Let's guess the twist in The Happening!
M Night Shyamalan has a new movie out next week. Matt Edwards puts forward his early theories for what the twist could be...
Matt Edwards
Like most people, I'll probably entirely ignore M Night Shyamalans new film, The Happening, when it hits cinemas on Friday 13th. It's a tactic that worked out really well for me with Lady in the Water. I've never seen that film and things have been going great.It's not so much that M Night Shyamalan is a bad filmmaker. Rather, his insistence on 'twist' endings has turned from an inventive plot device (The Sixth Sense) to almost self-parody (The Village). It feels like a cheap trick that doesn't even have first-viewing impact anymore because when you see his name above the film's title you know its coming.
The Happening has yet to be screened for critics, apparently in an effort to protect the inevitable twist ending of this film from ending up online. So what could it be? Here are my thoughts on what the latest twist in the Shyamalan saga could be.
It turns out that Bruce Willis was a ghost all along
Granted, it doesn't appear that Bruce Willis is actually in The Happening, but that would only serve to make this twist that much more surprising. It would also disregard the plot that is suggested by the trailer, throwing us, the audience, a real curve ball.
It turns out that everyone but Bruce Willis was a ghost all along
Again, we're relying on Willis being present, something that seems massively unlikely. But I fell into the ‘Bruce Willis definitely isn't going to be here' trap in Grindhouse and I won't be fooled again. This ending would raise the question as to how everyone but Bruce Willis died in the first place, but you only need to watch Die Hard once to know that it would take something pretty monumental to take Willis out.
The mass suicides in the trailer are all men, desperate to get out of seeing Sex & The City The Movie
Makes sense. I'm lucky in that there is no pressure on me to see Sex & The City, but I have friends who haven't been so lucky. The looks on their faces as they leave work that evening, it's like they're saying "I'm about to see dead people". Very sad. The plot would perhaps be Mark Wahlberg, who is a masculine action hero type, going round and telling men to butch up a bit and just say they don't want to see it. But then at the end it would turn out that he'd seen it himself and actually quite enjoyed it. Ahh, what a twist!
The mass suicides in the trailer are all movie executives who financed Speed Racer
The twist in this one would happen early on. All the stuff from the trailer would happen in the first ten minutes. Hollywood finds out the opening weekend box office for Speed Racer and thousands commit suicide. Then the film switches in tone and becomes a comedic satire of Hollywood and the film industry. This doesn't seem against the realm of possibility, given M Night's apparent disdain for the LA movie machine.
It turns out that men’s colds really are worse than women’s
It turns out that the women who have gone nuts have some incurable bird flu and have to be quarantined. The men get told to get plenty of rest and in a few days they will stop wanting to kill themselves. After all, it is just a cold. Then the last twenty minutes are just Marky Mark eating chicken soup, blowing his nose and watching Countdown and The Jeremy Kyle Show.
It turns out that it isn't even called The Happening
The film follows just like you'd think it would from the trailer; people are getting ill and then committing suicide whilst Mark Wahlberg runs around trying to find out what's going on. Then, fifteen minutes before the end a new character is introduced and then all the dead come back to life as zombies. A new title flashes on the screen; Al Pacino as Scarface Vs. The Army of Darkness. Then Scarface battles zombies until the film is over. Which would be amazing.
As I understand it, Ladbrokes are not taking bets on this. But perhaps placing a bet with your friends will spice this movie up.
09/06/08
What's the twist? What's the twist?
