I love M Night Shyamalan. Well, let’s be accurate - I love his films. Or, even more specifically - I love his approach to films. Or, to be sniper-level accurate - I love his approach to a film’s story.
“What’s you favourite of his films?”
Well thank you for asking convenient O/S voice. My favourite is… nope, not Sixth Sense. Nope, not Signs. Nor Old. MY favourite is The Happening.
“But why? What is wrong with you? Were you dropped on the head as a child?”
Hurtful, convenient O/S voice. No … I think, but I have a reason for that being my favourite of his films, and Ill tell you why because otherwise what’s the point of this post?
The Happening is…. not a good film. But most metrics. As an art form I don’t like using adjectives like bad to describe films. Beauty is, after all, in the eye of the beholder.
If you know you know.
However I do understand why a lot…
“Ahem"!”
OK, fine, most people don’t like it. I even agree with some of their points. But the metrics of how a film is usually judged and rated is not why I like the film. The reason I do is it’s a ****ing batshit idea! Plants suddenly start making people kill themselves? I mean, come on!
But it’s not the idea in itself - it’s that Shyamalan takes the idea seriously. His imaging was captured enough by it he went and wrote a screenplay, organised financing, went through casting, the whole onerous process of making a film about killer pollen and he gave it the time it deserved to breath (pun definitely intended).
Did it work? Probably not. But by god it wasn’t because he didn’t try.
And the thing is, Shammy has enough a catalogue now that some of his ideas didn’t, or didn’t quite work (step forward The Village) and others that very much did (Signs I’m looking at you). But each one he gave it his bloody all to try and let it live.
Creatives should all learn from Shyam The Man. We may fail, but let it not be because we didn’t give it our best shot.
NOGOA - to be short - nearly defeated me. I won't go too much into the story as you really should read it, but the supernatural elements of the horror take a while to kick to in, which is fine. A writer as talented as Nevill knows the benefits of a maturing tension. But in this case it allowed a sceondary horror to creep in - that of the poverty trap.And that's what stopped me reading. I've been there, of living hand to mouth and that despair of seeing no way out, and Nevill portrayed it perfectly. I don't know if he intended it that way and one day In intend to ask him, but it was so close to the mark of one of my very real fears that when the regular horror kicks in and people started dying that it was actually a relief.And that's what sticks out to me for this book. Nevill tapped into a very real fear of mine, and for a while it made me put the book down and walk away, because it was just that much too close to the mark. And at teh end of the day, it was far more frightening then an kind of supernatural haunting, and by a long margin.I've tried to include that in my own writing. In Grind, my story in Fox Spirit's Pacific Monsters, my horror wasn't being trapped on a barren island by a half-seen ocean creature. It was that the humans there could let the tension break them in npredictable ways, it was that the main character may never see his child again.We all see the monsters in our mind differently, but we all understand the terror of being separated from our children.
Anyway, now I've managed to frighten myself all over again, I'm off. Toodles. Michael
For those who don't know, Nemesis Games is the fifth book in the Expanse series of sci fi novels, which follow Captain James (why is it always James?) Holden and his merry around the inner solar system in a hard sci fi version of our nearish future.To cut to the chase, you should read this series. The hard and realistic application of politics over long distances has me pushing The Expanse series as Game of Thrones in space, and I've managed to get misters (they're a writing pair) Corey a few extra readers (No need to thank me, but a names character wouldn't go amiss).But, Nemesis Games in particular..... it's often harder to learn something from a good piece of art then it is from a bad one. By definition, a good piece of art is good at more than one thing, so it can be difficult to pick exactly what was good about it. And that certainly is the case here. The pacing is steady where it needs to be, racing where appropriate. The action is mind blowing in its scope, without crossing that indistinct line into silly, and the characters are believable.... ah, there we go. Characters. Or, more specifically, the crew of the Rosy. Or even more specifically, the Captain, James (always James!) Holden.Here's a thing - one rule writers are always told is avoid the White Knight protagonist. They're boring, they avoid conflict. Bad bad bad. And Holden is about as cookie cutter a White Knight as they come. He always does the Right Thing, will never do anything which could hurt someone else, even if they deserve it, plays by every single rule, and will go out of his way to be honest accommodating.And yet, Holden manages to be the biggest conflict creator in the actual solar system.Corey gets around this by making Holden's decisions be the creator of conflict in others. Semi spoiler alert for the first book, but him insisting on following his moral code of being open and truthful almost sets of a civil war int he first book. Twice.That neat little sidestep alone would make Holden a worthy main character, but Corey compounds the interest by giving him more complicated sides, in the form of his crew.