The Happening
*** out of ****
In the land of suspense thrillers, a genre overpopulated with screaming teenagers and bloody axes, writer/director M. Night Shyamalan is someone I can always turn to. Shyamalan is a filmmaker who’s more patient in his storytelling and one who never lets the creepy elements of his movies overshadow his characters in any way. He also knows how to create a truly creepy atmosphere that allows his films to really get under your skin more than not. His last two films, “The Village” and “Lady In The Water”, both were movies that were unjustly panned in my opinion. Complainers nagged about story issues and incoherentness, something I still can’t understand. Before I go on to review Shyamalan’s newest film “The Happening”, I would like to take a brief moment to defend the two aforementioned titles. First of all, “Lady In The Water” was a fantasy tale, so something like the characters discovering hidden messages in something as mundane as a crossword puzzle isn’t all that hard to go along with considering what type of story it’s in. I personally found all those elements to be completely understandable and easy to accept, given the rest of the movie. Shyamalan concocted a very unique fantasy story with “Lady In The Water”, which is one of the reasons I liked it so much. As for “The Village”, I think that film works best as a character piece, which is what I think it’s meant to be. The suspense there, in my opinion, purposefully takes a backseat to everything else while we become caught up with his characters. And it also features some very understated but very good acting.
I want to take a moment here and defend M. Night Shyamalan himself because starting with “The Village”, he has repeatedly received critical hatred. It’s like every critic has a personal vendetta against him. C’mon, the guy isn’t a bad filmmaker at all; he’s a very competent one who knows how to pace his films and hold our attention. “The Sixth Sense” got the attention of everyone, as it introduced the general public to a filmmaker who wasn’t concerned with CGI, explosions or cheap thrills. The thrills in “The Sixth Sense” were authentic and not formulaic; Shyamalan knew how to frighten an audience, and his attempts proved successful. His next film was “Unbreakable”, which I cannot comment on because I haven’t seen it yet, although that’s soon to change. In 2002, Shyamalan released “Signs”, which I consider to be the best film of his that I’ve seen to date. And then there was “The Village” and “Lady In The Water”, both of which I obviously consider to be very underrated.
Now onto “The Happening”.
Is it as strong as Shyamalan’s previous efforts? Not quite, but it’s still really good despite a shaky start. “The Happening” has proven something to me, that being that even on a decidedly lesser work, M. Night Shyamalan still remains one of our foremost storytellers. At least, that’s this critic’s humble opinion. I already know that I’m in the minority who actually liked this film, but I’ve got to be honest; I couldn’t help getting caught up in “The Happening”. In a time of year where most movie theater screens are occupied by dreck such as “The Incredible Hulk”, I find it refreshing to see a summer movie that’s more quiet and character-driven. In fact, that’s how all of Shyamalan’s movies are and while “The Happening” may be not as instantly engrossing as “Signs” or “The Sixth Sense”, it nonetheless proves to be a pretty effective apocalyptic suspense thriller. “The Happening” takes its time with the story, but that works and its 90-minutes virtually flew by for me.
“The Happening” opens in Central Park, which is full of pedestrians going about their everyday routines. But suddenly, with a shift of the wind, everything becomes silent and everybody comes to a complete standstill before walking backwards. Then, people calmly and quietly find violent ways to kill themselves. Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, high school science teacher Elliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg) is giving his class a lecture and obtaining theories on why the world’s bee population is disappearing. However, he is soon interrupted and taken to a gathering of the other school teachers, where Elliot learns of the events in Central Park. Naturally, they all assume that it’s a terrorist attack, so the school is dismissed and Elliot goes home, where his wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel) is waiting for him. The two quickly pack up and leave after learning about more events like Central Park occurring, and they get on a train with Elliot’s colleague Julian (John Leguizamo) and his young daughter (Ashlyn Sanchez) to flee the spreading attacks.
Unfortunately, the unknown event has spread all around them already and is closing in fast. So Elliot and the others must find a way to outrun this event before it finds them.
Let me start with the negatives of the film, so they can be out of the way. To begin, the movie does have a shaky start, story and acting-wise. For the first 15 or 20 minutes, I was seriously worried that Shyamalan had indeed gone downhill, but once everything picked up, I found myself wrapped up in this picture just like Shyamalan’s previous works. Yes, the acting isn’t up to the standards of the actors themselves, or even Shyamalan for that matter because I think of him as an actor’s director. However, part of me feels like the acting is that way because that’s how the characters were written. In circumstances such as the one portrayed in the film, people would normally be very confused and panicked, sort of hammy since they would all be like “Oh my God! We have to get out of here!” So in that sense, the acting is fairly decent. It kind of has that same understated and almost muted vibe that Shyamalan’s other movies had. However, there is one performance that I definitely found to be annoying. That being the hermit-like elderly woman that Elliot and the others encounter somewhere near the film’s third act. This part is played by the veteran actress Betty Buckley, and the character is a very strange aspect of the film that just comes across as odd in that bad way. One other small problem has to do with logic where certain characters’ actions are concerned. It is figured out that the event affects large groups of people, so the group led by Elliot is appropriately small, but the second group is bigger. Wouldn’t you want to avoid death if you could? Plus, a certain character does something at the end of the film, something life-threatening, and they don’t even take the neccessary precautions that would protect them.
But those negatives were outweighed overall by the positives. First off, Shyamalan has once again created a very chilling, very effective atmosphere in which his story seems to unfold naturally. Most other people may not like this, because they’ll think it makes the film drag. But I find the deliberate pacing of “The Happening” to be something that really helps it. Plus, the pacing is punctured effectively throughout the film by some pretty shocking moments of violence. The advertising campaign for “The Happening” has made a point of focusing on the fact that this is Shyamalan’s first R-rated picture, and justifiably so. At one point, the suicide scenes even go so far as to show an affected man willingly let his limbs be devoured by a mountain lion and another lying down in the path of a lawnmower. These images are very intense and disturbing, so the squeamish may want to heed the R-rating here. I’m glad to see that Shyamalan still can surprise us with his shock value, because there was one particular moment in this film where I saw something major coming only two seconds before it happened and it really jarred me. That type of shock value is key in creating a good suspense thriller, and that’s what Shyamalan captures effectively yet again in this gradually absorbing film.
The cause of this wave of suicides in “The Happening” is certainly not something that I’ll spoil here, and while it is admittedly a concept that is out there, I nonetheless bought it for the sake of the film. However, if you pay attention to the movie’s trailers and T.V. spots, then more likely you’ll be able to guess it. But I personally thought it worked in the film’s context.
Is “The Happening” as awful as everyone is making it out to be? No way. I’ve seen absolutely awful *cough “10,000 B.C. cough*, and this is far from it. “The Happening”, while it does have its flaws, is still another solid film from M. Night Shyamalan, a writer and director who has yet to disappoint me. I hope this guy has another hundred movies up his sleeve.
