The Happening - Review

Director & Writer: M. Night Shyamalan
Starring: Mark Wahlberg

I've spent years sticking up for M. Night Shyamalan. After The Village came out, I spent a good deal of time telling people that although the story was fairly lame, the photography and art direction was great. Signs was another flick which I thought was a bit childish but, on the whole, still worth seeing.

Then along came The Lady in the Water, and even I couldn't defend it. I shrugged and thought, "Well, even Shyamalan deserves an off day."

Except deep down inside, I knew that it wasn't an off day. Shyamalan's movies have been suffering from a big dose of amateurish whimsy at least since The Village, and Lady in the Water only confirmed it.

Now we have The Happening. When I saw the trailers for this flick, I couldn't wait to see it. I thought Shyamalan would turn things around and treat us to a very scary humans-run-for-their-lives movie. Instead, he gives us another dud, and I find myself wondering if he even knows how to tell a story anymore. This film is horrible on so many levels that it's a shame it even got made. And I can no longer deny it: Shyamalan's movies just aren't that good.

The Happening starts off in New York City. It's a pleasant enough day. People are hanging out in Central Park, rollerblading, reading a book, walking their dogs, so forth. Suddenly, one by one, they can't speak. They can't hear. They go into a trance. And then they kill themselves with whatever's handy, such as a hairpin, or a pistol.

The chaos spreads throughout the city, as people off themselves one by one. There's a particularly creepy scene where construction workers leap to their deaths, their clothing fluttering in the breeze until they smash to the concrete below.

That's a damn good first act for a movie. It instantly makes you wonder, "What's going to happen next?"

Alas, not a hell of a lot.

We meet Mark Wahlberg, playing Eliot. Eliot's a science teacher in a New York high school. When we meet him, he's giving a speech to his class about how nature marches to the beat of its own drummer. Some things can never be explained. In fact, look at all the bees that have disappeared over the past couple of years. No explanation. Maybe there isn't one. Nature, after all, is mysterious.

After he gave that speech, I shook my head, looked to my neighbour, and grimaced. Eliot's speech was a warning to the audience: this movie is going to suck. Why? Because Shyamalan the writer is using Eliot to tell you that the movie will have no satisfying conclusion. The dialogue is not so much a device to move the plot forward, as it is an opening argument form a defence attorney: "I've written and directed a movie that has a garbage ending, but you won't mind because I told you at the beginning that nature's mysterious. Shit happens."

The "shit happens" device is not new, but it is still insulting. After laying down 12 dollars to see a movie, it always hurts when you're immediately told that the movie isn't worth the price of admission.

I was amazed at how badly the story developed. I don't want to spoil it for anyone who wants to see it (and judging from the box office returns, that's not a lot of people), but fifteen minutes into the film, Shyamalan blows any suspense the movie might have had.

"I think it's the plants," one character says. He goes on to tell us that the trees and plants can talk to each other, and that they probably feel they're under attack, so they're fighting back. Well, so much for the hero discovering the source of the problem and doing something about it. Turns out, that is exactly what the problem is. Plants are mad.

This is old school Gaia stuff, the theory that the Earth is somehow all interconnected and each organism is in secret communication with all of the other ones. The Gaia hypothesis has it that the Earth is self-regulating, and that it "thinks" for itself. It's weirdo science, but you still hear about it sometimes. I didn't think Shyamalan was the type, but then, I've never met him.

I'm no environmentalist, but I'll let a lot of things slide if the story's okay. This one isn't.

In this movie there is no hero. Eliot is just some science teacher, and he and his wife (of course they're estranged, and of course they'll love each other by the end) go from town to town, trying to outrun the "virus." When the wind kicks up, look out! The virus spreads and makes people go into a trance before leaping from cliffs. Of course, you can't actually see the virus. No special effects spores for these plants. Just plain old invisible air, done with a handy wind machine.

The movie is so very bad, it is funny. Watch as one of the central features of the film is a mood ring that Eliot wears. Once upon a time, he'd given it to his wife. Here's the dialogue:

"That's the mood ring you gave me."
"Yeah. The first time I wore it, it turned blue."
"For patience."
"Mine was purple. We thought it meant passion, but all it meant was I was horny."
"What color is love?"
"I don't know."

Good grief.

There's a great moment in the film that I suppose is meant to serve as a subliminal message. After running away from the latest house they've broken into (I think they break into four, and each one represents a new act in the film), the characters end up standing under a real estate billboard. So while they talk about doom and gloom, and the plants get their revenge on some hapless folk down the road, you see the words YOU DESERVE THIS written on the billboard. "Deserve" is underlined. The sign is saying you deserve a nice new house. The movie's saying you deserve to be shot for building it. Cute.

Shyamalan has done something that isn't easy to do: he has created a movie with no good guy, no bad guy, no anything. The plants can't be bad because they only make you shoot yourself in the head. You pull the trigger. They're just giving off gas. There's no good guy because none of the characters are proactive in the least. They don't act, they just react, running away, running away, running away, until the movie's over (the ending is so simple and insulting, it will probably leave you shaking your head). There is not one time in the film where Eliot tries to figure out how to solve the problem, or have a seance with the plants to tell them to play nice. It's all reaction, all the time, which doesn't make for great stories. Who care about a guy that doesn't do anything?

This film has a horrible plot, laughable dialogue, and characters you won't give a damn about. Don't bother seeing it in theatres. You deserve better.