The Happening

Who keeps giving M. Night Shyamalan money to make these movies? Seriously, what studio executive read this script and thought that making this movie would be a good idea? After the disaster that was Lady in the Water Shyamalan comes back with a movie which unbelievably, almost impossibly, may actually be worse. Lousy acting, laughably bad dialogue and a story which is just downright stupid combine to make one terrible movie.

Anyhow the story here is that starting in New York City and then quickly spreading through the Northeast everyone is suddenly killing themselves. Everyone drops what they're doing, seemingly goes catatonic for a moment and then offs themselves anyway they can. Fling themselves off the top of a building, shoot themselves in the head...whatever. What could possibly make people do this? Obviously it must be some kind of terrorist attack or so everyone thinks. There certainly is something bad in the air and people need to flee. And here we meet our main characters, a Philadelphia high school science teacher and his wife along with his friend and his friend's daughter. They get out of the city, inevitably get stuck in the middle of nowhere, the characters begin to do and say things which make no sense whatsoever and the whole movie falls apart as we watch people try to run away from the wind.

Mark Wahlberg has the central role here and his performance is truly awful. Certainly he isn't helped by the hideous script but it really seems as if Wahlberg can do nothing right. He seems rather emotionless for a guy trying to figure out why everyone's engaging in mass suicide. As his wife, Zooey Deschanel goes through the film with a blank stare on her face. Some of the corpses show more life. Most of the other characters we meet make a bad impression if they make any impression at all. Some truly bizarre people wander in and out of this movie. And all of them are forced to spout dialogue which is so bad it often becomes unintentionally funny. Somebody wrote that? Really? Ha-ha. But as bad as the acting and dialogue are it's the story which is the biggest problem. Once the movie reveals what actually is happening it becomes impossible to take the story seriously. Stupid. So very, very stupid. The premise makes no sense, doesn't work at all, and thus the movie is doomed to failure. I really can't fathom that after reading the script anyone actually encouraged Shyamalan to go ahead and make this movie. The Sixth Sense sure was a long time ago.

This movie can be summed up very easily, interesting but lacking plot. M Night spent too much of his budget on casting Wahlberg to afford sufficient special effects to give this movie a cleaner look. With as poor as the effects in this movie are it makes you wonder what they spent the 60 million dollar budget on, they clearly could not have spent anywhere near that The Matrix had a 63 million dollar budget...

This is a suspenseful thriller with a mediocre plot. By far it is M Night's worst movie. There is a reason why this movie was written, directed, and produced by him, because no one else was willing to take a chance with it and after seeing the film you will understand why.

It's not as bad as the Professional Critics say it is, but I can understand why they hated it. The Characterization of basically everyone in the Movie is pretty poor, although Zoey Deschanel, Mark Wahlberg and John Leguizamo does work hard with Material they have and sort of work to a certain degree.

The premise is also a bit problematic, Plants are everywhere and there is no avoiding them if they are releasing Toxins unless you wear some sort of breathing filter and almost none of them got to that in the Film.

But it is a fairly effective Thriller, certainly good enough to watch.

Allow me to provide some background information on my relationship with the films of M. Night Shyamalan: I adored "The Sixth Sense" and still think of it as one of the best films of 1999 and one of the best supernatural thrillers in ages. "Unbreakable" was a fascinating take on the superhero genre. I loved parts of "Signs" to bits and consider the sequence in the basement towards the end of the film one of the finest examples of suspenseful build-up in recent film history. I even liked "The Village" and could easily dismiss "Lady in the Water" as a mere misfire. I was greatly anticipating "The Happening", especially as it seemed to be echoing one of my favorite guilty pleasures- the paranoid 70's sci-fi thriller.

Let's get one thing out of the way- "The Happening" is unbelievably, impossibly, ridiculously, hilariously, inconceivably bad. Normally I would refuse to rate any film that had any good scenes or that was well-directed less than four out of ten, but "The Happening" has to have one of the worst scripts among recent big-budget Hollywood films. It's absolutely shocking how retarded the logic behind this is and how poor so much of the dialogue is. This script began as "The Green Effect", a tremendously poor (trust me, I read parts of it) script by Shyamalan that was soundly rejected and eventually reworked into "The Happening". Having seen the critical reaction to "The Happening" prior to going into the film I found myself pleasantly surprised by basically the first thirty, forty minutes of the film. It was nothing special but it had something going for it, Shyamalan's direction was top-notch, and Wahlberg was playing the sort of goofy science teacher I'd loved (and loved to hate on occasion) in high school.

Then the descent began. The bulk of this film is some of the most hilariously awful crap produced by a talented filmmaker since Schaffner's "Sphinx". Shyamalan, who was using close-ups and steadicam shots to frankly brilliant effect early on, begins to use the same shots to comical effect. There is one painfully, painfully long close-up of Mark Wahlberg pleading for time to think and then calling for his group to 'keep ahead of the wind' that is up there with Nicolas Cage in "The Wicker Man" in terms of hilariously awful acting. That scene may very well be the turning point in the film, with Wahlberg's acting becoming more ridiculous by the second, culminating in a performance that essentially wipes from memory all his tremendous recent achievements as an actor. I don't blame Wahlberg for this, I blame Shyamalan. Wahlberg claims Shyamalan tried to force him into real paranoia so his performance would work better. What happens here (no pun intended) is that Wahlberg ends up looking amazingly uncomfortable for the last hour of this thing and struggles to deliver any reasonable line deliveries.

Okay, I do have to credit Zooey Deschanel for making this movie watchable. Besides being amazingly, ridiculously gorgeous she is a fine actress and creates a sympathetic character (and a fairly well-drawn one at that- one of the few pros in Shyamalan's script). There's also the score: oh my it's gorgeous. Seriously, ignore this film and just buy the score CD by James Newton Howard- it's brilliant.

"The Happening" starts out well but ends up being an absolute embarrassment. I was prepared for a mediocre offering- perhaps a misguided effort such as "Lady in the Water". I was not expecting a disaster on the level of "The Happening". Its last forty minutes and especially its last ten minutes or so are among the worst I have seen in a long time.

Have you ever wondered if it was possible for a film to go from enjoyable to absolutely horrendous in the space of ten or fifteen minutes? "The Happening" is proof that it can, pardon the (intentional) pun, happen.

3/10

After the hype created by Bird Box, it is worth revisiting The Happening which was critically mauled upon its release.

The reason might be M Night Shyamalan who wrote, produced and directed this film. His success in movies such as The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable meant that critics were just sharpening their knives and waited for him to fail.

It starts off shockingly as people kill themselves in New York, such as throwing themselves off a building. The mass suicides soon spreads and the authorities initially think it is some kind of a biological terrorist attack.

Elliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg) is a science teacher at high school in Philadelphia. When the school hears about happening in New York, it causes a mass panic.

Elliot, his wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel) fellow teacher Julian (John Leguizamo) and his young daughter Jess try to escape Philadelphia on the train. The train comes to a halt and they are stranded in the countryside.

Julian goes back to look for his wife who could not make it on the train. Elliot tries to figure out what is causing this phenomenon as they witness more disturbing suicides. He thinks there is something in nature, especially the countryside that is causing the happening.

Shyamalan was let down by Mark Wahlberg, the most unconvincing high school science teacher. Zooey Deschanel was not much better. I know she is supposed to have marriage problems but there was no chemistry here between the actors. Leguizamo would had been better as the lead.

The film itself is much better than its reputation deserves. There is an environmental subtext to it. It is eerie, disturbing and mysterious. I can understand what Shyamalan tried to do and he largely succeeded with a psychological apocalyptic horror. It would had been better with stronger actors.