Where Viewed: standard def DVD on the couch
Experience with Film: I remembered the shot of people laying down in front of a lawnmower from the trailer. And maybe that the bad guys required chlorophyll to survive.
Writer: M. Night Shyamalan
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Principal Actors: Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel
Is this the point when M. Night Shyamalan became a punchline? I couldn’t tell whether THE HAPPENING is meant to be humorous or scary. It fails at both. I read a CNN interview with M. Knight in which he claims that it’s not an environmental movie, that it’s a B-movie, but it’s also about “if you realize that in 30 seconds you were gonna die … what will you say to your loved one in that last moment?” Which is not really B-movie material. And if this is what the movie’s about, I sure didn’t get it. While watching it, my girlfriend joked that they shot the whole thing in a weekend because none of the actors seem to even be trying to emote. In fact, early on, Zooey Deschanel’s character actually says that she doesn’t like to show her emotions. Between that cop out and Marky Mark’s perpetually raised eyebrows, the actors aren’t doing much besides walking through fields. If I remember correctly, characters in Shyamalan movies often veer into deadpan—and it seems like a stylistic choice. But it doesn’t work here. In that CNN interview, M. Night claims that THE HAPPENING is intense, that it’s “breathless from the second the movie starts to the end”. He is woefully mistaken. It’s a chase movie with dull protagonists that are running from trees. And the wind. And trees blowing in the wind. It’s awful hard to generate intensity when the characters are either one-note or blank-faced. And the antagonists are plants. And are are in almost every shot of the movie. And are plants. And the protagonists don’t really have a goal–they’re just wandering around and have almost no control of their fate. Toward the end, the trees release their suicidal spores randomly and then they stop inexplicably. That’s it. There is no satisfying climax. There is no intensity. It’s not even a fun B-movie.
FADE OUT 