Unbreakable
Word count: holding steady at zero
The cat and I watched Unbreakable tonight. She was unimpressed, but I was blown away, which means this entry will be very similar to those for Signs and The Sixth Sense. Once again, I knew something odd was going on, and in the end that slight tickle of a breeze turned out to be a baseball bat headed straight for my temple.
But in a good way. M. Night Shyamalan is superhuman - with just one reluctant superhero, he makes the X-Men movie machine look…well, like a comic book. In fact, he makes 99% of movies look like comic books; I wish I understood, or could express, how.
One thing in particular I wonder: could his sort of surprise ending could be done in a novel, or is essentially a visual effect? I was trying to think of an example of a surprise ending in literature; the best I could come up with was mysteries, but even then you always know that the truth will out, and that the genre practically demands that it be a shocker. That’s not quite the same as being lulled into thinking you have a handle on this movie, right up until the moment baseball bat meets temple.
I have a new story idea, so I should be back to writing by tomorrow. The story already has a theme and several other goals - I want it to answer my Leather-clad challenge and to be ready in time for Die J/C Die Phase II, but I think a surprise ending could be squeezed in there somehow. I just need to figure out what that ending is.