Not Happening

M Night's Newest Dud


The Happening is not very happening. Since The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, it’s been all miss and no hit for director M. Night Shyamalan. This flick raises a bunch of questions immediately and judging from my calculations, is a sort of vegetation-runs-amok/environmental “turn-on-the-humans” doomsday scenario. I guess it must be M. Night’s comment on Global Warming, Ecology and the possibility of environment’s retaliation.
The film focuses on a few main characters running from an unknown virus that could be caused by nature’s ability to spread toxins in the air. The plot unfolds essentially as people in various city parks begin to halt what they’re in the middle of doing, then either walk backwards, repeat themselves, and/or stare blankly. But they ALL end up killing themselves. Animals seen to go by unscathed as plant-life goes berserk in Mother Nature’s version of mass suicides, sans the Kool-Aid. M Night doesn’t make horror movies; he makes long Twilight Zone episodes. Most of M’s tricks are here, some worthy of the sneaky repetition but mostly resembles a tired hack genre getting old. Even his mandatory Hithcock-esque cameo isn’t onscreen—its there, but the credits is where you’ll find it.
Right when it gets eerie it gets stupid. By far the worst part of The Happening is the absolute unbelievability of the characters and the actors’ performances. The scene establishing friendship between Elliot (Mark Wahlberg) and Julian (John Leguizamo) is about as phony as movie dialogue gets. And Elliot’s marriage to Alma (Zooey Deshannel) isn’t remotely convincing, as the actors prove void of portraying anything beyond stick-people. There is bad soap opera dialogue running rampant, laden with idiotic bits of attempted tension-releasing comedic banter. The moronic relationship between the two leads is so cute and demeaning, I almost left the theater. Wahlberg plays a guy who keeps it together in the face of doom but his wimp-voice and cry-baby attitude dominate the entire evacuation sojourn. He literally just walks thru the role. He had a few chances to chew up the scenery and this would’ve been a perfect opportunity; eat the scenery and save the world. Instead he’s a perpetual one-note grimace. Zooey just runs around batting her baby blues like some kind of coma victim showing us vapidity gone wild. Responding to the theory that terrorists have devised a toxin to make people kill themselves Alma utters the ridiculous line, “Just when you think no more evil could be invented…”
There are Major plot holes in this thing; is the toxin carried by the wind? Is plant life the species attacking? If so, why did they allow a car to smash into their brother, the tree? The best part of the whole film is the photography and I think M Night knows this. Here he tries to take our mind off how lame this movie is by letting us luxuriate in the pretty scenery-even if it could be evil. Using cinematographer-legend Tak Fujimoto he scores big. The coolest stuff is simply the wind rustling leaves in the trees or the ability to make breeze-blown grass in fields look creepy— no insipid dialogue just visuals. The silent parts speak the loudest. And thanks to an upgrade of an R-rating we get some blood-spewing and clever ways of certain demises: death by lawnmower, zoo lions mauling a keeper, and workers dropping off construction sites.
You will have to decide for yourself: is it a voice for environmentalists, an attempt at thought-provoking insight to our bad choices in the world, or the what-ifs? What if plants took over and got mad at us for screwing up the planet so bad.
In the end this movie’s message (stay with the one you love) turns out to be cute, not creepy or scary. The only thing that kept me in my seat was to watch for all the clues to M. Night’s twist ending. The twist is that there is no twist. Apparently M. Night has given up on twist endings and on giving us decent movies to watch. The Happening is all about the quest to find a safe haven. Maybe M. Night should find one and stay there for a while.

The Happening
Starring Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschannel, John Leguezamo
Written/Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
 1/2 star