The Still Featuring The Actors | Zooey Deschanel and Mark Wahlberg search the horizon for a movie with a vaguer titled than The Happening.
Don’t worry: I’ll warn you before I get to the spoilers. The real problem in reviewing M. Night Shyamalan’s latest, The Happening, is trying to pinpoint exactly who its target audience is. It’s far too plodding for horror fans, much too graphic and violent for those who lean toward thrillers... it won’t even satisfy the few moviegoers who can actually stand Mark Wahlberg. I have a sneaking suspicion that this movie was made for one person and one alone: M. Night Shyamalan.
Sure, The Sixth Sense was a fantastic, out-of-nowhere little chiller, but its follow-up, Unbreakable (a creepy love letter to comic books) lacked the same “special something.” Then again, I thought his alien invasion flick Signs had its fair share of creepy moments (although my hand felt a little clammy afterwards from Shyamalan leading me through the entire thing).
But somewhere around this point in his career, things started to go wrong for him creatively—ironically, just when Disney (the studio responsible for his biggest hits) decided to give him free rein over his projects. Suddenly the man touted as the filmmaking prodigy who was the next Hitchcock and the next Spielberg combined started making really bad movies: the Outer Limits ripoff The Village and the so-bad-it’s-funny Lady in the Water. He took very little responsibility for both disasters, blaming studio interference on quality and content. Disney called him difficult.
What’s a genius to do? Well, the only option for Shyamalan was to jump over to the greener pastures of 20th Century Fox, who not only promised him the same amount of freedom as Disney, but also the tempting offer to try making more adult-oriented scare fare. A promising prospect, but The Happening might be the R-rated rope he’s hung himself with.
WARNING! SPOILERS BEGIN HERE!
Things start with off a bang (well, a gentle breeze) as we come across a pleasant New York afternoon in Central Park... pleasant, that is, until everyone begins offing themselves in various gruesome ways. Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, a science teacher (Wahlberg) describes how millions of honeybees have gone missing and no one knows why. Could these phenomena be connected? And if so, how?
Screw it. I’ll tell you how. Everyone suspects terrorists, but in actuality, plant life has started producing an airborne neurotoxin that negates all sense of self-preservation in humans, causing anyone who gets a whiff to stop in their tracks and commit suicide with whatever’s handy—a hairpin, a combine, an closed window... even, in one particularly ludicrous scene, a hungry lion.
Because the toxin seems to be sticking to the east coast (Why? Science.) Our heroes—the clueless teacher, his twitchy wife (Zooey Deschanel), and his weepy work-buddy (John Leguizamo)—make a run for the countryside, thinking their city is a possible target for the toxin. But as they head farther into farmland, they realize that it’s not Osama that’s out to get them; it’s their front lawn. So begins 90 minutes of people running in terror from tall grass and stiff winds.
SPOILERS END.
The Happening is just foul, from its absolutely awful acting (Deschanel looks ready to bust out laughing at any second), to Shyamalan’s tasteless attempts at “scariness”—he lost me at a scene showing construction workers plummeting from a skyscraper that’s so gratuitously graphic I wanted to leave the theatre.
Am I being a dick about this movie? Perhaps, but I might have been kinder if I hadn’t noticed M. Night giving himself an acting credit as a fucking text message. The Happening is a toothless, pointless example of the hyper finally succumbing to the hype, and it could very well dot the i on Shyamalan’s career suicide note.
...I hope I didn’t wreck the ending for you.
