Review by Rob Wright

After some disappointing turns, M. Night Shyamalan has returned with "The Happening," which focuses on a inexplicable phenomenon that causes people to commit mass suicide. Does Shyamalan reclaim his magic touch?

http://www.tomsgames.com/us/2008/0 [...] ng_review/

Wow ... good things are certainly 'not happening' ... (haha get the pun? u geddit? haha........ ... - nono i do not have a lame sense of humor, that's how the humor in the movie is...) for Night Shyamalan. Anyhow Spoilers ahead.. though not too explosive.

There's something smelling nasty in the air....no i'm not talking about the PLOT of the movie, i'm talking about the movie itself.

Agreed the movie wasn't as bad as the misbegotten Lady in the water .... well that was primarily because Shyamalan was all over the news for rejecting Indy4 and Harry potter 4 by saying he deserves better projects and that he'd pen his own fairy/magic tale ..... the bloke didn't learn even after Disney called it rubbish and threw the script in the can and him out of their building... ... what resulted was a different studio (Warner), total bull of a screenplay with extremely unconvincing characters, bad CGI and his own horse knocking him down.

But then Shayamalan is a master of finding the genius in an actor ... look what he found in Bruce Willis, we can actually understand what he speaks now .... and sample Mel Gibson in Signs..brilliance. And Lady in the water did have some excellent acting from Paul Giamatti ..... The Happening not only had horrendous acting from Mark Wahlberg but also a carnal sin of underplaying John Leguizamo ... and overplaying lost and terribly miscast Zooey Deshanel

What The Happening had was a really strong beginning. I would place the start of the movie on number two, next to Signs. Just like in Signs, the music by James Newton Howard quite frankly effectively sends chills... it wasn't as shockingly scary as in Signs but it still had a quiet sense of melancholy unsettling. The shot of the girl stabbing her own neck with that music playing was horrifyingly and tastefully scary. Full points for the start.

And thats all....................apart from the start the remainder of this poor movie had squat.

The intro of Mark Wahlberg with his eyebrows up to his hairline begins revelation of the script's true form.... its bludgeoning stupidity. Mark walks through the movie like he's had one too many chillies for breakfast and things are 'happening' in his stomach. I was beginning to wonder if its his farting thats making people kill themselves. But no, the script isn't as smart as that. Shyamalan sticks to his overused formula of something happening in Philly and his native Pennsylvania...only this time i was tired of seeing the same names over and over and over and over again. Mark even tries to be funny in the movie when the school principal walks into his classrom and he pretends to be scared of her calling her the Dark Lord. Intended comedy is a strict no-no, Marky. His over the top eye movements and inexplicably inept dialogue delivery, especially at the train station when he asks 'whats going on' is downright laughable. Hard to believe its the same guy who got a well deserved academy award nomination for The Departed.

But then i thought all that surely must be Shyalamalan's doing...my doubt was confirmed when i saw an excruciatingly amateur handling of a situation of Leguizamo leaving Mark and Co to search for his wife. And sadly, things only went downhill later ... the audience is expected to get scared by a little wind rocking the trees in broad daylight. But even at that point I still supported Shyamalan thinking the esteemed director didn't want to use the cliched CGI trickery and darkness and lightening to create an atmosphere of manufactured horror. Unfortunately even that hope was blown to bits when Shyamalan introduces a strange old woman living alone in an apparently creepy house in the middle of nowhere. Not only that but he resorts to preteen horror movie method (the doll on the bed and suddenly the old hag screaming). How stupid does he think the audience is?

And if all that wasn't corny enough Shyamalan brings forth the LAMEST HAMMIEST most laughably ridiculous climax in a movie .... Mark Wahlberg stepping out of the house in a laugh out loud corny slow mo shot to die with his wife and niece. To top it all the same eerie music plays..only this time its effect is shot to screwball.

Anyhow Marky Mark and his wifey don't die (though they should've, for acting so bad for 90 mins after we paid to watch them. Zooey Deschanel's unwaxed facial and limb hair didn't help matters either.)

There was much talk about Shyamalan and his twist endings. The director made sure he made a big fuss about how he's not that sort of a director and how he can produce a varied range of stories and not just twist endings and that the audience will really appreciate the ending in this movie which is NOT a twist. ................. Well he was lying..because there IS a twist in this movie. A twist that far outperforms and outshocks the twist of Sixth Sense. It is this... Zooey Deshanel who had a hard time getting pregnant with Calvin Klein underwear model Mark Wahlberg gets knocked up by some invisible toxic wind in the trees.

Her kid later grows up and goes to France... and when he farts, the same fatal toxin releases and kills people.

I expected a roaring comeback from Shyamalan with this movie.. especially with the R rating and a very original and eerie premise... it wasn't to be. I really hope this phase of his lasts only as long as Spielberg was out of form between 1941 and Always. For Shyamalan is a young filmaker with obvious prodigious talent. All he needs to do is get off his ego so that he can get back to what he does best ... drawing up marvelous scripts, directing his actors like they're all academy award contenders and using a camera in a boldly beautiful fashion ...all of which were absent in his previous two efforts.

@mihirkula
LAY OFF THE FREAKING SPOILERS. Sheesh. You should have at least tagged your post with "***WARNING, SPOILERS***" before rambling on about specific scenes.

@Rob
Well, I disagree that Deschanel did decent acting. In my opinion, she was much worse than Mark Wahlberg. Her character was intended to bring certain things to the table, balancing Wahlberg's character, which she just failed to do so. It can be argued that Mark had a lack of chemistry, but I think that Deschanel should share more of the blame.... I just didn't feel emotion out of her character.

Other than that, I mostly agree. M. Night Shyamalan had a great premise for a movie, but just failed on delivery.

In the end, I think its still a movie worth seeing for certain people, since its topics make for good conversation, but overall we have a movie that just doesn't feel right. From the character interaction, story progression, down to the big reveal. Everything's just enough out of place to ruin things.

^... ok apologies for not adding "Warning Spoilers" ... will do that right away. I didn't think of it before for those are pretty lame spoilers anyways.

^I pretty much agree with you on your points. The plot of the movie was bad, and everything you pointed out as cliche' was.... but, its still not polite to give away the crap ending, and the "villain".

***Warning Spoilers*****
***Warning Spoilers*****
***Warning Spoilers*****

What annoyed me most about this movie, besides the bad acting, bad script writing, poor use of music, camera, and worthless characters such as the old hermit lady, was that the core cause of "The Happening" didn't make sense.

OK, so we want this to be a wrath of nature movie. It has been proven that chemicals in the brain are indeed responsible for self-preservation. It is not unreasonable to assume that the chemical can be blocked, or even switched.

However, there is an inherent flaw to this. If the chemicals in our brain were switched, because we as human beings are designed to adapt, the brain is given much control over its "programming". We are not simple animals driven by instinct.

In the same way that a person with normal brain chemical levels can choose to kill himself (think samurai seppuku, or a marine killing himself to avoid torture, not necessarily depressed susie), a person with a flipped self preservation mechanism would at least struggle with the chemical imbalance, rather than just freeze and then abruptly walk over to the nearest cliff.

The mention of the Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) and Red Tide as examples of unusual natural events also greatly irritated me. Especially the mention of CCD.

First of all, CCD is caused by humans. We haven't quite narrowed down the cause, and there are numerous contributing factors, but the bottom line is that bee keepers sticking to "Natural Beekeeping" standard are not effected. CCD might be caused by genetically modified crops, use of antibiotics in hives, malnutrition causing increased susceptibility to viruses and parasites, or new neonicotinoid pesticides which can **** up their neato bee navigation system. I think its a combination of factors, but like to blame neonicotinoid pesticides since it best explains why the bees don't return to the hive. Regardless, ITS NOT AN ACT OF NATURE, ITS AN ACT OF MAN.

Healthy wild bees, who are away from human made pesticides do not experience CCD. Calling this an act of nature that we will never fully understand, is nothing short of stupidity.

The Red Tide was a better example... some harmful algal blooms involve the production of natural toxins, which include a neurotoxin called brevetoxin. But Karenia brevis Algae possess these toxins all the time, its just that during a algral-bloom there is just a lot more of the algae, so, therefore a harmful level of the toxins that particular algae already has. A harmless algae does not get up and decide "I'm sick of these fish eating my homies, lets kill em'!", its either just a result of natural cycles, or human interaction in the way of loading the water with too much nutrients for the algae, throwing things out of balance.

What M. Night Shyamalan needed to add credibility to his "villain", is some kind of explanation as to how humans intervened. Blame the government, biochemical terrorism, something... there needed to be a supplementary villain.

Another thing that irked me, is why did this just happen to the North East, and what was up with the way that the phenomenon escalated on a exponential curve? Neither made logical sense to me. I'd envision a plant attack of a deadly toxic chemical to more or less sweep across the continent, following the wind cycle, killing everything in its path. A complete apocalyptic event, would have certainly been more interesting... I'm not sure why a movie already having guys feeding themselves to lions is holding back on the scale. Limiting things to the North East, just made the story feel even more fake to me.

So, it was a decent premise... the idea of a chemical causing a person to kill him/herself is pretty scarey, and could be a reality through chemical warfare, however... after this little idea M. Night Shyamalan might not have been clever enough to pull off the rest of the story. He only pulled off 1 believable character for christ's sake...

***Warning Spoilers*****

Did anyone else think that shooting of the two kids was a step to far? I'm all for gore and blood etc but hell even I don't want to wittiness children getting their skulls blown off.

^... the entire movie was a step too far.. lol... shyamalan lost his way through the script i guess....

***Warning Spoilers*****

@Jean
I suppose the idea was to portray human nature in an emergency state to be unsympathetic, and brutal (Steven King did this a bit in the Mist, and was also unsuccessful)...

Ironically, real life emergency situations have proven to show human nature in a much more positive light (911, and Katrina are probably obvious examples). That scene with the kids pushed too far, and wasn't very believable... like most of the rest of the movie. Shyamalan just seemed to put too much effort into unnecessary gore, rather than making a solid script.

-My personal most hated scene was the one with the zoo keeper feeding himself to the lions. (mentioned briefly in my last post). I mean, come on, how lame can a director get.... Not only was this scene unnecessary, it doesn't even make any sense... if the people at the Zoo were effected, who the hell filmed this guy getting eaten alive? Security footage? The guards would be effected as well. And, it looked like it was supposed to be from a camcorder.

The details in this film... fail.

Oh, on the note about not wanting to see children get shot... at least they were teenagers.