Movie Review: The Happening

The Happening (2008):

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Rated: R for violent and disturbing images

Critics Rating: D minus

View: Trailer

This movie was in itself a reason to wait till it comes out on The CW because it was not worth $10.25 for a hour and thirty one minutes. It had you feeling like you would rather sit and watch the first ten minutes of I Am Legend over nine times and enjoy it. For a movie called "The Happening," not much happens. But these are just my thoughts.

The film opens in New York City. People start to get confused in Central Park, repeating their words, standing still and sometimes walking backwards. We hear a few distant screams. A cop on the road shoots himself in the head. A driver gets out of his car, takes the gun, and also shoots himself in the head. We see a pair of high heels walk over and a hand starts to pick up the gun.

Meanwhile on a building site, workers start to walk calmly off the top of the building, crunching down to earth.

A science teacher named Elliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg) is called out of class to a staff meeting warning about this "terrorist attack" in New York, and advising that school is canceled. Elliot and his wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel) flee Philadelphia on a train, with a friend (John Leguizamo) and his daughter Jess. On the train people start to get reports by cellphone that the attacks are in lots of places.

The train ends up leaving them in a small rural town, as the conductors have lost radio contact with everyone else. At a diner they see a newscast that suggests the suicides are not caused by a terrorist attack, but by a natural phenomena. The friend leaves Jess with Elliot and Alma to go and look for his wife in Princeton (when he gets there it is infected, and, after the driver of the car he is in crashes deliberately into a tree the friend slashes his wrists with glass and dies).

Elliot and Alma decide, along with everybody else, to flee for the state line, as the attacks seem only to be affecting the northeast of the US (how original). A nice couple who run a plant nursery offer to take them in their car. The man suggests to Elliot and Alma that the toxin is produced by plants (PLANTS!!!). He explains the way plants can communicate with other plants, and the way they can release chemicals to get rid of specific pests (in this case, us humans). Eventually, they all die except Elliot, Alma and Jess (of course.)

Elliot, Alma and Jess move on till they find an old house with no power which they think is abandoned. A spooky old lady lives there, who chooses to remain out of contact with the whole world. She doesn't want to know about the event in the outside world, however she gives them supper and a bed for the night (the funniest part is when she slaps the shit outta the little girl for touching the food.). In the morning she tells Elliot they have to go (she seems completely bonkers). She then goes outside and is affected by the toxin. Elliot runs through the house trying to find Alma and Jess. They are outside in a spring house; he is stuck in the main house; however he can talk to them through a speaking tube. He explains that the toxin now seems to be set off by even one person alone.

Elliot decides that if he is going to die he doesn't want to die alone. They all leave their safe hiding places and walk into the middle of the garden and hold hands. The wind blows. Nothing happens. Hmmmmm....

Three months later and they are all living back in Philly. Jess is off to school by bus. Alma is doing a pregnancy test; it's positive. On the TV is a scientist warning that the event was like a red tide; the first sign that the planet is rejecting humans as pests. The host says that if that were true it would be happening in other places.

Cut to a park in Paris. Two guys are walking discussing plans for after work that evening. Cue distant scream; one guy starts to repeat his words, everyone stands still; other guy says (in French) "Oh my God".

So in my mortal words, I say this was a stupid movie to get the message that "true love conquers all" out to people. (Oh, and that mother nature is pissed.) I would have probably been more satisfied if it ended like The Perfect Storm and everyone died. It would have been more believable then. But you make the decision for yourself.