Reviews

I am dumbfounded. 90% of the reviews and comments about M. Night Shyamalan's "The Happening" movie are negative. I personally loved the film!

The problem is that viewers (including critics, from what it seems) don't think hard. They thought that the message of the movie was "nature taking revenge on humanity -- be kind to the environment". And so by having plants releasing toxins to kill people, viewers found that plot ridiculous. While the nature stuff is the visible "message" of the movie (and it's not even proven in the movie that nature was the culprit, it's just the No1 suspect), it also had a second message that could only be seen if you look at the signs the director gives you. And that message is "don't be lonely, don't fear to love, trust others".

The director masterfully starts the movie in Central Park, and we later see that "the happening" is happening in the metropolitan area, which is where millions of people live. As the movie progresses, the heroes find themselves to smaller and smaller groups of people. In fact, through their panic, they start to think that the smaller the group they belong to (and lonelier they can be), the safer it is. But as we will see later with Mrs Jones' death, this is not necessarily true.

Tell-tale signs about the "loneliness" message in the film is when Julian says "don't hold my daughter's hand unless you mean it", the ring that changes colors depending on the emotion of the person that wears it (do we need a device to tell us what we feel?), and it's very clear when it shows how lonely modern people are when the two heroes are communicating via the sound tube (which is a separative kind of communication).

Only when they overcome their loneliness and fears, start to trust each other, get together and show true love to each other, they become unaffected from the toxin. Mrs Jones died because, even if she was alone in the field and therefore shouldn't have been affected, she had such a poisonous mind that she didn't feel love for anyone. She was the epitome of loneliness. She didn't trust anybody. In fact, Mrs Jones' character is like the "bad boss" at the end of a computer game level. She was everything that's wrong with modern society, even if she was living all alone far away from the society (a very artistic way to show that if you hate society for what it is and so you don't contribute to it, you contribute to all that's wrong in it, so nothing gets fixed in the end).

Basically, what the director wants to say is that modern society sucks. But it's not going to get fixed if we remove ourselves from it or from our loved ones. Fixing starts with the person closest to you.

Finally, it's very possible that the "crazy" plant-owner guy and his wife lived too, although we don't see that in the movie. If we have seen that, maybe it would have been more obvious to viewers what the movie is really all about. I believe that the director could have made a few things more clear for viewers to understand, so I will take a point out of my final movie rating for his shortsightedness: 9/10.

Terrible show. Hasty writing and pace, no fleshing out of the situations or the characters.

Dialog as bad as seen on network TV, like the worst kind you'd fine usually on CW. For example, on the first episode, a character who had quite some dialog up to that point, dies while part of the main team, and no one acknowledges his death afterwards. I mean, what is this? Who wrote this vapid, emotionless, shallow show?

Also, the anachronistic stuff (e.g. Modern dance, pop song, speaking rudely to the royals etc) really take you out of the fantasy. Either this is high fantasy, or it's a cheap teenage drama disguised as one.

I wanted to like this, but it doesn't let me. It feels as if the writers didn't take their assignment seriously, and only worked on the script in between other projects, in weekends.

What this film is, is the kind of atmosphere and "feel" people report under hypnosis when they try to see what happens between reincarnations. According to these reports, we go to this intermediate stage, where time loses its meaning, and we hop from memory to memory, as if in a dream. At the end, a higher evolved entity (symbolized by the pig in this film) comes and takes you to the next stage when you're ready. That's where all your achievements and disappointments are laid bare, and you understand that the only thing that mattered was love. It's hard to imagine that the author have not read these hypnosis sessions when the novel or the script was written. If they didn't, then they're even more receptive than they think they are.

One of my most favorite sci-fi movies of all time. Most people didn't get it though, so here's some analysis. Contains spoilers:

1. Where did Alton come from?

• Alton was conceived & born normally by his parents, as any human has. The fact that he could reach to other dimensions was a product of evolution. His father exhibits the same abilities (as shown at the very end when his eyes shine), but to a much smaller degree. The evolution of human kind to another state of being is teased.

2. Where did the alien structures come from?

• They were not "alien" in the traditional meaning. They were on a parallel Earth (or another dimension), an Earth that had a different evolutionary path than ours. Parallel dimensions are hidden from our awareness under normal circumstances, but the biological evolutionary step mentioned above made it possible for Alton.

3. What were these beings?

• These were light beings. That's where the spiritual part comes in: "light beings" are considered in spiritual circles to be very advanced entities. It's been teased by the movie that that's where humanity's future lies too. Also telling is that Alton is reborn by the sun (the light that gives life to everything in our planet).

4. What was the point of the movie?

• Alton is a messianic figure, just not in the traditional terms. The cult thought that he was literally a religious figure, while Alton is messianic in a more subtle way: he reluctantly gives a preview to humanity of what lies ahead for them. The movie is about humanity's "first glimpse" of how expansive the Cosmos is. Not just in terms of aliens travelling from planet A to planet B (in the same universe) as all traditional sci-fi movies have been for so long, but also in parallel, and also up and down and inner and outer (in other words, the Cosmos is a web in all directions of different universes and dimensional existences). That's next-level sci-fi. That's the border between sci-fi and New Age spirituality (without the negative baggage that usually accompanies it in the minds of most people).

5. Ugh, so New Age hogwash was the point of the movie?

• No. What people today call "spirituality" is really science that hasn't been understood yet. And since science can't explain it yet, some "faith" might be required in the meantime for those who had direct experience with it. This is why it was so important for Lucas to say "I believe", because after he had his direct experiences with Alton, he made the leap to faith. But belief is to be transcended by hard data, otherwise it becomes dogma, which keeps humanity down. This is what the movie is going for too: the leap from unbelief, to belief, to hard data, and not to dogma (that the organized religion/cult had fallen victim of).

The most telling scene on this interpretation, is at the very end, when Durst is cutting her hair. You can interpret that scene as simply trying to get away from FBI, so she needs to change her appearance. Another, deeper explanation would be though, that Durst's character now is free from religion and dogma. You see, her braids were the same as the women in the cult. Even if she had left the cult, she was still bound by their beliefs for years after. By cutting down the braids, she's now free from such beliefs and dogma, she understands that the cosmos is more expansive, and that said expansiveness is not necessarily "religious" in nature, but rather, "just is".

This was for me the best movie of 2016. The most forward-looking, and the most "edgy" sci-fi movie of them all, by literally moving the needle of sci-fi from caricature super-heroes, monsters, and A-to-B aliens, to a more expansive terrain that's more rich in potential. As an filmmaker myself, that's the kind of sci-fi I always wanted to make too.

6. So why didn't so many people get it?

• It's because most people aren't indoctrinated in such cosmological ideas. Even if Alton did explain it at some point, about a "world on top of ours", that still didn't register with most people. Most viewers needed a way more spoon-fed explanation to get it (and maybe they should have received it, that's a failure of the movie production companies involved to not insist that the director gives it to them).

Additionally, the press' comparison of this movie to the '80s Spielberg movies didn't help at all, because this movie had absolutely nothing to do with these older movies (people went to the cinema expecting something specific and recognizable, and they got something completely different instead). So they found the movie a boring dud, as if without significance, and with a WTF ending. But there is significance in the movie, it tells of a larger world that we will eventually reach one way or another, but that we must have faith until that day comes, when that faith transforms from belief to hard scientific data.

This is not different than if the year was 1870, Jules Verne trying to convince people that one day we will have technology to reach for the stars, or the deeps of the sea, and instead, he gets people thinking he was crazy, or just a "fantasy story without significance". All it needed was some faith in the natural process of technological and/or biological evolution. That's what the filmmaker is asking of you today too.

Warning: *Some spoilers are discussed*.

"Twin Peaks", is a surreal thriller, serialized for the TV, by acclaimed writer and director David Lynch. The show is seemingly about the murder of teenager Laura Palmer, but eventually it becomes apparent that it's about good and evil and the duality of everyone, wrapped in a paranormal way. In many ways, "Twin Peaks" is a lot like "Lost": people who are not what they seem but are interconnected, deep mysteries, and paranormal elements that drive their fans into theory frenzy! "Twin Peaks" did it first: it put people into theory mode, it's just that unfortunately for it, the Internet was not widespread at the time, and so much of the glory was lost in localized conversations (aka the "watercooler show") rather than becoming an international phenomenon.

The first season was almost perfect. It was up to the point, interesting, haunting. I regard the second season being split into two phases: the Laura Palmer investigation, which is a continuation of the first season, and the aftermath after the killer is found. The first phase of the second season is not too bad, but it's apparent that things started to get a bit haywire with the writers, David Lynch having very little involvement with the show, and ABC trying to drive the project. For example, the Harold Smith outdoors-phobic and Japanese investor subplots where useless and silly. But you haven't seen silly yet.

In the second phase, 90% of the plot is downright silly. From the pregnant Lucy and her two silly men, to James and rich lady subplot which had nothing to do with anything else, to James in general being portrayed like a man whore having the hots of four women in 15 days time while at the same time he's supposed to be level-headed (remember, 1 episode is 1 day in the "Twin Peaks" world), to Josie becoming a maid (what the hell?), to Ben Horne becoming crazy and then sane again, to Leo getting controlled by a dog collar (!), to Nadine and mayor's stupid subplots, to David Duchovny guest-starring and appearing in woman's dresses. I mean, the consensus is that "Twin Peaks" lost its audience because the killer was revealed, but the truth is, it's lost its audience because the show lost the plot entirely, all by itself. I could barely sit through and watch the second season's second phase. I would pause it every 10 minutes and go eat something, or check out my email. I just couldn't sit through an entire episode anymore (except the last two where Lynch came back to direct).

The truth is this: "Twin Peaks" should not have had more than 16 episodes. It should have ended when the murderer is revealed, and should have replaced some unneeded subplots with some of the (rare) points found in the second phase, like the Lodges, Cooper getting possessed by BOB after Laura's murderer dies, the army's involvement & Major Biggs etc. And after the series' run, the three movies should have been created, just like Lynch wanted it. Only one movie was shot at the end, because by that time, the peaksmania had died down, exactly because of that disastrous second phase, and so the movie didn't do well in the box office. Maybe these movies should have been tele-movies.

In conclusion, "Twin Peaks" failed because no one could take the step "Lost" writers took with ABC in February 2007: to give an end to the series and not let it go on and on forever like that. If Lynch was to strike such a deal with ABC before he started shooting, then "Twin Peaks" could have become the ultimate series today (both TV and cinema). It's a shame really.

I did not like this movie. I found it worse than its predecessor. Evans was not as funny as in the first one, and the logic of the direction was terrible. For example, there you have Evans being able to exchange abilities with the others, and yet, on the next scene he is touching his sister without anything happening. Or, Victor also having been touched by the Surfer's power, and yet he could touch everyone and not switch powers.

Or, when they are on the flying machine, without a protective glass, and going full speed, and not only they were able to shout at one another and get understood, but the amount of wind on the hair was minimal. How stupid was that? I did not like this movie. It was badly done, in the sense that there was no ATTENTION to detail. And the scenes felt rushed, like they were cut off too much in the editing room. In fact, some shots didn't even make sense: there you have Richards fighting and then immediately after he is with Susan. It just felt too cut-off.

5/10 (I gave the first movie 6.5/10)