I Will Never Understand People

Rating: 10/10 (13 June 2008)

M. Night Shyamalan has created a very original story with a lot of creative ideas, amazing tone and brilliant shock and suspense scenes that would make even Hitchcock proud. So why all the hate for such an awesome movie? The only conclusion I can come up with is that either people just love to hate on Shyamalan, as was evident with The Village, or they just wanna see more rehashing. People must love love all of the sequels(Indiana Jones 4, The Incredible Hulk), remakes and adaptations(Speed Racer, Iron Man), and the straight forward rip-offs(The Strangers, The Ruins), etc. etc. Don't get me wrong, I liked most of these movies with the exception of the rip-offs and Speed Racer but The Happening is far superior because it actually has originality. It truly, in my opinion, is the greatest movie of 2008 so far and maybe the best movie of the past few years.
I loved everything about the story. The thing about Shyamalan is that people always complain about his movies being unbelievable or unrealistic and this simply makes me angry. A movie is not to be watched the intention of learning about the world, it meant to be watched to see a story. It doesn't need to be realistic, it doesn't need to follow some sort of snobbish standard. It's art for God's sake! Anyways, back to what I was saying about the story. It moves amazingly well and I was upset to see it finally end because I wanted it to keep going. There are a lot of shocking and very disturbing moments which is why I was surprised that more horror fans weren't impressed. After all of his PG-13 films, I thought this would have had very little violence and barely deserved the R rating because most of his movies have been pretty tame. I'll tell you right now that it definitely earned the R rating. It is one of the most gruesome and disturbing Hollywood releases I've seen in a long time.
I also wanted to mention how people have been complaining so much about the acting in this film. It was definitely bizarre and awkward but I thought that it followed along with the story and helped the movie create its own little world in that sense. I thought the whole cast did a great job.
Don't buy a ticket to this one if you want to see another rehash of something that's already been done. It is a truly different film and I think it is ahead of its time. Shyamalan is one of the only directors out there still doing original work, and he does a damn good job of it if you ask me.