The Happening

Ever since his major debut in '99 with The Sixth Sense, director/writer/whatever M. Night Shayamalan has cornered himself as a proverbial one trick pony. It seems that everyone will go into one of his films asking themselves "What's the twist going to be?" and spend most of the film trying to think far enough ahead of the story in order to beat it to the punch. Admittedly, The Sixth Sense was effective (if not fairly predictable to some) and Unbreakable was very well done, though the twist in this case was particularly unnecessary, it still worked for all intents and purposes of the film. It wasn't until Signs that I started to see a flaw in the designs and the dangers of clichéd repetition. I was onboard Signs the whole way (an alien apocalypse seen from one small household) until the last five minutes when we were bashed over the head (almost literally) with that trademark twist. A twist that singlehandedly ruined the previous 103 minutes. I'll admit, it was after this mess that I washed my hands of the Shayamalan name altogether as I haven't yet bothered to see either The Village or Lady in the Water.

However, The Happening intrigued me. It seems in an attempt to distance himself from his "twist of fate" as it were, M. Night has left the 3^rd act reversal behind in lieu of something else entirely. The previews for The Happening looked especially intriguing and featured something yet uncharted for the director, an MPAA rating of R. Unfortunately, as it turns out, you can't substitute one gimmick for another and expect anything of substance to come of it.

The story (if one can even really call it that) follows Elliot Moore, played by Mark Wahlberg and his wife Alma, a particularly unemotive Zooey Deschanel in their attempts to outrun and ultimately survive an outbreak of a toxin that causes the survival instinct in humans to be repressed, resulting in mass suicide. Therein lies your R-rating. The first 15 minutes or so are fairly effective, though it's all downhill from there, right about the time Mark delivers his first line. Now, I'll be the first to say Wahlberg is a pretty accomplished actor at this point (with roles like The Departed, Boogie Nights and I Heart Huckabees under his belt) but he phones in the worst performance of his career, either through terrible dialog or bad directing. The only performance that was passable is John Leguizamo who is underplayed to the point of insignificance.

It is explained very early on (and repeatedly thereafter) that the toxin that is affecting the eastern seaboard is the result of a rapidly evolved defense mechanism in plants and it's being set off by smaller and smaller groups of people. Starting in Central Park, New York and eventually "chasing" groups of five or six people across small county Pennsylvania, the toxin is only ever displayed by heavy winds, which makes absolutely no sense at all. Granted, there isn't really a way to SHOW that a plant originating toxin is after you, but this method implies that either the plants are causing the wind or the toxin evokes strange and unusual weather patterns. Good for the cast, bad for the picky (or even rational) viewer. And of course there is the obligatory message about global warming, mass-media sensationalism, gun control and (for no apparent reason) religious zealotry.

I was hoping this would be the film to take M. Night Shayamalan out of the "do not watch" column, but alas, it just doesn't seem like he really cares about his art or his audience anymore. A promo on the Sci-fi channel quoted him as saying "Whatever… it's rated R…" It just goes to show, if you don't have a story worth telling, it doesn't matter what it's rated. It's still garbage.