With M. Night Shyamalan back in the news recently for relatively positive reviews for his newest film, let us not forget that he has made some shitty movies. One of those movies is The Happening.
Heralded as Night’s first foray into hard-horror with its R-rating, The Happening was either designed to be a campy, B-movie with grade-A production values or a massive fleecing of American audiences expecting a decent film and instead getting scary shots of trees, leaves, and dissertations about the “coolness” of hotdogs.
Of course by now, you know that Mark Wahlberg stars as Elliot, a man with many faces, as long as all of those faces are of a furrowed-brow and confused nature. He and his groundhog of a wife, Zooey Deschanel, attempt to flee Philadelphia after some sort of event, or “Happening” if you will, occurs in New York City turning its citizens into mindless, backwards-walking, suicide machines with proclivities for some of the most ridiculous methods of killing oneself.
Admittedly, the film starts strong with an idealistic day in the park interrupted by screams and mass amounts of violence. In fact, the one shot of construction workers casually walking off the beams of a high-rise remains a high-point in the film and even an impactful shot in cinema in general. Unfortunately it isn’t long before the constantly befuddled Marky Mark is introduced and brings along a gaggle of awkward pauses, insipid dialogue, and character motivations that have no busy being in a film portraying real life.
There are conflicting reports of the anticipated tone of The Happening with all the pre-release media indicating a horrific (and that it is) tale of human survival while the post-release media had everyone, including Night, backtracking to say that this was always designed to be nothing more than a B-movie. After all, an eco-terror movie about (allegedly) killer plants and trees with people nervously looking every time there is a soft breeze or rustling of leaves supports to B-movie evidence.
As does the fact that there is not a single redeeming acting job done in this movie. Marky and Zooey are among the most awkward pairings in cinema and every scene screams it. John Leguizamo, Mark’s buddy math teacher, acts in two manners: spouting mathematical facts and making stupid decisions to the detriment of his young daughter. The random suicide fodder littered through the movie mostly do nothing special except for spout out theories and grossly overreact. It’s almost as if Night’s direction to the actors was “Pretend you’re not an actor and you’ll be great.”
But I don’t buy a purposefully made cheesy movie for the fact that everything is so damn serious. From the aforementioned running from the wind to the macabre (yet unintentionally hilarious) ways people kill themselves, this movie does not wink at the audience to allude to the fact that it knows it’s crap. Night thinks his film is high-class what with the death and horror and other shenanigans going on. It’s no doubt that The Happening does not have a good cinematic reputation but a nudge to the audience or someway to show that this was a tongue-in-cheek horror story would have improved that greatly.
Granted, this film is nowhere near as inept and incoherent as Night’s follow-up The Last Airbender but that isn’t exactly high praise. And even though this film is a cinematic trainwreck of epic proportions, I still own the Blu-ray. I still pop it in from time to time for the incredible shots that Night does somehow manage to pull off as well as the unbearable cringing it brings.
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