Soooo excited!!!

http://www.thehappeningmovie.com/

This is the new M. Night Shamalamadingdong flick, right? Which means I'm certain that a big plot element will involve WATER. Again.

I kinda' liked "The Village", though. A bit melodramatic at times, but it was okay. "Signs" had a good set-up, but the ending sucked hard.

Saw the preview for "The Happening" over the weekend, but considering the director and the fact that it stars Marky Mark...I'll pass and wait for it to hit STARZ or DVD. Can't stand Marky Mark as a lead actor. "Apes", "Invincible", "Shooter", etc. The guy plays the same open-mouthed and mumbly character in every flick. Which isn't very engaging or interesting. He's gotten more mileage out of a big shlong than anyone.

His selling point here is that it's his first "R" Rated feature.

So in other words expect the same with some boobies or "fuck"s added in here and there.

You don't like Mark Walberg!? Have you seen We Own the Night!?

I love M. Night. I was disappointed by Lady in the Water, but the rest of his movies are super fantastical. I am SO stoked for this one.

Super fantastical? You do realize that the guy is a total one trick pony right?

Let's see here...

Sixth Sense: was great.

Unbreakable: interesting, but tedious at times.

Signs: pretty good.

The Village: the swerves ruined the movie for me.

Lady in the Water: alright.



So I'll probably end up seeing this. I hate to admit that the "R" rating has my curiosity.

Wha...? He's had three stellar movies (Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs), one super good movie that would have done a Hell of a lot better had it been billed as a suspense rather than a horror (The Village), and one other movie (Lady in the Water, which I admit I didn't really like). How is that one trick? That's at LEAST three tricks, four if you liked The Village and five if you count Lady. The Happening will make the sixth trick... :P

I guess the one-trick would be the "shocking swerve" at the end of each (I haven't seen Lady in the Water). Although "Signs" was pretty straightforward.

Lady in the Water didn't have any SHOCKING SWERVE!!!~ but a few unexpected developments along the way. It was more of a grown up fairy tale drama than a horror/suspense movie.

You got it.

M. Night is one of the people trying to make "mainstream" horror films. Basically he tries to be intellectual for the sake of being intellectual. I would hardly call "Sixth Sense" great as very much like M. Night himself, it's a one trick pony. There were far more clever examples of what he does in other films such as "Frailty" that pack a punch even if you've already seen the movie. To me Unbreakable is his best film and it's the furthest out of the horror genre. I can't believe that people like Signs at all and The Village was one of the worst movies released that year.

It's okay if anyone here likes his movies, I'm just surprised people are still willing to go pay money in the theater to see his garbage.

Also Rowe, the "R" rated thing is supposed to get your interest. That's most likely the only point to it in the first place.

He also has that recurring theme with WATER. Water was Bruce Willis' weakness in "Unbreakable" and wasn't it essential to "Signs" as well? "Lady in the Water"...well, there ya' go.

Oh and I REALLY can't stand Marky Mark. Tolerable in "We Own the Night" due to the rest of the cast. But as THE main guy in a film, he's awful. I liked the set-up and was wiling to buy into the distorted truths in "Invincible", but in the end I couldn't seem to give a shit about his character. Nothing likable about him and his open-mouth stare did nothing. He works okay as a thug ("We Own the Night") but not as the main good guy we're supposed to root for.

I'm not about to pay 9 bucks to sit in an auditorium with the camera slowly panning around that open-mouth while "dramatic" orchestral music plays.

The main problem I have with M Night is that he shouldn't be billing his movies as horrors. They're not. Horror is The Ring, The Grudge, etc etc. The Sixth Sense is the only one remotely like a horror, and it wasn't even that scary...it qualifies as a horror because of the ghosts and gore. Signs was the furthest thing from a horror - I would classify it as suspense - as was The Village (it was billed as a horror because of the "monster", which, IMO, was a big mistake...people showed up expecting a monster and were thus disappointed). I don't remember what the hype was like with Unbreakable or what it was billed as.

As far as I've seen, he's not billing The Happening as a horror. It seems to be in the suspense category, which is where it should be. People who enjoy horrors and go to the movies to see an M Night movie expecting a horror will ALWAYS be disappointed. People who go to the movies to see a good M Night movie or a good, intelligent suspense/thriller will be satisfied. At least I am.

What I like about M Night movies is that you can watch it several times and notice some element to the story that you didn't see before. His scripts are intelligent, layered, and they always make some comment about the human condition.

Anyway, water does seem to play a part in M Night's movies, but I don't think he means to do that, otherwise it would be an element in The Village and Sixth Sense as well. In Signs, water was the aliens' weakness. I'd also argue that water didn't really play a huge part in Lady. The only time it was important was that the main character was a water nymph. That was incidental in the story, as it wouldn't have mattered if she was a water nymph or a wood nymph...the story centered around the myth and how the people who lived in the apartment fit into the myth, not on the water itself.

Anyway, I like Walberg. I've actually only seen him in Shooter and We Own the Night, but he was good in both.

Jillie, I actually write about horror and I'm kind of a nerd for it, so I hope you understand that this isn't actually making fun of you or anything.

But goddamn that statement made me completely fucking die inside.

I'm completely aware of that, so damn it for having it work (on me, at least).


Is it wrong that I really liked The Ring? Whether or not it's one of the great "horror" movies doesn't impact my liking of it, and it would also depend on what exactly do you consider to be horror in the first place.

And I'll gladly admit that I'm not an expert on the subject like DK, but that's just an outsider's opinion.

There's nothing wrong with liking The Ring. I actually like The Ring much better than the original film Ringu, but to say THAT is what horror is certainly bothers me to some degree. If you were to point to films that represent horror you'd be much better off going with Psycho, Night of the Living Dead, Frankenstein, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, or Halloween.

I wasn't poking fun either as I think it's sad that's what people have been led to believe are "horror".

What would you classify movies like The Ring, et al? I'm not a big horror fan, myself, especially not "horror" movies with a lot of blood and guts. Not because I'm scared of it or anything, but just because it doesn't affect me in any way. I like suspenseful movies that keep you on edge, not that attempt to gross you out (ie/ Saw 1-56).

I don't really see how "Psycho" can be lumped in with "Night of the Living Dead" and "Texas Chainsaw". It was more of a suspense flick. Heck, we watched it in class back in high school. Hitchock deliberately made it in black and white so the shower scene wouldn't gross out the audience.

There are obviously different genres of horror. I've even heard Godzilla flicks classified as such. I see a few obvious divisions: monster flicks, slasher flicks, suspense flicks, etc.

Psycho is the basis of the slasher film, so therefore it can easily be lumped in there. Sure there's a lot of suspense there but that's more of the way Hitchcock did things anyway. Suspense is a big thing in horror films, although something that would be your typical suspense film wouldn't be considered horror without the grizzly imagery or morbid subject matter, which Psycho has a consderable amount of.

I respectfully disagree with counting "Psycho" as the basis of the slasher flick. Sure, what became slasher films have elements of Norman Bates in them....but as a film, "Psycho" has more in common with Hitchcock's "Frenzy" than "NOTLD" or "TCM".

The lengths the weirdo in "Frenzy" goes to to dispose of a body is a good example of the obsessive freak from future slasher flicks. But nobody's ever referred to it as a slasher or horror movie. Both flicks are about a twisted killer going after women, but Psycho has a scene of "disturbing imagery"-- the mom's corpse all dressed up. While "Frenzy" has death and corpses, it doesn't have anything as spooky as that. Would that be enough to jump it into "slasher horror"?

As a kid, I had heard the reputation of "Psycho" as being the quintessential horror flick. But when I finally saw it (in school, no less), I didn't think it was horror at all. To relate it to modern films, I'd say it's more like "Silence of the Lambs". Would you consider "Silence of the Lambs" horror?

I'm not trying to stomp on any of your ideas, I'm just curious about this classification and think it's worth y'know...discussing on a discussion board.

I kind of agree with you, I think, eVe. I don't understand how slasher flicks are in the same category as ghost flicks or movies like the Hannibal series.

I was still waiting for someone to DEFINE horror movies for me, so I went to Wikipedia (which I hate, BTW, but it served my purpose for this discussion) and found a very interesting article concerning the development of horror movies in pop culture and the different sub-genres.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_Film

This is the first paragraph, for those of you who want the short version...

I think that sums it up nicely. "Horror movies" are those movies "designed to elicit fright, fear, terror or horror from viewers." So, ergo, any movie that is made with the intent to frighten its audience, whether that fright is in the form of gore, supernatural beings, or thoughts of what the world might be like post-apocalypse, fit into this genre.

"Psycho" is definatively been considered by most to be the "basis" of the slasher film. When people hear the words "slasher film" they think nothing more than Michael Myers and Jason. That's certainly a major part of the most successful side of things but it's not categorically what a slasher film is. Basically and sorry if this is spoiling anything, I have to use it here for the argument....but Norman Bates is running around as his mother killing people. That in and of itself is a slasher film. As it's basis for being "horror" it certainly is. There is suspense but that was Hitchcock's forte. "Psycho" is a film about a mentally disturbed man who as a mother obsession and murders people with his motel as the setting. There is also a whole Italian film subgenre of horror called "Giallo" that is basically a Italian thriller. It's also one of the bases of the slasher film. Plus the fact that the Janet Lee character gets killed so early in the film is certainly something that is a "horror" theme, which he was the first to do and show's his intent. He is trying to scare the shit out of the audience and make them feel unsafe as the top billed actress in the film was killed early, therefore putting you in a difficult position as the viewer.

Although I see where you are going with "Frenzy" as it's certainly a base for what the slasher film does, but the fact that it was released after a good portion of the Italian "Giallo" films, it didn't change the landscape of things like "Psycho" did. Also to me "Frenzy" is kind of like a horror movie meets "The Fugitive".

"Silence of the Lambs" is certainly you're prime example of a police procedural horror film.

Not at all. I welcome the discussion.