What’s Happening?
When I was a little girl, my dad once said to me—in line for either the water slides or some unknown roller coaster; I’m don’t remember which, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t my idea—”Hey, sometimes it’s fun to be scared.” Even at the time, I was pretty sure he was either wrong or lying. And that, ladies and gentlemen, boils down the basics of why this blog pretends that horror movies don’t exist. I don’t like to be startled; I don’t want to sleep with all the lights on. I don’t want to be a grown woman who’s just waiting for some Child of the Corn to come wandering into her bedroom as she sleeps. Alone.
Which makes me uncertain about The Happening. I like the poster, with all the abandoned cars; I keep telling myself that maybe it’s just a suspense thing. I like suspense. And I sometimes dig M. Night Shyamalan. After all, The Sixth Sense is my usual rule of thumb for scariness, the approximate ceiling of what I’m willing to subject myself to. So, you know, maybe fair game, right?
It’s true that I’ve skipped his last couple of projects, but that was a function of their being bad, not scary; I did see Signs and survive. But The Happening, as the ad campaign associated with it loves to remind us, is rated R, a first for the Shyamalan universe. And that makes me nervous—they don’t rate suspense movies R for nothing. So I guess that’s the question: does The Happening move Shyamalan from suspense and the supernatural into full-fledged horror territory? And how many minutes of the movie would it take me to figure that out?
Readers, I’m depending on you to let me know: CH-friendly, or no?
The Happening, M. Night Shyamalan, The Sixth Sense, Signs
June 7th, 2008 at 7:04 am
I’m with you on the scary scale - Sixth Sense is about my limit. Still - my family keeps trying to pull me across that boundary with the old, “You’ll like it - be okay - be glad you did,” or “You are such a baby” routine. Too scary is not fun.
June 9th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
I know! There’s a certain flowery-named monster movie they’ve been working on me for. You and I can sit and cringe together.
June 16th, 2008 at 12:12 am
[...] 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 [...]