My wife and I were unfortunate enough to see M. Night Shamalyan’s new movie, The Happening, over the weekend. I say unfortunate because that’s how I felt during most of the movie. I was unlucky enough (or dumb enough, depending on your point of view) to be tricked into paying $30+ to see yet another dismal failure by this over-rated, over-hyped, and over-egotistical so-called auteur.
Good news for M. Night Shamalyan: the movie theatre was packed. Bad news for M. Night Shamalyan: as we left everyone we passed was bitching about how bad the movie was.
It’s a shame it was so terrible, really it is. It has such a great premise (that could truly be frightening if handled by a halfway-competent director) that obviously appealed to large numbers of people. I know that many, many people were talking excitedly about this movie months ago.
So what went wrong?
Well, let’s start with the plot. Oh, I suppose I should give the obligatory SPOILERS warning here. The basic plot is that people start freezing, acting disoriented, and then committing mass suicide. Survivors flee the big cities and eventually it is revealed that it is the plants causing this behavior, releasing a chemical in revenge for humanity abusing the planet. It’s also strongly hinted that the mass disappearance of bees is either responsible for this or the final straw that makes the plant-life finally snap and go postal. We follow the desperate attempts of one couple to survive.
Okay. So far, not so bad. Not great, as it reads like as if someone had ghostwritten a novel synopsis Al Gore had written on a napkin during a really heavy lunch, but not terrible.
But the script lets it down so badly. The opening scenes are pretty good, with people jumping off construction sites and tearing their own skin off. But almost immediately, something doesn’t add up. We’re in the park, the trees start rustling, and everyone freezes. Of the two women on a bench we’ve been focusing on, one gets disoriented and stabs herself in the throat. The other is unaffected. In fact, she’s the only person unaffected. How? Why? It’s never explained. And it’s repeated at the end of the movie too, so it’s not a one-time only forgivable mistake. If she’s immune to the chemicals the plants are now suddenly pumping out, then how come? Why isn’t she all over the news? Why isn’t someone doing something? The same thing happens on the construction site – why is it only workers at the top are affected? They’re further away from plants and the wind would be stronger, so there would be fewer chemicals in the air. It makes no sense whatsoever.
We meet Mark Wahlberg at this point, who is a science teacher in a school. Handy, right? And if that weren’t coincidence enough, he’s teaching a class on the ramifications of acts of nature. Wow, spooky. Now, coincidences (and I use the term loosely) like this can be okay, if handled well (see The Day of the Triffids novel, for a perfect example which also has killer vegetation as the enemy*) but here they’re thrown at the audience in such a ham-fisted manner it’s just embarrassing.
We also learn that his best friend is the math teacher (John Leguizamo) and that his girlfriend (the ever-vacant Zooey Deschanel) is cheating on him (and she and the best friend hate each other). I think we’re supposed to believe that this ‘cheating’ is okay as they only ate dessert together (which we find out later) but it still makes her out to be a total bitch and a very unsympathetic character. John Leguizamo, meanwhile, is a devoted husband, father and son, and the script shows us how good of a best friend he is too. Needless to say, the bitch lives, the good guy dies. Just goes to show that despite all his ego, M. Night Shamalyan has bought totally into the Hollywood line of crap.
Wahlberg isn’t aware of this cheating but does become so during the movie. He takes it in stride and keeps going, which is probably just as well as if this movie had another ten minutes of mindless dialogue or vacant staring the audience would be killing themselves just like the fictional people on-screen. The script subtly hints – and by subtly I mean it’s pretty blatant and by hints I mean Shamalyan hits you over the head with a neon rock with the appropriate dialogue on it – that this is because of his resolute, never-say-die character. Unfortunately, through a combination of bad lines, awful direction and Wahlberg’s limited acting skills, it actually comes across as the character being a pathetic doormat who can’t stand up for himself and with little or no redeemable or likeable features.
The three main characters flee the city via train, with John Leguizamo’s snot-nosed daughter (Ashlyn Sanchez) in tow. During the train trip, we discover that girlfriend isn’t really committed to the cheating (so she’s flakey, as well as untrustworthy) and that other cities are now “under attack”. The train stops in the middle of nowhere and the passengers obligingly stand around for a while. Yep, I’m not kidding. Now we see why Mark Wahlberg is the main character. He’s the only one with enough intelligence to actually ask the railroad employees why they’ve stopped and where they are. Come on, for fuck’s sake! Even in ordinary, everyday circumstances, if a train just stops then every damn passenger would be clustered around the staff. And then the staff replies that they’ve lost contact. With who, asks Wahlberg? With everyone. Oooh… spooky. Great line, delivered well. You can see why they used it for the trailer. Unfortunately, it makes no sense. Who have they lost contact with? Their bosses? How? Other people are still using cellphones, so there’s no reason they can’t get in touch with someone. Lost contact with the terminal, yes. Lost contact with the railroad company, yes. Lost contact with everyone, no. Don’t be idiotic.
So this huge crowd of people crams into the small village diner and learn on the news that this death attack is spreading and it’s gradually targeting smaller and smaller groups of people. They panic and all leave in cars. No, I don’t know where they got the cars from – they all came on the train, so this makes no sense either. (Oh and there’s an important – or totally trivial but the director wants us to notice it – bit in this scene regarding Wahlberg’s mood ring. It has no relevance to the plot and is supposed to indicate character but in reality it’s just a distraction. It is also hammered into the script as a supposedly poignant ending later, in the same way a tantrum-throwing three-year-old hammers a square peg into a round hole in his plastic toy toolset.) Wahlberg and Deschanel are stranded until the last car offers them a lift. It’s from psychotic old man (Frank Collison) and his wife who own a greenhouse/nursery nearby. Collison can’t act to save his life and was obviously cast because he looks creepy. Anyway, Leguizamo decides at this point to go looking for his wife, who happens to be in one of the areas hit by the effect. Yeah, really sensible. Still, to its credit the script does make a decent enough effort of explaining his actions, although abandoning your young daughter seems a little stupid. True, his best friend is there to take care of her, but so is his bitch of a girlfriend who hates you.
(Oh, and no review of the movie can go by without commenting at this point on the iPod scene. While in the diner, a woman shows a video taken by someone elsewhere in a zoo on her iPod. Now, not only is this scene really badly filmed – it’s obvious that the picture has been superimposed on the iPod – but it’s also bad. Basically a guy (presumably a zookeeper) walks into the lion cage and offers himself up to be eaten. And two lions proceed to pull his arms off. Yep, you read that right. They pull his arms off while he’s standing. And he doesn’t even tug against them. Now,I don’t know much about African wildlife, but I’m pretty sure an adult lion could apply enough pressure with its jaws to bite through a human arm easily enough. But they don’t bite through the arms. They gingerly take hold of the hands and then just pull, and the arms come off much higher up. Also, a lion could probably tear an arm off, provided it had leverage. If the man was down on the ground and the lion had its weight pressing against him to hold him still, then yes, the arm could be torn off. But that’s now what happens. Instead, the lions just gently tug, the man doesn’t move (he doesn’t stagger, isn’t pulled towards the lions, or anything) and the arm separates from the body with an explosion of fake blood. It’s meant to be shocking but it’s just shockingly bad.)
(And jumping ahead a little, John Leguizamo dies – in one of the few truly shocking moments in the movie, although it is strongly signposted – after reaching the town where his wife was supposed to be. Big whoop. Why bother even having this character in the movie? Or the actor even? I think Leguizamo’s great, but he was way underused here. Cast some unknown, who’s cheaper. And needless to say the way he dies is stupid. He and his new buddies are in a cloth-covered convertible Jeep and so the chemical in the air is going to get in, yet we focus on a tiny rip in the fabric. Sigh.)
Anyway, Collison and wife run back to their nursery to get a few things for the road. Now we know Collison is crazy because of the way he looks, but just in case we don’t he harps on about hot dogs and how plants respond to stimuli. Yep, liking one food type and thing it’s cool to talk to plants makes you crazy, apparently. Nice to see how bigoted a writer/director can be these days. He also explains the plot to the audience, which is handy. Oh, and there’s a shot when the car pulls up with the greenhouses in the foreground and two big cooling towers in the background. Subtle, eh?
So off our merry fivesome (Wahlberg, Deschanel, Collison, his wife, and snotty kid) go. They stop at a four-way junction in the middle of nowhere due to some bodies being up ahead. A scared army private arrives behind them and tells them that that way is cut off. Then more people arrive from the other two directions, saying the same thing. This was a reasonably well-handled scene actually. Shame it didn’t last. See what Shamalyan did there? We just got rid of a bunch of people and now we have a flimsy excuse to get the group big again. Can you say lazy writing? Sigh.
Eventually, the group splits up into two groups and heads across country. The larger group, led by the army private, is affected and everyone dies (off-screen). Wahlberg figures out (again, bearing in mind he’s already figured it out once and been told it by Collison earlier) that the plants only release their chemical when there’s a large group of people. His group splits up further. Now it’s just him, his Deschanel, snotty kid, and two other snotty teenage kids. This, of course, makes no sense. If this was true, then why wasn’t everyone attacked back at the crossroads when they where in a much larger group? Why does splitting up into smaller groups save them when they’re running (and failing) away from the wind that’s already carrying the chemical? And why are groups of five safe now when they’re not earlier (see Leguizamo’s death)?
Much later (about half-an-hour or more into the movie but nothing happens of any consequence whatsoever), the group tries to take refuge at a house only to have the two teenage brats act like assholes (which is pretty much a true representation of the youth of today, sadly) and end up getting shot for their troubles. The trio (Wahlberg, Deschanel and snotty kid) then find refuge with an old woman (Betty Buckley) who invites them to stay but acts crazy (see, in Shamalyan’s twisted head if you’re old, you’re crazy). The next morning, she discovers Wahlberg creeping about her bedroom (where he mistakes a small doll lying in full view for her – I’m not making this shit up, honestly, it really is that stupid…) and yells straight at the camera: “Leave now!” This is supposed to be a big shocking moment but I swear to God the only reaction it got from the audience was for at least half to shuffle to their feet before sitting again.
Buckley walks out of her house (yep, when you want someone to leave the best way to achieve that is leave them in the house and leave yourself) and walks in her garden. The plants are now really pissed off and start targeting single people (why they didn’t do that from the beginning is beyond me). Buckley goes really crazy and smashes the house windows with her head, which lets the chemical/wind in. Wahlberg takes refuge in a cellar-like room. Meanwhile, Deschanel and snotty kid are in a shed outside, but luckily they can all hear each other due to underground pipes (and yes, these were laboriously revealed in an info-dump earlier). There’s an oh-so-meaningful conversation about their relationship and the mood ring, which includes one of those lines you never want to write just in case your movie sucks (“Is this really the end?” – at which point half the audience can be heard muttering “I fucking well hope so…”), then all three of them agree to commit suicide and be with each other when they die (even though the distance involved clearly means they won’t be, even if they run, which of course they’re too stupid to do – and dragging the poor kid along seems a mite unfair to me).
Needless to say, and much to the chagrin of the audience, they don’t die. Three months (or something like it) later and we have a long section focusing on a news report that explains the plot one more time (just in case the audience are really dumb). We also have a far too long section of Deschanel trying to act nervous and finding out she’s pregnant, then Wahlberg walks down the street and finds out. Yay! Happy ending. Although I imagine most of the people in the theatre were expecting to see Wahlberg stop and start walking backwards. But then if I saw Deschanel in the street, I’d personally stop and start running.
But wait, this is a M. Night Shamalyan movie. So there must be a twist ending, right? Well, yes, there is. That news report came down to no one believing the plants were responsible (despite all the scientific evidence there would be to the contrary, obviously) because it only happened in one place. And lo and behold, after Wahlberg gets the bad news, we cut to a park in Paris , where the opening scene is reshot (complete with one stupid immune plot-hole, sorry, character). Spooky. Little advice, M. Night, if you’re going to have a twist ending, you have to set up the twist as soon as possible and disguise it to make it effective. You don’t bring it up in the penultimate scene and then make it blatantly obvious. That’s not a twist ending. It’s an ending. And a damn poor one. You knew this in The Sixth Sense, you even knew it in The Village (as obvious as that plot was), why not do it here?
So that’s the plot, such as it is. And as you can see it makes little or no sense. Is it the wind that’s dangerous? Or just an indication that the chemical is coming towards you? Does the chemical hang in one area, as the movie often suggests? Or does it come from anywhere the plants detect large groups of people, as the movie also suggests? Which is it? If it’s the wind, then Leguizamo shouldn’t have died. If it’s an indication, then people inside houses shouldn’t die – but sometimes they do, sometime they don’t. If it’s a chemical, it shouldn’t hang in the air. And it should also affect anyone touching a plant – which everyone does – regardless of the wind. There’s no consistency or logic to the plot anywhere and it drives you insane after a while.
Other stuff I should note is that the acting was mediocre at best and terrible at worst. When Mark Wahlberg is the best actor you have in the cast, you know you have problems. I like him, I like his movies generally, but he’s no great shakes as an actor. John Leguizamo needn’t have bothered showing up. The Deschanel can’t act her way out of a wet paper bag (she’s one of the many things that ruined The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy too) and the remainder of the cast are weak to non-interesting.
Why the hell was this rated R? Can anyone tell me that? I mean, what do you see that’s so gory or shocking? There’s no sex, so it has to be violence. Okay, bodies dropping from the sky, a single car crash, hanged bodies, the two kids getting shot, etc. etc., that’s all true, but you don’t see much. Most of the blood, gore and even violence happens off screen. The worst scene is when a guy lies down beneath a lawnmower (yep, again I stress that I’m not making this up) and you see a ton of blood – but that’s it and it’s shot from some distance away. I guess the Betty Buckley’s face stuck with glass shards might be gory too, but I doubt it. I’d be hard-pressed to give this an NC-17 rating in all honesty.
And am I the only one who thinks M. Night Shamalyan is beginning to believe the hype that he is the next Alfred Hitchcock? Listen to the music used for the train journey. Not only is it far too loud, it also sounds like a bad homage to a Hitchcock movie score. And then after the two snot-nosed brats get shot and killed, we get a scene that just reminds of old movies, we get the girl running, crying, with the sun behind her and the camera down low in front of her. It just seemed so out of place and yet such a desperate plea for attention by the director.
I did think during the movie that M. Night Shamalyan should write a comedy. Seriously. Yes, most of the audience was laughing at the wrong (and inappropriate) places, due to the bad acting and writing. But, there were several scenes in there that were actually funny (mostly featuring Mark Wahlberg – his talking to the rubber plant, for example, or his claim of flirting with the pharmacist). Not that I think Shamalyan should ever make another feature film in his life but if he did, a comedy would be out of the box for him and might actually benefit his career.
In summary (finally, right?) M. Night Shamalyan has lost the plot. Truly. If you thought The Village was disappointing and The Lady in the Lake was pathetic, then you’ll need to be prepared to further lower your expectations. Why this over-rated hack keeps getting money thrown at him to make such mediocre trash is beyond me. Avoid The Happening at all costs.
