Alecc B. on "The Happening"

Something is happening...to M. Night Shyamalan. I think he needs to take some time off and re-evaluate a lot of things. I believe the problem is thatShyamalan is thinking about what the audience likes and how to give it to them. As a writer, you can't do that. You have to write what you feel works for you. 

Now, I know what you're thinking, Lady In The Water was completely off the deep end and was definitely about Shyamalan just doing his own thing. I personally liked that film, but I'm well aware of the hatred for it. 

Let's take it back to The Sixth Sense, a little film back in 1999 that cost $20 million to make and ended up almost bringing in $300 million domestically. That was a film that had no expectations, with Shyamalan making the film he wanted to make. Sense still holds the trophy as being his best film. Since that, though, he's been more miss than hit.
Shyamalan's latest flick is The Happening, his first R-rated offering. The trailers have been promising, but that's always the case with this director. Killer marketing but the final result is not as good. 

PLOT

There is something strange happening to the citizens living in the northeast area of the United States. There are mass suicides taking place. What's going on? Is it some kind of terrorist attack? A chemical bomb? More importantly, do I give a shit?

ACTING

Mark Wahlberg plays Elliot, a science teacher (Already a stretch.) in Philadelphia. Marky-Mark doesn't really fit into this role. He's a good actor, but I just didn't buy him in many of the situations he finds himself in here. Zooey Deschanel plays Alma, Elliot's wife. I like Deschanel, but she is horribly miscast here. She had zero chemistry with Wahlberg to make me care about them at all. John Leguizamo shows up as Elliot's friend Julian.Leguizamo is decent here but the close-ups on his face made his snaggle-teeth very distracting. Ashlyn Sanchez plays Julian's daughter Jess. She's not bad. Betty Buckley plays Mrs. Jones, one hell of a wackjob that Wahlberg and Co. encounters. Buckley is amusing and her screentime would have been welcome if this film was part of the Evil Dead series, but since it's not she just feels out of place.

WRITING & DIRECTING

The Happening is probably Shyamalan's laziest screenplay. The majority of the dialogue is poor and the flow of the story is all over the place. At a running time of 90 minutes, I'm curious to find out if the story was longer or if there just wasn't much to it in the first place. There's also a scene near the end where Shyamalan explains to us what happened by pretty much spelling everything out like we're idiots. I would have preferred that it went unexplained. It's more scary that way...at least for me it is.

As a director, Shyamalan still has some skill when it comes to setting the mood. The first ten minutes of the film were very creepy and unsettling. After that the movie started to slowly fall apart. That's not a good thing, by the way. 

The R-rating didn't help matters much. There were actually a couple of scenes that were downright laughable (Example: Man with lions.). I do like the fact that more R-rated movies are coming out this summer, but this isn't one of the good ones. 

I'm still holding out hope that M. Night Shyamalan will one day bring us a film that will grab us like The Sixth Sense did. Until then, I guess we have to deal with disappointing efforts like this. Or not.

The Happening...more like The Crappening.

Overall Review: *1/2 stars

Best Line: 

Wahlberg: I didn't even have a cough.