| THE HAPPENING |
 2008 - USADirector: M. Night Shyamalan
- Reviewed by Vickie
Warning: this review contains spoilers. Read at your own peril. Let me begin this review by saying that I loved The Happening... but for all the wrong reasons. Despite the dark, moody, menacing trailers and previews that had me worrying I'd be traumatized by whatever scary s**t M. Night Shyamalan had conjured up for his first R-rated outing, it was not frightening. At all. Unfortunately for all involved, it also wasn't well-written, well-acted or well-directed. In my world, it’s now known as The Crappening. Instead, it was a bonafide laugh riot! Halfway through, I started to wonder if the filmmakers had made such a spectacularly bad movie on purpose... as though M. and crew figured critics and audiences would so eager to tear the film to bits no matter how good it was that they might as well just create a huge, hysterical dud and let the world have it. Mark Wahlberg, in a role that would have been better suited to someone like Topher Grace, stars as nebbish, nervous know-it-all science teacher Elliot Moore. (We know he’s nebbish and nervous because Wahlberg plays Elliot with a kind of anxious, breathless, slightly fey voice that gets funnier with each successive line reading.) Elliot’s in the middle of some anvil-like foreshadowing... I mean, in the middle of talking to his class about unexplained events in nature...when an unexplained event in nature HAPPENS in Central Park. People stop dead in their tracks and start killing themselves in all sorts of creative ways. Bio-terrorism is suspected, the national media pounces on the story and everybody starts freaking out. Within hours, northeastern city after northeastern city falls victim to similar HAPPENINGS in their parkland areas. Coincidence? No. Elliot and his best friend, geeky math teacher Julian (John Leguizamo, in another fit of inexplicably poor casting), get ready to flee to the countryside with Elliot’s wife, Alma (Zooey Deschanel), and Julian’s daughter, Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez), in tow... all the while spouting annoying, expositional factoids that are simultaneously leaden, distracting and completely unrealistic. It was like watching two encyclopedias trying to outdo each other scene after scene. Note to Elliot (and M.): we all understood your whole “mankind is destroying the planet” argument the first ten times you said it, so there’s no need to keep hammering away at the same point. After much chaos and calamity HAPPENS, and at the halfway mark of the film, we learn that—here comes the spoiler, so look away now!—it’s the plants. That’s what’s causing these mass suicides. Plants. Per the weird, hot-dog-loving, exponentially expositional botanist guy clearly dropped into the action for the sole purpose of explaining what’s HAPPENING: plants, trees, flowers, grass, weeds, shrubs, vines and the like have somehow held a conference and decided that they're sick of the way Earth is being polluted, so they agree to collectively release toxins into the environment to kill the humans. Kill the humans! At this point, the film—which has already been on a trajectory to grade-A hilarity—continues full steam ahead into ridiculousness. Somehow, amid all this science talk and blathering on about mathematics and percentages, no one bothered to insert logic into any of the proceedings. You know, stuff like why the toxins in the air don't seem to travel outside of treed areas. Does the wind just stop at a predetermined point? Are the toxins only effective for 20 seconds? Will closing the windows in your house or car really save you from the air? And what the hell is HAPPENING on the West Coast... or is nature on that side of the country just totally cool with pollution and thoughtless humans? So, in lieu of logic and reason, we're treated to lots and lots of really laughable overacting (or underacting, depending on your perspective) as Elliot, Julian, Alma and Jess run from meadow to meadow... TRYING TO ESCAPE THE GREENERY. Their thinking seems to be, “I know how we can get away from the trees! Let’s run to the OTHER trees!” Deaths start piling up amid the truly awful bit players in increasingly (unintentionally) entertaining ways, and Elliot’s voice goes up an octave scene by scene until he finally loses it under the pressure and starts screaming at panicked people in the middle of a field. So deliciously campy! [Runner up: Julian’s attempt to calm a shrieking, horrified, panic-stricken young woman by forcing her to do a math problem amid the carnage. Seriously. I burst out laughing.] And then, like a bedazzled cherry on this super-sized sundae of good times, master-thespian Betty Buckley shows up in the film’s last third as a bats**t-crazy hermit who serves up a heaping plate of madness and scenery-chewing in such an over-the-top way that is laugh-out-loud funny. Seriously, see the movie for her 10 minutes or so. You will not be sorry. All this to say, The Happening blows... as a thriller. There’s no suspense, and the whole movie is basically Elliot and company running from one location to another. The characters are all one-dimensional despite noble efforts to the contrary, and not particularly likable. There’s zero chemistry between any of them, platonic or otherwise. Everyone is equally disappointing (save for Buckley’s aforementioned needlessly tour-de-force performance), and I felt embarrassed for actors I normally like. If, for some reason, you're still inclined to see this film, lower your expectations immediately. Or, better yet, go in expecting to see a comedy. You're bound to enjoy it much more either way because, at its core, that’s what it is. A comedy. Sure, the opening sequence—specifically, the construction workers dropping to their deaths and landing with rather gruesome results on the pavement below—was a little harrowing, but the rest of the movie? Dull. Funny as all get out—the scene in the lions’ den was my personal favorite—but uneventful because, despite a title that suggests otherwise, not a whole lot actually HAPPENS in The Happening. |
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As a thriller: 2 out of 8 slices