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The Happening film review
THE HAPPENING
Running time: 91 mins
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo, Ashlyn Sanchez, Betty Buckley
In the production notes, The Happening's writer/producer/director M. Night Shyamalan states "My goal was always to make a fast paced movie where you come out paranoid about things happening in the world you never really considered." The reality is the film confirms the doubt that The Sixth Sense's creator is ever going to make a good movie again.
The Happening is a supernatural thriller very much in the vein of his previous work. Shyamalan paints moodscapes bathed in a suspenseful atmosphere that carry the looming promise of a climax that rarely materializes or satisfies. Very much the auteur, his internal vision of a gripping, thought-provoking thriller never makes it to the screen.
The inspiration for the film was the thought, "What if one day nature turned on us?" It's an intriguing premise if not a wholly original one, with Hitchcock's The Birds being a classic example. Here though, instead of fauna, it's flora that wreaks revenge. It strikes first in Central Park where early morning visitors suddenly become motionless before setting about finding any way possible to kill themselves. The initial reaction, given the beleaguered city's history, is typical. "Oh my god, what kind of terrorists are these?" someone cries. As the mysterious phenomenon quickly spreads beyond New York, panic strikes America's northwest as people flee the airborne toxin.
Elliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg) is a Philadelphia high school science teacher entwined in marital difficulties with his therapist wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel). The couple escape town with Elliot's work colleague Julian (John Leguizamo) and his 8-year old daughter Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez), but when Julian heads back in search of his wife, Elliot and Alma are forced to look after Jess.
Nowadays we are all too aware of our vulnerability and so it's easy for The Happening to tap into that collective fear, which it does as it depicts grisly evidence of the deadly toxin's effects, including one victim lying down in front of lawnmower. It's these moments, which punctuate Elliot, Alma and Jess' journey across the countryside, that are the most effective, while another set in a remote farmhouse involving the reclusive and unhinged Mrs Jones (Betty Buckley), though disturbing, seems jarringly out of place.
It's one of many examples of Shyamalan's contrived style. Something that's exemplified by his characters. No one appears real. It's like they've all come from some parallel universe where people look like humans but rarely talk or act like them. As a result, the normally earthy Wahlberg is lost, along with the rest of the cast.
Something else that goes missing is a cohesive plot. Various theories are posited as to the cause of the phenomenon, some speculating that it is the plants. But Shyamalan deliberately didn't want to offer a definitive answer, preferring instead to leave it up to his audience to draw their own conclusions. With it being hard to connect with any of the characters or figure out quite what's happening and why, the only conclusion I could come up with is, who cares?
Kevin Murphy
