Movie Review: The Happening

M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening (2008) is a goofy, boring, ill-conceived film that recalls some of the concepts realized in better movies such as The Birds (1963) and War of the Worlds (2005). Shyamalan does not spring a surprise ending, providing the essential explanation for the “happening” in the first 30 minutes. And the explanation makes no sense scientifically, morally, or dramatically; neither does this film. At least The Village (2004) made a moral point: you can’t eliminate evil by walling yourself off from the outside world. There is no moral point in The Happening, because the protagonists and antagonists have literally no interaction, and no one—literally no one— in the film traverses anything close to a character arc.

Spoilers below the fold.

Shyamalan waists no time, letting the weirdness begin in the movie’s first minute. In Central Park, people freeze, walk backward, speak incoherently or repeat themselves meaninglessly, and then kill themselves in whatever manner presents itself first. The phenomenon spreads throughout large metropolitan areas in New England, and from there slowly reaches into small towns. But it never leaves the northeast, and never presents itself as a tangible force we can see or touch. The initial guess, a terrorist attack, is quickly replaced by an airborne toxin possibly released by plants.

And . . . that’s it. There are a few creepy shots of dead people, two teenage boys that are shuffled off in brutal fashion, a lawn mower scene impressive for its utterly pointless violence, and a crazy woman who would be right at home on that island of weirdos in The Wicker Man (2006), which, and I kid you not dear reader, was a better movie.

The “happening” ends as quickly as it began, until things go wrong in a French park. But at this point, who cares? Shymalan’s premise is interesting in the abstract, but in this movie it serves only as a mechanism to make people die in a way that’s supposed to be creepy, which means Shyamalan only wants to get under your skin emotionally without engaging you on an intellectual or moral level.

Of this film’s many flaws, the biggest is Zooey Deschanel, whose loony-tunes performance left me praying her character would hug a tree and pick up the nearest steak knife or pistol. The movie’s other problems all relate to inconsistencies and absurditites:

1. A father abandons his daughter to look for his wife, who is almost certainly dead. No sane human being makes that choice.
2. Fleeing the neurotoxin in an open field, Elliot and Alma are accompanied by two teenage boys and a girl with red hair and a green shirt. The boys don’t make it to the end of the movie alive, as noted above, but the girl doesn’t make it to the end of the scene. She disappears completely without explanation. Did she fall down a hole? Did she quit the movie? Did she turn into a tree? Was she beamed up? Where the hell did she go? The world may never know.
3. After spending the night in the electricity-free home of an obviously disturbed and dangerous woman, Alma and Jess wake up at dawn, pack everything they own, rouse Elliot, and say, “We’re getting the HELL out of here before that Crazy Bitch wakes up and kills us. You coming or not?” No . . . wait, that’s what normal people would do. In Shyamalan’s bizzaro-world of inexplicable decisions, Alma and Jess wander outside, where people have been dying for twenty-four hours from an unidentified, airborne neurotoxin of unknown source, and enter a spring house to play with frogs and standing water. Way to go, geniuses.

I could write more, but it’s time for supper and I’ve wasted enough time on this film. Stay home and read a good book. Or ride your bike.

---

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• Five-Sentence Movie Reviews (special edition)
• Watching Movies with Your Kids
• Contributing at Ningin/”Happening” Review
• the happening (review)