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Starring
Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel
Directed by
M. Night Shyamalan
Final Grade:
FRated R for violent and disturbing images
a review by Heith Carnahan
The Rundown
Mark Wahlberg is a high school science teacher who's far more passionate about his work than his students are about learning. In the middle of a typical day, word spreads across the country that people are behaving very, very strangely. Something is happening to them that causes confusion, physical disorientation, and finally, death.
While it's still unknown what the cause is, it's quickly surmised that these events tend to happen where large numbers of people are concentrated, and the mass exodus away from the cities begins. Wahlberg and his wife (Zooey Deschanel) hit the rails in their attempt to escape the phenomenon, and that is, unfortunately, where the story effectively ends.
Night has fallen
Let me say right off the bat that I am a fan of M. Night Shyamalan. The Sixth Sense blew me away, I adored the much-maligned Lady in the Water, and I did appreciate the twists and turns in both The Village and in Signs. That's probably why I was so bewildered by The Happening. It matters not that this is Shyamalan's first R-rated feature; the elements that earned the R rating weren't necessary and often bordered on ridiculous (more on that in a minute). What's far more important is that a plot with such far-reaching ramifications -- global, even -- failed to engage on even the most basic level. That, my fellow movie lovers, is a script that just flat sucks.
Early on, there are faint moments of interest, I'll admit. We still don't know what's causing the phenomenon, and the nationwide reaction to the events helps create a sense of unity. Then... the film goes absolutely nowhere. There are hints of marital problems between Wahlberg and Deschanel (I don't even remember the characters' names, if that tells you anything), and at one point they realize they're stuck with someone else's kid for the long haul, but then things get silly quick.
It is revealed relatively early that whatever is causing The Happening to happen switches the brain 'off' in such a way that prevents people from defending themselves against harmful situations. But for some reason, the script translates this into characters going out of their way to cause harm to themselves; a police officer puts his own gun to his head. It falls, and someone else picks it up and does the same to themselves. Repeat the process until there are no more bullets. Goofy? Wait until a man turns on a lawn mower and lies down in front of it. There's just no sense to be made. Of Anything.
Just when you think things can't get any worse -- for us, the audience -- we find out what's causing all this... and I just don't know what else to say. Shyamalan is better than this; he's proven that he can take extremely off-the-wall material and make it believable. He can make us care about a bedtime story no one's ever heard of, he can make us see dead people we don't know are dead, he can put us in a village and fool us for two straight hours, but even his creativity can't save this one. The Happening is one cat that should never have been let out of the bag.
The Bottom Line
It's the worst movie I've seen this year. If I can't convince you to skip anything else in 2008, skip this one.
-- Heith Carnahan, heith @ movie-popcorn.com