Film Noir, The Decay of Modern Cinema and Why The Happening Doesn't Happen #2

You guys, this is, like, totally my first followup post. Yay!!!

Ok, so. As told before by me, there is but one moment that completely and utterly obliterates this fucking movie (The Happening). No, it's not the fact that the ending sucks. No, it's not the fact that, regardless of how believable the plot can be, it still doesn't really add up for a decent horror movie. No, it's not the fact that Wahlberg's acting consists of clean language and a "I wanna take a shit" grin throughout the goddamn movie. And No, it's not the fact that most of the movie happens in the country side as opposed on the movie posters which was kind of a turn off for me.

It's the kids that get blown away by shotguns.

THERE, I FUCKING SAID IT!!!! WHO ON THEIR RIGHT FUCKING MINDS COMES UP WITH A SCENE LIKE THIS?!?!?!?! WHO ON THEIR SHITFULL LITTLE HEADS DARES TO MAKE AN AUDIENCE UNDERSTAND THIS?!?!?!?!?! ARE THEY OUT OF THEIR FUCKING MINDS?!?!?!?!?!

Sooooo....halfway round the movie, after we've put up with seemingly enough bullshit and welcome some cinematic sense anytime soon, our heroes and the addition to the group who are two teenage kids that don't look a year over 16, give or take, wind up in front of this house. Finally, some shelter to protect them from the mean, vicious, sucide inducing plants. As they come closer to the house, I'll say, it started to give me a certain sense of uncertainty while seating in the movie theater with my sister and her friend. I didn't said anything of course, but had you been me, you wouldn't have shaken that feeling either.

Come to think about it, nobody would've shaken that feel of uncertainty. It was a big, old "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" style house. From the outside it looked so decrepit that you could just hear it squick by looking at the damn thing. As the group of survivers comes closer to that house we see how it's pitch dark on the inside...and on the outside there's nothing but old, rotting window wodden blinds and a big ass tree. Old one too, as they say in the movie. So now you have what I called "shit factors" when I saw it. Shit Factors meaning that any of those two can give way to a moment were you conciusly go "Shit, I didn't expect that". Here being the windows and the big ass tree.

The window blinds looked like you could knock them the fuck off with your elbow. Now for some reason, I thought "Imagine what a shotgun could do to those things". We're talking old, non sturdy wooden blinds. AND A BIG ASS TREE, by now, it's pretty clear that anything plant is bad. So what happens? Good guy Wahlberg starts looking inside the house through the cracks in the window and when realising there's movement inside asks for help.

Here's an important lesson in horror movies. People's psyche is fired when watching this movies. I mean, anyone will get inmersed in the storyline of any horror movie, wether it's good or bad. Now, something life has tought us and Death Proof's very own Quentin Tarantino has remarked; In a horror movie, you don't hate the maniac killer, the vicious monster, the underlying threat to people's lives or anything related to that matter. You hate the assholes. The men and women who, among the events that unfold and threaten the very way of life in people, act like utter idiots. They don't help, they don't die and they repeatedly get in the way. We're talking the skeptics or the overly fanatic, the stuborn, the bastards or bitches, and finally the people that take advantage of others. Be it the sassy white bitch or the rapist macho mother fucker.

In this movie, it just so happened to be the owners of said creepy house. Upon asking for help, our hero encounters that the current tenants don't want to open the fucking door and let them in, not because they might be infected, nor because they might bring said sickness into the house. They won't let them in, get this, because according to the owner of the house, Mark Wahlberg and company could be the terrorists. AHA!!!! A redneck asshole who's got his head far up his ass to realize a man, a woman and three minors of which non of them represent a serious threat are not terrorists, even though he could hear them. Wow, talk about hating material.

The scene carries on, the kids get impatient. "OPEN UP BITCH!!!" shouts one of them (By the way, one kid is white the other is black). The one that does stands in front of the doorway, the other starts hollering from a window. The man still refuses and you can feel the tension. Suddenly the voice from inside says somehting like "OPEN THIS" or something and out comes the long, stiff barrel of a shotgun and voila. White kid goes down. Not only does he go down, we get to see from his back how all the little pellets of the shotgun shell pierced right through his whole torso.

Everyone shrieks in fear, the dramatic music get's pumped and just as his friend, the black kid, looks in horror at the bloody body of his now deciesed friend, another barrel comes from within the cracks and points to his right side temple and boom. There goes the black kid. Now, I have to admit that this is horror. True, undeniable horror. The kids get killed, that used to be a big no-no in the horror film industry and only the directors with the cojones and the compelling story line could pull that off. Why then does this scene piss me off so damn much I even dared to write all of this?

Simply put, there is no retaliation. The kids get shot, the other flee the scene and we know nothing of Tim Fuck and the hillbilly gang. Nothing!!!!!Nada!!!!Zero!!!! Two kids, two perfectly and incredubly inocent kids have just been blown away BY FUCKING SHOTGUNS!!!! And nobody does anything. That's it, that's what pisses me off so much. You waste your time and energy creating this scene. You strive to make it perfect, you wanna lead audiences to fear, to hate, to suffer. Good, now were's our goddamn price. As a director/writer/whatever you can't ask that much from an audience.

Hey that's me. Maybe you'd think "DON'T KILL THE KIDS", wereas I think "Go ahead. Kill the little buggers. It adds up for the suspense and thrill of the movie. BUT WERE'S MY FUCKING PAYBACK?!?!". That scene had me haiting a non existing sorce of evil. Non whatsoever. It wasn't enough the guy was undeniebly stupid and wild, clearly he's some country ass boy who, like I said before, must be the sort of stupid white american macho asshole to believe. Firmly hold the fact that this people might be terrorists as truth. Well it isn't enough to lead me into believing this, analysing the situation and draw up conclusions. Now you also want me to swallow up the fact that, not only can't I see his face, but neither do I get to see Trigger McHappy in all his republican gun enthusiastic shitface fucking existence bite the dust.

NOT FUCKING FAIR. You don't do that. The assholes, as unnimportant to the story IS STILL THE ASSHOLE and nothing says satisfaction more in a horror oriented movie, were violence of any kind is condoned, than watching most of this very own violence get wasted senslessly on the one goddamn asshole. Fuck the plants, fuck the people. If somebody really deserved to die, was White Trash Toby sitting on his stupid rural ass on that movie. And it might seem like I'm overreacting but come on. In horror movies, if you're gonna kill the kid, you best make sure someone pays for it. It's hard allready to see someone die from a shotgun blast that's not the bad guy, let alone a kid.

That's what I'm talking about. All I get was a voice, were's the promise that them assholes gonna end up killing themselves? Were's the scene in which the big ass tree gets inside the house and chokes that motherfucker to death? Dude, it's pissy. When you're watching such bullshit all around you, like an unworthy plotline, crappy acting, out of role personalities and stupid solutions to way too over themselves problems, the LAST thing anyone needs is watching the kids get shot, in the chest and in the head....with a shotgun....FOR NO APPARENT REASON...and sitting there as nobody does anything.

That's not the Mark Walhberg I know, that's not how Zoey Deschanel would leave it and there's absolutely no way in fuck end hell M. Nigh Shyamalan would let any of his stories go this bad. Not even a curse word, or a "YOU SHOT A KID, YOU FUCKING BASTARD!!!". Not even a face, I mean not even have a decency to show us what to hate but give us something to hate anyways. Last time I cheked, unfocused anger was not a huge seller.

So if this movie sucked so bad, why invest time on it? Why talk about it silly? I'll tell you why, because there are other examples of better movies. Examples of movies that don't seem to be better movies but are anyway.

This is Mr. Bitchin Telling you, It's all about the audiences true needs. Tune in next time to find out what movies are keeping it real in the revange department, which are the movies that are decaying the medium and what in the holy darn world is all that about Film Noir.