls this much, especially with someone as typecast as Wahlberg or completely indifferent to this genre as Leguizamo. The best of luck at the Razzies.