Review: The Happening (2008)

[Scott Mendelson]

The Happening
2008
90 minutes
Rated R

by Scott Mendelson

Critics were wrong on Speed Racer, wrong on Wanted, wrong on Hancock.
What about one of the alleged super-turds of the summer? Well... they
aren't completely wrong, but there is hope.

First of all, two very important things about The Happening...

1) It's obvious that M. Night Shyamalan had absolutely no interest in
making an R-rated film. Despite my amusement about Fox's marketing
campaign, and the extra interest that said rating probably garnered,
this is easily one of the softest R-rated movies I have ever seen. No
sex or nudity, no hard profanity that I can recall, and very little
graphic violence. The television edit of this film will be maybe five-
seconds shorter. M Night's previous films had a realistic, clinical
take on the violence that made it more disturbing than the usual
splatter. There are a couple scenes that capture that 'son of two
doctors' visual (for example, a close up of a realistically broken
body that has just fallen off a building), but most of the content is
shot from far away and cuts away far sooner than you'd expect. My
guess is that the subject matter itself guaranteed that the film would
garner an R-rating, and that Fox asked Shyamalan to toss in a little
gore for gore's sake.

2) Mark Walhburg should never, ever appear in a mainstream tent pole
movie that requires him to play an everyman and someone of great
intelligence. He couldn't do it in Planet Of The Apes, and he's quite
terrible here. He's perhaps the least convincing onscreen educator in
the history of celluloid. I've always preferred his brother Donnie,
and even he would have been more convincing as a blue-collar science
teacher. The film is plenty flawed aside from him, but his stunningly
awful performance is probably 60% of the reason the movie doesn't work
as well as it should. The majority of the acting has an odd stilted,
quasi-realistic quality, like a cross between super-realism and
surreal 1950s horror acting. It doesn't always work, but it keeps you
on edge in a way that conventional performances might not have.

Most of you know the general plot at this point and I won't spoil much
for those that don't, but the first forty-five minutes of this eighty-
five minute movie are surprisingly compelling. There are enough scary,
nasty jolts and clever violence to keep you just on edge (I
particularly like the 'recycling pistol'). Again, the acting is odd,
and the plot choices are a little off (when a train stops suddenly mid-
journey and forces everyone to de-board, only our hero asks the train
operators just what is going on), but there is a palatable sense of
menace and dread. I like how the news reports are realistically
panicked and confused, often giving out false information and wild
theorizing.

Random note 1 - As I was watching the movie, it occurred to me, with
no small amusement, that two places likely not to be affected by the
incidents would be Mel Gibson's farm from Signs and the colonial town
from The Village.

Random note 2 - If you're going to have characters using the word
'happening' in a dramatic fashion a good dozen or so times, don't call
your movie The Happening. It's a big pet peeve of mine when characters
shoe-horn the title of the movie into the narrative, and it 'happens'
a whole bunch here (the oddly named James Bond movies, like Tomorrow
Never Dies, The Living Daylights, or Die Another Day, do this every
time).

Zooey Deschanel seems to be playing a realistically screwed up person,
to the point where it's (realistically) off putting at times. Still, I
like that it's all but stated that she had a very screwed up childhood
(did she see dead people as a child?), but that childhood trauma is
never spelled out or even stated. The rest of the cast does what they
can, even when the plot makes them make boneheaded choices. For
example, John Leguizamo eventually leaves his daughter in the care of
Wahlburg and Deschanel in order to find his wife. But, really,
considering the nature of the calamity, his wife is either completely
healthy and completely able to save herself, or she's already dead and
there's no hope. Under those circumstances, you stay with your kid so
she doesn't either end up an orphan or die alone.

There are genuine Shyamalan touches, especially in the eccentricity of
the characters. The older lady that figures into the third act (Betty
Buckley) is inexplicably crazy, but yet a symbolic explanation for her
character is undone by the plot. She just seems to be batty for no
particular reason (Wahlburg does his worst acting in his scenes with
Buckley). Deschanel is cooky too, as is the gardener who is rather
plausibly offers an explanation for the carnage while obsessing about
hot dogs. It's actually the occasionally quirky dialogue, rather than
the rote violence, that makes this feel like a Shyamalan film. For the
record, I adore how the romantic subplot, Deshanel's guilt over having
an almost-date with an attractive coworker, is dealt with. Wahlburg's
speech involving cough syrup, as well as a brief beat involving him
getting relationship advice from two kids, is the highlight of the
movie.

Despite my praise of the above, the entire last third of the movie
really drags and the movie just sort of ends, halfheartedly, without a
real climax. Granted, the end of the movie is rooted more in character
drama than in the thriller staples, but you need something, anything,
to get a rise out of the audience in the end. Of course, this is the
big problem with the movie. Quirky acting, odd pacing, weird plot
choices... all of that would be manageable save for a threat that,
once revealed, really can't be dealt with in any cinematic fashion.
Again, avoiding spoilers, but once you know what's going on, you
basically wait for the problem to ride itself out. This may be
realistic, but it's not entertaining.

I stand by what I wrote last over the last month or so. Even a bad
Shyamalan movie is more interesting than the bland, try nothing,
accomplish nothing confections that make up the majority of the
suspense/horror/thriller genre. I can't quite recommend The Happening,
but it has enough quirky and intense touches to absolutely recommend a
rental when the time comes. Shyamalan still has to redeem himself, he
still needs to learn how to end a movie that contains no twist (of his
pictures, only Signs avoids a twist AND ends successfully). But The
Happening is not a catastrophe and it has more to like than 90% of the
horror films so far this year. That's not saying much, but it is
saying something.

How's this for a pull quote? - "M. Night Shyamalan: Scott Mendelson
still hasn't given up on him."

Grade: C