Clarification
Why do I do this to myself? Why do I pretend I might like movies like The Happening? Is it some kind of peer-pressure thing? All the cool kids are white-knuckled and squinch-eyed in the theater, so I should be, too? Clearly, anything beyond Bambi on the creep scale is not to be endured. I know this about myself. Did I really think I was going to make it to the theater for whatever it is M. Night Shyamalan has up his sleeve?
They had me at the white-faced, bloody-nosed zombie. Now, I like a good creepy moment as much as the next girl (as long, of course, as the next girl doesn’t really like creepy moments). The people falling from the sky? Call me callous, but I think that’s a pretty awesome shot. But that zombie/alien colonist/James Carville freaks me out. As soon as the extended trailer hit my TV, the debate was over. Nothing but kittens and rainbows and unicorns for me, okay? I live in a Lisa Frank world. I’ve accepted that.
Apparently, everybody else agrees, or perhaps they’d just rather watch a green monster stomp all over the U.S. Army. The Happening came in third at the box office this weekend (trailing The Incredible Hulk by $24 million and the second weekend of Kung Fu Panda by $4 million, which doesn’t bode well for the alien zombie folks and their marketability). A $30 million first weekend isn’t terrible—plenty of movies you may have seen this year have opened to cooler audience responses—but it’s not enough to make Shyamalan’s film, which was a hard sell anyway due to the box-office failures of his previous two movies, a legitimate threat to the Hulk. Would The Happening have been a box-office winner in, say, April? I’d tell you, but then I’d be sleeping with the lights on for a week.
The Happening, The Incredible Hulk, M. Night Shyamalan, box office, box office totals, Kung Fu Panda, horror movies
June 16th, 2008 at 11:19 am
anything beyond Bambi on the creep scale is not to be endured.
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Yeah, that pretty much describes my feelings on scary movies. I was so ready to leave the theater about a third of the way through The Sixth Sense. *shudder* I’m glad I’m not the only one.