The Happening Review - Written by Spaldy

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel
Written, Produced, & Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan

The influence of Alfred Hitchcock has always been very visible in M. Night Shyamalan’s films. Shyamalan lifts a lot of what is great about Hitchcock for his own work: the slow build up of tension, surprises, and making the viewer picture some of the darkest moments of the film in their minds rather than throw it up on the screen.

“The Happening” is the story of an event in the Northeast of the United States. There really isn’t much more you can say to describe the movie without giving away the story. Not that there is much of a story here. But in the interest of protecting readers who do not want to know what happens, I will warn you right now the rest of this review (minus the final paragraph) will be nothing but spoilers.

The movie starts at the same time that this strange phenomenon begins and point to Shyamalan for diving right into the action. We open in Central Park on a weekday morning where suddenly everyone just seems to stop moving. Some begin to walk backward. Some do nothing. And then they start to commit suicide. The film follows the progress of the event as it radiates, but considering the explanation for the phenomenon and the rapid way is spreads, it never quite makes sense how New York media can report on the story in the city. Yet this is just what happens.

In nearby Philadelphia, panic starts to set in over the possibility that the event is a terrorist attack that might soon be repeated in their city. Mark Wahlberg is Elliot Moore, a high school science teacher who is preoccupied with the recent distantness of his wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel). Elliot’s very neurotic best friend Julian (John Leguizamo) is the high school math teach who is hustling to get his wife and daughter Jess as far away from town as possible. Julian has a bad feeling about the event in New York and invites Elliot and Alma to join him and his family at his house out in the country. Elliot, Alma, Julian, and Jess manage to catch one of the last trains, but Jess’ mother gets caught in traffic and is left behind. Thus starts the downward slide of Julian and the fall of the Northeast.

The acting in this movie was surprisingly wooden and full of pregnant pauses. These kinds of issues are usually the fault of the director and it is a very strange thing that after having so many opportunities to make films that Shyamalan had these problems here. Wahlberg and Leguizamo are very capable actors but the first half of the film felt like the line readings of a student film. It was a very strange thing to watch. Even though I really loved the characters of Elliot and Alma, I felt like the script kind of failed them in a lot of ways.

The story was an interesting idea though it came off a bit heavy handed. I like the idea of the every day ordinary things like plants becoming deadly so suddenly. Not since “Day of the Triffids” has shrubbery been so threatening. The idea has a lot of built in tension and in the case of one really great scene with Mark in an office, great set up for comedy as well. However, the story just does not really seem to work in the end. The event is never fully explained to anyone’s satisfaction and the cop out of saying that nature is a mysterious beast does not cut it for me. It is especially frustrating for the answer to be “it just happened and we don’t fully realize why” and then see the main characters moving back to the city. Really? You just narrowly escaped a phenomenon with a 100% kill rate that starts in highly populated cities and decide that when it subsides you just have to move back there and start a family? I don’t think so. I don’t care how much I love cheese steaks, Constitution Hall, or “Rocky,” that town would be dead to me. And not only because it is filled with the rotting corpses of a couple million people that committed suicide, but also because “it just happened” is not a good enough answer for me to consider Philadelphia as a viable place of residence.

In some ways I really liked the film. The tension was so well done, and I really respect that element of the film. On the other hand, it fails as a movie because it is only entertaining for the first half of the film really. Once the explanation starts to come out, the film really falls apart. Shyamalan has always been able to nail tension in the first act and sometimes the second act of his films. However, he seems to have a lot of trouble with the final act. Although a vast improvement over the terrible “Lady in the Water,” this movie is still difficult to recommend. I can’t imagine DVD would do the tension much justice, so seeing it in the theatre might be your best bet to enjoy this film. However, as the ending is a bit of a let down, spend your money with caution if you are thinking of catching it in theatres.