I mean, we go from a shot of a guy feeding himself to a lawn mower to a dancing boom mic scene, then two kids get offed by a shotgun with extreme closeups. kapow.

maybe it’s his (SHAMALAMADINGDONG’s) way of not taking the story too seriously. like, “hey everybody, this is kind of gross and really scary, but it’s just me making some money. er, a movie.”

iT MUST BE HIS IDEA OF A FUNNY m. nIGHT SHAMALAMADINGDONG THING. I THINK IT MAKES A MOCKERY OF FILM MAKERS WHO ACTUALLY CARE!!!!

One thing it has going for it, the story touches on bio-warfare against the population.

One thing it has going against it, the film is chock full of people killing themselves with whatever is nearby.

I can’t see this as a family feel good hit or a film you want to see again like Iron Man….

790… That’s top shelf! LMAO

Yeah Elliott, so were the disease, the audience, you and me, all of us the Problem!

Nice message MkMight Shamilanski.

Extreme anti-human behavior. Allmost like he’s telling us, “Hey I’ll kill you all, better start liking my movies, or this is you man!!”

That’s just how I see it.

Vic

If you found a lot of posts saying it happened in this film (as I have found as well) then I would argue that your explanation is not the reason for it.

Vic

I looked around the internet to see if it happened to anyone else. I saw a lot of posts about it happening, but also replys that said their showing was fine. I pinned it down to the projectionist not changing the screen size to the proper format, as there were a lot of people who said that the boom mic in frame happened on other movies (ones which I saw in theaters and did not see the boom mic).

I’m a bit of a film maker myself, and I’ve watched dailys from large budget movies. Like tv, there s a “title safe” box, and as long as the boom mic doesn’t enter that region, the footage is usable. Unfortunately, when the theater projectionist doesn’t squeeze the movie screen to the matching format of the movie, those unsafe areas show up, and we can see the boom mic, as well as stage hands, camera and lighting equipment, etc.

So I guess the thing to do as soon as you see a boom mic dip into frame is to find a theater employee, and get them to fix the screen format.

http://www.filmbuffonline.com/ReadingRoom/TheHappening.htm

” As reports of strange deaths begin to come in from cities around the world, some believe that the mysterious deaths are part of a coordinated terrorist attack, while others argue that there is no one connection between the cities so far targeted. The school where Elliot teaches science is dismissed. Elliott races home to collect Alma and then meet his friend Julian and his child at Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station in order to head out to the presumed safety of the New Jersey countryside. But it is only after they begin their trek do they begin to realize the scope of the death toll. People in big cities, small towns and cars parked on the New Jersey turnpike all succumb to the urge to kill themselves. Elliot begins to realize that the deaths aren’t the result of a terrorist attack, but are being caused by the release of a toxin by the surrounding plant life in an evolutionary last-ditch attempt to protect themselves from the predator that endangers them the most- man.”

The author of the article was fairly impressed with the first draft, but the concept just seems silly.

Of course, I suppose one could say the same for “Ratatouille”, and we both loved that movie, so who knows for sure (and as a result of that film, I hesitate to completely balk at any concept no matter how preposterous, without seeing the results). I suppose a lot depends on how well it’s executed. It might be really good, it could be crap or any ratio of the two extremes in between. Shayamalan has proven himself capable of both.