Split 2017

I wrote a favorable review this year of M. Night Shymalan's unpopular The Happening. I think its the most creative, topical and pleasing of the work I've seen. Split is a throwback to his earlier films - very Hollywood checklist, very moody and self-serious. It has moments of awkward humor and deep social commentary but its all stifled by the industrial, commercial nature of the story. What starts as a very creepy, reflective portrait of the sick Jungian archetypes of modern American structuralism drizzles into a lazy deconstruction with cop-out answers about trauma that were only clever in the 1950s when Hitchcock made them originally. The presentation isn't interesting enough and it all feels cheapened as it climaxes with an "Avengers" cliffhanger ending. Yes, this was all an origin/prequel/commercial for Unbreakable 2. That explains the boring execution and lack of inspired ideas as Shymalan is out to please "demographics" with superpowers, a "sexy psycho" Heath Ledger antagonist, child/sexual abuse subplots and impossibly brilliant teenage victims who are too often visually sexualized (not a good look when the film is about sexual victimhood).

Maybe its all a brave pervy confessional of its director with the psychoanalytic nature of the plot and this obvious hypocrisy of fetishizing adolescent white girls, a running theme in Shymalan's work. He blames his mom like every director ever - like Aronofsky's mother! this year- and delivers a bland Saw rip-off off that easy critic-bait. I found the film disturbing for the right and wrong reasons. This was like the 10th film this year to make softcore porn out of child-looking actresses and it seems like a male generational confirmation and/or a sexist self-pitying protest. Its gross, to me. Why not just show hot women and get over this disgusting Lolita fetish? Why keep drilling these nasty dark impulses into commercial films? That doesn't make it art. Elite Hollywood pedo lifestyle propaganda dressed as softcore S&M popcorn entertainment for teens. And this weirdness goes all the way back to 80s horror slashers and beyond.

Anyway, the film was too long, too slow and didn't pay off much of anything but shows another, more unlikable but vulnerable side of M. Night Shymalan who must be having a bad midlife crisis and dip in his bank account.

The Happening 2008

This film has an 18% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 5/10 on IMDB but a favorable 3/4 from the late Roger Ebert. It is now regarded in popular online circles as one of the worst films ever. This is sad evidence that most modern audiences don't know a good film and don't know when they are being fooled.

The Happening is another Twilight Zone-ish piece of weirdo Hollywood filmmaking from M. Night Shyamalan. Its a deadpan spoof of disaster films (Spielberg's War of the Worlds seems like the obvious target) and a quite brilliant satire on human self-destruction. The brilliance of Shyamalan is that it avoids being serious, preachy or un-entertaining while being a very thoughtful, vicious and nightmarish movie.

The plot finds Mark Wahlberg and an increasingly dwindling cast being killed by... nothing. More specifically, air. More specifically, chemicals in the air created by plants that have grown highly conscious and murderous in reaction to human habitation. Its a fairly plausible bit of science fantasy but its handled in a consciously obtuse way. What takes it from the realm of realism is that the chemicals cause people to commit suicide in over-the-top and gory fashion. M. Night is making a comment on the public's then-obsession with realistic torture and gore in film, TV and news. The film is formatted closest to a Saw sequel or any dumb "body count" movie from the period. He also uses this bit of exploitation to divorce the film from seriousness. But it never stops being smart and characters keep being believably human: selfish, stupid, absurd, hilarious, layered and weird. In case you think its just weird for weird's sake or just plain corny, the film is loaded with a B-movie soundtrack, quirky acting and gruesomely absurdist slapstick constantly winking that its all a big joke. A clever joke told with a straightface that builds to a thoughtful punchline.

Zooey Deschanel steals the film as Wahlberg's bizarre wife who is still not quite in love with him. By the end she has fallen for him and his compassion, intelligence, resiliency and self-sacrifice. A wonderful allegory reveals itself as plants see the love and self-sacrifice of this couple and decide to spare them and let humans have another go at living on this planet. Or did the psychotic greenery just run out of gas? The final scene leaves us wondering.

The Happening is a great love letter to classic sci-fi cinema: its over-the-top melodramatics, low budget minimalism, absurd premises and usually earnest themes. No shock that it went over the vast majority's heads, so kudos to M. Night having the courage to make a film destined to bomb and be misunderstood. Its a real labor of love, which is rare in Hollywood. Even more, its an intelligent, unique and hilarious labor of love. Its the most cult movie in his wide body of cult movies and its probably my favorite. I think Shyamalan evokes the work of such greats as David Lynch, Werner Herzog and Kurt Vonnegut here. Its pure surrealism done in the grandest scale yet.