Well, that Happened.
It’s hard to know what’s safe to say about The Happening. I tend to laugh at people who get worked up about “spoilers,” but at the same time I think there are some movies that should not be spoiled. Sometimes it’s hard to draw a line between what is “spoiling” a movie and what is simply describing it.
I mention this because I don’t think it’s possible to to say anything specific about The Happening without someone thinking you’re spoiling the movie for them. The truth is, everything is laid out for the viewers in the first 15-20 minutes. The rest of the film is simply the unraveling of the premise. This is unusual for M. Night Shyamalan, known for his twist endings and jaw dropping reveals (admit it – you didn’t know he was a ghost). But then, this whole movie felt below par for his work.
The Happening follows a science teacher (Mark Wahlberg), his wife (Zooey Deschanel), along with their friend (John Leguizamo) and his daughter, Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez) as they try to survive a series of “attacks” or “events.” These biological attacks cause victims to become disoriented and confused, then suicidal. The myriad of death scenes and sequences that follow from this premise more than earn this movie its R rating. At times I felt like I was watching an old Bruce Campbell movie in the way each death tried to top the last.
Some of the acting was top notch. Wahlberg and Deschanel occasionally have moments and lines where they make the audience fall in love with their characters. Leguizamo shines in his supporting role, as he always does. However, all the actors spend most of the movie fighting a bad script, forcing out awkward dialogue and trying to make it sound natural. I left with the impression that Shyamalan, impressed with Diablo Cody’s script for Juno, tried to capture the same youthful and trendy banter for his characters. Shyamalan, however, is not Diablo Cody, and Wahlberg’s science teacher winds up sounding like a freshman liberal arts major trying to seem intelligent. You know the guy I’m talking about – the one who has to share his poorly phrased repackaging of everything the teacher says, and thinks he’s impressing his teacher and classmates.
Actually, the dialogue problem is only symptomatic is a silliness throughout the script. Various characters repeatedly demonstrate either a misunderstanding or ignorance of basic evolutionary functions. Plants menace the characters with a toxin, but only when the plants that are blowing in a strong breeze. This lead me to the conclusion that for this movie, not only can plants control their own evolution through force of will and communicate and coordinate biological warfare with other plants; they can also control the wind, stirring up gale-force winds to distribute their poisonous pollen.
I’m pretty sure this isn’t the conclusion I was supposed to draw, though. No, the message of the film is very blatantly “Humans are hurting the environment, and sooner or later it will hurt us back.” This is delivered repeatedly like a slap across the face, being stated explicitly by various characters and screaming through the backgrounds where signs proclaim “You Deserve This” and steam billows from nuclear reactors.
Perhaps that is the meaning of seeing this film. After paying the full price of admission to a movie whose tag-line puns on the director’s previous films, maybe I did indeed get what I deserved. You don’t have to, though. Wait for the DVD. And then try to get someone else to pay for the rental.