It is time for us, the citizens of this grand and glorious nation, to take a stand. To take a stand against the oppression, degradation, economic loss, and irreparable psychological damage caused by a single man. A man, whose reign of terror now stretches almost a decade in length and, despite all rational indications, appears to be growing stronger. He titillates us with the possibility of something that at worst will be interesting and at best will be nigh perfect in its power to entertain and enthrall us. This demon spawn of hell of whom I speak is M. Night Shamalan. And he will wrench our souls from our bodies and take about $9.50 from our wallets. Unless, you have a student ID, in which case you’ll only lose your soul and about six bucks.
You may or may not have noticed that I spelled M. Night’s name incorrectly. I know that there is a y between the h and the a in his last name, but I refuse to spell his name correctly out of principle and encourage you to do the same. Hopefully, if enough of us butcher the phonetics of his surname, we can deflate his ego enough to make him reconsider making whatever shit-storm of a movie he’s writing at this very moment.
Now, I saw The Sixth Sense when it came out in 1999 and I will readily admit that it was thoroughly enjoyable thriller, in spite of the fact that it caused a 3 to 4 year epidemic of people making half-assed jokes involving the phrase, “I see…(insert word here)…people.” However, while the movie was good, I think that people drastically underestimate Haley Joel Osment’s off-the-charts creepiness in the movie’s success. You take that kid out of picture and replace him with any other little tyke (with the exception of Dakota Fanning who is Osment’s female creeper equivalent) and the movie would have been just above mediocrity. I just thank God that the kid never made it into any TV or commercial spots. Can you imagine a Life cereal ad with Haley Joel Osment? Oh, Mikey would like it all right, and then he’d gouge out his brother’s eyes with his cereal spoon.
After The Sixth Sense is where M. Night Shammalamma’s reign of terror truly begins. Since that film came out, the man has written and directed five movies, none of which could be qualified as good. Granted, there are some people who will claim that Unbreakable and Signs were solid, enjoyable films, but I think these people miss what has become one of the key features of a M. Night production: a terrible, trite, and downright stupid ending that ruins everything that came before it. Signs is a perfect example of this as M. Night builds up the suspense of whether or not the world is going to be destroyed by evil extraterrestrials only to bust out the amazing plot twist that the aliens are deathly allergic to water. Water! That’s the best this dumb motherfucker could come up with? The substance covering 2/3 of the fucking earth? Why the fuck would aliens invade a planet that is predominantly made of liquid that burns their skin off? No, no, I’ve got to stop this now because attempting to apply reason and logic to any of this man’s films only leads to frustration and aneurisms.
I went to see Signs, and I ended up going to see The Village as well, which illustrates the second major flaw in all of M. Night’s films: his total inability to write even palatable dialogue. The Village had a cast that included Joaquin Phoenix (two Oscar nominations), Adrien Brody (one Best Actor Oscar), William Hurt (one Best Actor Oscar), Sigourney Weaver (three Oscar nominations), and a bevy of other talented actors. However, in spite of this collection of thespian excellence, the script that M. night wrote for them was so bloody horrendous that I felt like I was watching a high school production of The Crucible. This man managed to flummox the abilities of some of Hollywood’s finest actors with his complete and utter literary handicap. No actor, no matter how talented, could possibly say lines like, “I love you… like the day is long!” or, “We’ll be safe, we have the magic rocks,” with a straight face. It is somewhat needless to say that the shit-tastic “twist ending “ to The Village was really of no consequence because the film was pure drek from the opening credits and you can’t ruin something that was never any good to begin with.
This leads me to this past Friday when I went to see his latest offering, The Happening. I had no expectations for this movie whatsoever and knew beforehand that seeing it would be an exercise in masochism, but I went anyway. Part of the reason I went was that my friend wanted to see it and agreed to pay for gas and parking, but the other part was a morbid curiosity as to how M. Night Shamalan could possibly find new ways to fuck up a good premise for a movie. The idea behind The Happening, that some chemical or force reverses our survival instinct, causing us to become intensely suicidal, is a good one. However, true to form, M. Night managed to screw it up with his horrendous dialogue and a gut-wrenchingly sappy, pandering message of eco-consciousness. The idea that plants can adapt and “fight back” against our destruction of the planet by releasing spores is just idiotic and it completely ruins an otherwise intriguing premise. And, contrary to what you may think, what I just wrote doesn’t deserve to be prefaced with a spoiler alert because there is nothing to spoil. You will be just as unsatisfied with The Happening whether you know his signature “plot twist” or not.
I feel a great deal of guilt for paying money to see The Happening because I believe it is morally irresponsible, especially in these times of economic downturn, recession, and increased unemployment rates, to support the gainful employment of M. Night Shahmaylan. Just because a man made one good movie does not give him license to make bomb after bomb after bomb. The man is not talented, he is not original, he writes about as well as first-year theater major, and he has some sort of terrible power over us. He manages to get movies green-lighted that should never be in production and he gets the general public to come out in droves to watch films that even Pauly Shore could rightfully call crap. This man is one of the two major cinematic conundrums that I cannot for the life of me wrap my head around (Tyler Perry being the other). All I know is that M. Night Shaminahalalan must be stopped before he makes a movie so truly horrific that gives legions of moviegoers post-traumatic-stress-disorder. Don’t think it couldn’t happen. Thirty-three people had to be committed after they saw Battlefield Earth and a further fifty-two theatergoers were hospitalized with 2nd-degree burns on their corneas after watching Glitter from start to finish. The next film M. Night Shyamallan makes, and there will be a next one, could do even more damage than that.
Gkl
