The Happening

Copyright 2008, Twentieth Century Fox

Sigh. I wish, I really do, that I could say this is strike three, without any reservations, for M. Night Shyamalan. I told myself after sitting through the 2004 and 2006 debacles The Village and Lady in the Water that this past summer's The Happening was it. If this was a bad movie, something as bad as those other two misfires, then another M. Night Shyamalan movie I would not see. I wish this was as awful as those two, or at least as awful as people said, but The Happening isn't bad enough for that kind of vitriol. There were far worse films in 2008, and Shyamalan has made far worse movies. My hope is that he's got no more left up his sleeve.

Yes, this is a movie with problems. Many, many problems. First of all, the premise itself. At first glance, the concept works thanks to Shyamalan's skills as a director. Simple shots of people frozen or walking backwards slowly is just a bit creepy. In some way, the first 5 minutes of the film, set in New York City, as people begin killing themselves in gruesome fashion, work very well. In the same breath, they don't work at all. For example, the second NYC scene is set outside a construction site, as four workers tell jokes. They're interrupted violently by the first of many people jumping off the top of the unfinished building. Though the final shot shows about five people sailing off into death, the problem comes before. The first jumper falls and dies instantly; the reaction of the four workers is blankness. No, none of them off themselves in the scene, and only one shows any kind of emotion. Did we miss something? A guy just killed himself. Unfortunately, one of the strange cues in a Shyamalan movie is emotional inertness, and it doesn't let up once we leave the construction site.

The main character is Elliott Moore (Mark "Say Hi To Your Mother For Me" Wahlberg), a high school science teacher in Philadelphia. The plot boils down to this much: he and a colleague (John Leguizamo, underused) find out about the NYC deaths, presumed to be a terrorist attack, and take off for what is hopefully a safe house with family in tow. The family is Elliott's estranged wife, Alma (a truly miscast Zooey Deschanel, and when did you think that would be possible?), and his colleague's daughter. Of course, their train ride to the safe house doesn't go as planned, and Elliott and Alma end up running for their lives, running away from...the grass. The plants. The wind. Let that sink in, and while you do, consider that Wahlberg, for God knows what reason, chooses to read every single line? As if it's a question? And Wahlberg's really annoyed when he's talking? So say hi to your mother for me, okay, chicken? Oh, sorry. He was rubbing off.

Nothing goes much further here than the basic concept and common issues with Shymalan's leading men. They always have issues with their wives, or are so lonely that they have none, and their wives usually have nothing to do aside from look worried or scared. Even though Betty Buckley (as a nutty old lady) livens things up late in the game, a person can make nature look only so scary. On the one hand, I give credit to Shymalan for making an Earth-friendly and timely horror movie, one that requires little special effects, but on the other hand, it's pretty fucking ridiculous to watch Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel run around in the grass for 90 minutes and even more ridiculous to find out what the epidemic is and why it's happening. If more people are going to be convinced of the dangers we are causing to our planet, we have to got to stop making drivel like The Happening.

One and a half stars out of four