-- Dr. Harold Medford from Them!
“Well, I think Bill's got a point. If you look at the whole life of the planet, we... you know, man, has only been around for a few blinks of an eye. So if the infection wipes us all out, that is a return to normality.”
-- Sergeant Farrell from 28 Days Later
“As a species we're fundamentally insane. Put more than two of us in a room, we pick sides and start dreaming up ways to kill one another. Why do you think we invented politics and religion?”
-- Ollie Weeks from The Mist
The Happening is a very lazy film. It is a shame because the idea showed a great deal of promise. The premise seemed like the perfect film to make M. Night Shyamalan relevant again. Is it as awful as many critics claim? I am afraid it is the worst film that Mr. Shyamalan has ever made. He seems especially disengaged from a film that he is credited with directing, writing and producing. How does he expect the audience to care for the characters and the situations in his films if he does not care? There is something rushed about the whole enterprise. The Happening should be a very terrifying film given the premise. I am not an apologist for the director nor am I one of his many haters. I have always had mixed feelings about his films. I like some of them and others I think are incredibly mediocre. There is a common problem with his films like The Village and to a greater extent with The Happening. He has interesting ideas, but the execution is sloppy and sometimes unwatchable. The Lady In The Water suffers more from the director’s hubris than anything else. It was the casting himself as a very important character in the film that showed me he really did believe his own hype. I like The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable-- they were great showcases for Bruce Willis. Signs has some of the director’s most chilling scenes. In these three films, it is the actors who make the films come to life. All the good scenes are in the trailer-- a big mistake. The film is as bland and dull as they come.
The film opens in New York City. People get confused in Central Park, start repeating their words, stand in place and some of them even walk backwards. Then we hear screams. People start killing themselves. Whether it is a traffic cop who shoots himself, a woman stabbing herself in the neck with a hair pin or construction workers falling off a building, people are starting to commit suicide. After the cop shoots himself, several others follow suit and use the gun on themselves. What the hell is going on? They must have read the script. Why is this going on? What is causing this behavior? For the first several minutes I was willing to follow Mr. Shyamalan on his latest venture. After the initial set up, the film loses its direction. People kill themselves in a variety of ways. The creative suicides seem to be the only thing that interests the director. In Lady In The Water, he was intent on giving it to the critics via Bob Balaban’s character. In The Happening, he is intent on giving it to the audiences who did not like or did not show up for his last film.
High school science teacher, Elliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg) fills in for Bruce Willis and Mel Gibson this time. In the film’s beginning, he is quoting Albert Einstein on how the disappearance of the honeybees will affect humanity. It sets up the theme of the film, but sadly, the film never gets anymore more interesting than this high school lecture. Elliot is called out of class. The schools are being closed because an event is happening-- the word “happening” is used so many times in the film that drinking games can be built around the film. He goes home to his wife, Alma (Zooey Deschanel) and they leave for the train station where they join Julian (John Leguizamo) and his daughter Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez). While on the train, they learn through cell phone conversations from various passengers that the suicides are going on all over the Northeast. The train stops in Filbert, Pennsylvania. The train conductors have lost contact with everyone. Julian decides to leave Jess with Elliot and Alma to go find his wife. The three of them are on their own.
What is causing these violent disturbances in the Northeastern United States? Is it a plague? Is it a terrorist attack? Is the government behind it? A terrorist attack is ruled out as time goes on. The falling bodies at the New York City construction site are meant to evoke memories of 9/11. Speaking of 9/11, the initial fear and tension wear out very soon in the film. This worked much better in films like Frank Darabont’s The Mist, Steven Spielberg’s War Of The Worlds and Matt Reeves’ Cloverfield. The fear and tension that he displayed in Signs is nowhere to be found in this film. What we do learn is causing this “happening” is ecologically driven. What is causing these winds of doom? Is Mother Earth having her revenge on the human race? Did I not just see a variation on this in The Ruins? The mass exodus of people leaving the train and wondering the countryside reminded me of the refugee scenes from War Of The Worlds and the mass evacuations from Cloverfield.
There are a lot of scenes that remind me of elements from other films. When Elliot, Alma and Jess end up at an abandoned farmhouse where an old woman lives, it reminded me too much of the Tim Robbins sequences in War Of The Worlds. Betty Buckley plays Mrs. Jones and her character reminded me of Tim Robbins’s Harlan Ogilvy. Mrs. Jones is not playing with a full deck as we quickly learn; she is completely isolated from civilization; she is completely independent of the outside world. She seems to be a stand- in for M. Night Shyamalan who has always prided himself for operating outside of Hollywood-- living and making movies in Philadelphia. This is nothing to sneeze at, but given that he may have committed career suicide with this film, I am not sure he will be able to operate outside the studio’s perimeter for much longer.
Many have said that the acting in this film is dreadful. I think Mark Wahlberg is an excellent actor, but as Elliot he is not given much to work with. He barely registers in the film. Zooey Deschanel seems perplexed as to why she is in the film. She is a great actress and has a strong comedic presence. She seems to be doing a bad variation of Kat, the character she plays on Showtime's Weeds. John Leguizamo has a throwaway part in the film; he does not have much to do at all. This is the first film from Shyamalan where the acting is utterly non-existent. At least Paul Giamatti registered in The Lady In The Water.
I love bad movies just as much as the next person. They are essential and necessary. This film is not even guilty pleasure kind of bad. I have mentioned several recent films that The Happening reminds me of or is trying to emulate. It does not come close to capturing the moods and intensities of films like War Of The Worlds, The Mist, Cloverfield or even The Ruins. In the ways the event is finally explained, it reminded me too much of last year’s The Invasion with Nicole Kidman.
The Invasion which was another version of The Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. The epilogue of The Happening is lifted straight from 28 Weeks Later. It is safe to say that The Happening is M. Night Shyamalan’s polemic on the environment and how we are harming the planet. I am getting tired of all polemics. Not many people liked it when George Romero preached to us in Diary Of The Dead-- well I did not mind the film, but many people did not like when the subtext became the whole film. Still, Shyamalan’s lecturing is never a good idea. When we learn that is essentially ecological vengeance on the human race, it feels cheaper than his notorious twist endings. No one would ever confuse this film for An Inconvenient Truth. To be honest with you, Godzilla Versus the Smog Monster has more credibility than The Happening as far as environmentally themed films are concerned. The Happening could have done with some much needed direction and engagement from Mr. Shyamalan. He should leave the social commentary to the professionals. Do not preach-- show the audience your beliefs with a great script filled with artistic merit.
