Tagged: The Happening

Review: The Happening (DVD)

Following the miscue with Lady In the Water and the disappointing The Village, M. Night Shyamalan needed a bounce-back movie that proved he could still create effective cinema. While The Happening may not be a complete vindication, it is a step in the right direction toward re-establishing himself has an effective thriller and suspense director.

The Happening is also noteworthy in that it is the first R-rated feature Shyamalan has ever made. While The Happening is an R, it places its use of those freedoms appropriately into cinematic intensity, rather than needless excesses.

The opening sequence is a perfect example of this judicious lack of restraint; two female friends are talking in a city park; one of them stops mid-sentence, repeats herself and then, as her friend is reacting to some off-screen horror, she withdraws a knitting-needle-like hairpin from her hair, places the point of it at her own neck as her friend turns back to see what she is doing, and then begins – slowly – to plunge the needle into her own neck.

What makes the film an R is not a bunch of frivolous nudity or a huge, gory gunfight, but simply the fact that Shyamalan allows his camera to linger a bit longer on the horror unfolding on-screen. In a PG-13 cut of the film, we would have seen the needle poised at her neck, then cut away to a close-up of her friend screaming; in the R-rated edit, we see the needle pierce the neck.

That’s the difference and even in this excess, Shyamalan shows judicious restraint, using the lingering camera just long enough to amp up the suspense and growing sense of horror, but not indulging in the gore for too long as to blunt its shock value in the way a teen slasher movie might.

The DVD release follows a rather successful run at the box office; The Happening made $64 million domestically and $163 million in worldwide box office, against a modest, $48 million budget. That’s a huge improvement over Lady In the Water, which made only $42 million domestically and $72 million worldwide against a production budget of $70 million. The Village was extremely successful at the box office and only a critical failure, drawing $256 million worldwide in box office against a $60 million budget.

So, while The Happening made money, which is an improvement, Shyamalan still has a ways to go before it can be said that he’s mended fences with moviegoers enough to draw them back in at the level he did with such films as The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs and, yes, the disappointing but high-grossing The Village.

There is a satisfying number of special features included on the DVD release, including several mini-documentaries that go into detail on the behind-the-scenes stuff and about the only thing they don’t discuss is whether they used Cisco routers for their Internet connections on the set.

The only real complaint here is the lack of a decent commentary track; hearing M. Night, Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel dish on the production would have added to the enjoyment. Other than that, The Happening is a solid DVD release that delivers the goods better than any movie Shyamalan has helmed since Signs.

Hulk smash! (Box office)

Well, it doesn’t quite measure up to Iron Man’s opening, nor does it compete with even the first Hulk movie, but there are several reasons Marvel Studios should be encouraged by Incredible Hulk’s $54.5 million opening. First, it was $20 million ahead of the next-closest feature, Kung Fu Panda, currently in its second week of release; second, it seems like a movie that, rather than losing steam fast on bad word of mouth as the first Hulk movie did, seems to be holding a bit more steady, thanks in part to a cameo by Robert Downey Jr. in his Iron Man/Tony Stark persona, which gave Incredible Hulk some legs off the goodwill generated by the very successful Iron Man movie.

Rather than go with big-name director Ang Lee this time, Marvel went with a lesser name directing, but a more faithful adaptation of its comic book hero. Instead of an artsy mess, this Hulk movie delivers all the expected “Hulk smash!” action that the first one failed to deliver. The film also fields a fresh cast to make the break from the Ang Lee-directed mess complete.

Replacing Eric Bana is Edward Norton as Bruce Banner, and replacing Jennifer Connelly as Betty Ross is Liv Tyler, hot off her appearance in the surprise summer slasher hit, The Strangers. Plus, comic fans were thrilled to see Hulk battling his arch-nemesis, the Abomination, rather than a bunch of stupid Hulk-Dogs. Incredible Hulk is an upgrade in most every respect, including a trim $150 million budget, a third of which the movie has already made back; by the time it has enjoyed its domestic run and raked in some foreign receipts, this is a Hulk film that ought to make money.

As mentioned earlier, Kung Fu Panda held firm at second place with $34.3 million, and just short of $118 million domestically in its second week of release, which should have voice star Jack Black selecting out new home furniture with his royalty payments; followed closely by M. Night Shyamalan’s R-rated The Happening, which did better than expected, raking in $30.5 million to take third place, a take that will certainly be good news after the slim $60 million budget it took to make the flick.

Adam Sandler’s You Don’t Mess With the Zohan was solid in fourth place with about half that take, at $16.4 million; Indiana Jones added $13.5 million in fifth place, once again besting Sex and the City in staying power.

Sex dropped out of the top five but did decent business as alternative programming to the male- and child-dominated selections at the box office. Sex took in $10.1 million in its third week. No other movie cracked the $10 million mark, although four other flicks did $1 million or better. They are Iron Man ($5.1 million after seven weeks in release), The Strangers ($4.0 million), Prince Caspian ($3 million), and What Happens In Vegas ($1.7 million.), which means all Top 10 movies grossed at least $1.7 million or more.