Reviews Oct 06 2008 @ 05:00 am
REVIEW: The Happening
Directed By: M. Night Shyamalan
Written By: M. Night Shyamalan
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel
Running Time: 91 minutes
Rated R for violent and disturbing images.
This review was originally published June 15th, 2008.
Strange events are occurring all over the United States. Out of nowhere, large populations of people have started blathering nonsense. Soon after, they become still … as if someone has pressed a pause button. The final step of this strange and unpredictable happening is death: the “frozen” people use any means necessary to quickly kill themselves and people close by. In case you haven’t already heard, this is M. Night Shyamalan’s first R-rated film: The Happening.
And oh yeah: the deaths are violent.
What if the toxins are ... in the air?!?!?!
Mark Wahlberg plays Elliot Moore, a high school science teacher. After giving an uninspiring lecture to his students about “proper awe and respect for the laws of nature”, he’s called out of his classroom by the principal for a faculty meeting where all the teachers are vaguely told about this strange event and advised to leave the area. The whole city is atwitter with news of the horrific events, and Elliot rushes home immediately to leave for the train station with his wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel). The “happening” spreads. People die. Our heroes run for shelter.
What little story remains is so un-compelling and poorly made that it’s hard to believe The Happening is a “summer blockbuster” with major studio backing. Shyamalan’s camera placement is so uncreative that it becomes oppressive and annoying; you’re likely to find more creative direction in any one episode of Law & Order. More than half of the film is taken up with close-ups — not just normal close-ups, but shots that are so in-your-face that its hard to keep up with the dialogue. I can imagine cinematographer Tak Fujimoto (known for his work with Jonathan Demme and Terrence Malick), wincing behind the camera at the prominent protruding wrinkles above Mark Wahlberg’s eyes and Zooey Deschanel’s permanent expression of wide-eyed terror. The color palette is generic as well, failing to help what little story is offered.
Although the inane, new-agey Lady In the Water (the director’s last film) wasn’t worth the film it was shot on, the studio decided to give Shyamalan yet another chance to prove his reputation as the modern “master of suspense.” That chance involved an R-rating which consequently became the biggest part of The Happening’s marketing. The blood-red rating on the posters and announcement of “M. Night Shyamalan’s first R-rated film” in the TV spots will no doubt chase conservative suspense fans away from the theater. The film itself will leave fans of gory horror flicks without their violence fix; instead they’ll be asked to concentrate on flat characters uttering uninteresting dialogue riddled with extremely self-conscious film references. But it gets worse: the film gives absolutely no closure about the strange happening. There’s so much build-up that to leave the audience with not even a glimmer of a pay-off seems downright unethical!
As a director, Shyamalan has proved himself capable of producing subtle, thoughtful, and very accessible PG-13 fare … but there’s nothing at all subtle about The Happening. Almost every line in the script is on-the-nose (”Just when you thought there was no more evil to be invented!”, “Mother of God, what kind of terrorists are these?!”). Mark Wahlberg talks to plastic plants, another character talks at length about the nutritional value of hotdogs, and Zooey Deschnel … well … she doesn’t really contribute anything other than a beautiful pair of perpetually wide eyes. The dialogue is one of the script’s minor faults compared to the careless disappearance of partially “developed” characters and the lack of grief or loss over the death of another main character. As an audience, we’re left in the mud even more than the characters themselves.
Please God, help us get out of this movie.
Shyamalan said in an interview with USA Today that The Happening is “meant to scare you”, but all the scares are cheap and mostly rely on percussive booms in the soundtrack. Even more shocking is the lack of any notable acting performances. Gone are traces of Zooey Deschanel’s stunning, vulnerable performance in All the Real Girls or the charismatic Mark Wahlberg we saw in The Departed or Boogie Nights. The best performance in the film is not one of acting or directing, but music. Somewhere in the director’s flat material, James Newton Howard found inspiration and crafted another beautiful score for the increasingly amateurish auteur. If the movie’s climax is at all moving, its certainly not due to imagery or story — it’s the music, one of The Happening’s only assets.
Shyamalan’s early films (The Sixth Sense, Signs, and even The Village) deftly weaved themes of family, faith, and innocence into their twisty narratives. They weren’t preachy, but quietly profound — almost as if the themes weren’t trying to be stated, but were simply the natural conclusions of the story. The message of his new film certainly isn’t one of environmentalism (he makes darn sure to cover his bases on that one). It wouldn’t be grasping at straws to say the main concern of The Happening is a world of people who have forgotten how to communicate with one another. But why make this — of all things — the theme of the most hyped R-rated horror film in recent memory? Why even tackle such a hearkening theme by bringing in a strange natural phenomenon to “solve” the problem? It’s all so contrived.
“That was pathetic,” said my father as we sat through the credits. I tend to agree, but despite all my criticism, I’ve been trying to get myself to like the film since leaving the theater. I’ve tried thinking about how it could be Shyamalan’s treatise on marriage and the role different genders play in the making of a family. Didn’t work. I even took into mind that indirect statement about cultural loss of relationship and the need to talk to each other meaningfully. Alas, no positive themes could make up for the lackluster execution of the story. In the end, there’s nothing left for the movie to stand on. The Happening is a non-event which begs me to question whether M. Night Shyamalan has any of his career-making spark left to give.
on Jun 15 2008 @ 10:45 pm 1. Colleen said …
I really enjoy this film. The wacky dialogue, the inane acting, the dumb story. Instant comedy classic. Its only too bad, that I don’t think M.N.S. was trying for comedy.
I see you eye’n my lemon drink…LOL
on Jun 15 2008 @ 10:52 pm 2. Evan Derrick said …
I eagerly anticipate your Haiku review of this one, Colleen.
on Jun 16 2008 @ 10:19 am 3. Rick Olson said …
What has happened to M. Night? I quit watching after the thoroughly abominable “The Village.” It was like somebody turned off a switch and all of a sudden he couldn’t make a decent movie to save his life.
on Jun 16 2008 @ 10:36 am 4. Luke Harrington said …
You’re lucky you missed out on Lady in the Water, Rick. It made The Village look like Shakespeare.
As for what’s happened to M. Night, I think he’s just far too stuck on how gosh-darn-awesome he is, and he’s spent the last decade trying to establish himself as a brandname, rather than bothering to grow as a filmmaker. He’s at a point where everyone expects him to make the same movie over and over again, and he’s more than happy to deliver on those expectations (while continually putting less effort into it each time).
Hmmm…sort of like Disney animation in the 90’s…
on Jun 16 2008 @ 10:38 am 5. Phillip Johnston said …
I was one of the few fans of The Village. I thought it was just as good as Signs, but not nearly on par with The Sixth Sense and especially Unbreakable (his best movie, IMO).
But yeah. This is a different story.
on Jun 16 2008 @ 11:27 am 6. Rick Olson said …
You’re probably right, Luke. He’s one arrogant dude.
on Jun 16 2008 @ 12:47 pm 7. Evan Derrick said …
The sad thing is that most directors are arrogant pricks – M. Night just gets drug over the coals for it because he makes such a point of placing himself front and center. If he was just quietly arrogant, and if his films weren’t constantly billed as The Next Big Thing, we wouldn’t be nearly as hard on him.
In terms of his canon, I think Sixth Sense is the best, but I think that Signs shows the most promise. His control over the suspense and tension in that film is Hitchcockian.
on Jun 16 2008 @ 12:59 pm 8. Joseph said …
^ Agreed on the last point. This is where The Happening fails, however.
on Jun 18 2008 @ 8:02 am 9. Luke Harrington said …
I pretty much knew it was the beginning of the end when Signs came out, and Newsweek put a full-body shot of M. Night on their cover with the headline “The Next Spielberg!” And to no one’s surprise, he immediately started spiraling towards irrelevance.
(Apparently, the Sports Illustrated/Madden/Wheaties/Campbell’s Chunky Soup Curse extends to non-athletes as well…)
on Jun 18 2008 @ 12:00 pm 10. Joseph said …
After thinking about The Happening all week, I’m probably going to try watching it again.
on Jun 22 2008 @ 11:45 pm 11. Thadd Harrington said …
After reading your review, I have to ask: If you keep trying to like this film and failing and all you do is complain about how bad it is, how did it manage to get even one and a half stars from you?
Oh, and Luke, you forgot to mention the Heisman and getting picked in an early round of the NFL draft in your list.
on Jun 23 2008 @ 7:20 am 12. Luke Harrington said …
I was focusing on the curse that comes with getting photographed for the cover of various things…
But you make a good point.
on Jun 24 2008 @ 9:12 am 13. Ryuen said …
I just watched this movie. It was totally weird, from the speech, the act, the irritating-and-crazy looking wife with huge eyes, and the so-called science teacher who acts like a scientist with funny face expression
on Jun 24 2008 @ 10:26 am 14. Evan Derrick said …
Thanks for dropping by, Ryuen. Hope you make more visits in the future. I would almost assume that your feeling of ‘weirdness’ in watching the film was mostly due to the movie’s ineptitude, as in it’s been a long time since you’ve seen a movie as poorly made as this one and it just hit you as being weird. But that’s just an assumption on my part.
on Jun 24 2008 @ 2:53 pm 15. Maurice said …
I will make a stand here, and say I liked this film. I liked “Lady In the Water” better but only because the sadness that Paul Giamatti extruded overwhelmed my sense of empathy. The quiet desperation of this character’s attempts to block his personal grief was painful for me. Also, the fact that I knew beforehand that it was a “fairy tale” required less effort to suspend belief. I could say “Yeah. Right” in the same tone I would use to comment about Jack’s ability to cut down the beanstalk before the giant reached a safe altitude.
That said, it was a “B” movie. Not a perfect one but a good one. The failure lies in the actors used. We had Marky-mark in a role he is ill suited for because it is outside his normal pervue. No firearms, cursing, cockiness or muddy football teams. His bewildered look was funnier than his take about how ears grow each year.Try this: Replace Mark with a different A-list actor, say Jet Li or Orlando Bloom. It still doesn’t work. Now, imagine Giovanni Ribisi or (again) Paul Giamatti. It works. Sucess!
It needed more paranoria, more suspicion, more panic. Everyone should have been an actor like Betty Buckly (best role in the film). It needed Leslie Neisen wrestling the grizzly to the death (his) to really qualify as a good “B” movie. Those movies have that feel to them, the feeling that no matter how fast you run, how much you prepare or how hard you fight, you will get snatched by a Triffid the minute you open the lighthouse door. You’d never believe a vampire could grab you but a Ymir? Hey, that’s Venus calling, baby!
C’mon, Harrison Ford is starring in a really good “B” movie right now. Think about it. Remember the last time you and the commies got in that Rugby scrum? Remember how your buddies were fighting off the Fembot with the sword while crazy old Kevin McCarthy kept the flesh eating ants off of you with with the crystal skull of the pod person he uncovered? It’s just like that with the “Happening” in the sense that we should have had David Keith with the hat and whip. Heck, “Star Wars” was the best “B” movie of all time but if Nicholson or De Niro had been in it, we’d have all said “No Way.”
This film wasn’t big enough to support the cast it had. Ditch Wahlberg and Zooey, move up Leguizamo to the lead. Pair him with Faith Domergue and while you’re at it, cut off his legs cause he’s way too tall in this role. What this film need more of was believability and less implausability. I meeded to believe in the lead characters in the situation, not the situation itself.
I think M was trying for the look and feel of “The Beast With A Million Eyes”, the menace that you know is there because the wind is blowing but can’t see because it’s hiding in the scenery. He only missed it because he thought the script was a large as his cast.
Thanks for another great review. I really enjoyed it.
on Jun 24 2008 @ 3:13 pm 16. Evan Derrick said …
Dude, Maurice, epic comment of the week here. I think you make some fabulous points, certainly the most defensible points I’ve heard so far in regards to this film. Is it an issue that a casting change could have fixed? Or is the script creatively bankrupt beyond repair of “just the right actor”? I haven’t seen it myself, so can’t comment, but I’ll keep your thoughts in mind, Maurice, when I actually do see it.
Regardless, fantastic thoughts. By all means, stick around and comment more in the future. Having (smart) opinionated people like yourself really adds to the community.
on Jul 03 2008 @ 11:38 am 17. James said …
I saw this movie a few weeks ago with a few friends of mine, and right after we walked out of the theater, we immediately agreed with the following statement:
“I can’t believe we paid money to see that piece of (crap) movie!”
You all know what I meant by (crap). Censoring sucks, but it helps to be respectable.
on Dec 11 2008 @ 7:27 pm 18. Scottie said …
Come on, does nobody else see the blatant, obvious relation between this movie and The Birds … right down to the main characters boarding themselves up in a house for the climax?
But it gets worse: the film gives absolutely no closure about the strange happening. There’s so much build-up that to leave the audience with not even a glimmer of a pay-off seems downright unethical!
— again … straight from The Birds. Not because it worked with the plot, but because Hitchcock did it first.
Shyamalan’s statement that it’s “meant to scare you” makes a little more sense in this light … The Birds was definitely scary. Shyamalan took what he thought were the scary elements — nature vs. man, inexplicability, gruesome deaths — and put them to his own story. But that wasn’t what made The Birds scary. Walking through flocks of restless birds ready to attack at any moment … that was scary. Never knowing what might hide behind a closed door … that was scary. What Shyamalan seemed to understand in some of his previous films and has now apparently forgotten is that jumping out and saying “boo” may be startling … but waiting for someone to jump out and say “boo” is downright terrifying.
on Dec 12 2008 @ 9:45 am 19. Evan Derrick said …
Great points all, Scottie. And given Shyamalan’s obsession with being the next Hitch (a title that slips further and further from his grasp the more movies he makes post-Signs), I’d wager that you’re spot on with that assessment.
I hope he doesn’t ruin the live-action Airbender. That show has a very special place in my heart.