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So I saw ‘The Happening’ …
Despite what you may have heard or seen, M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening is not awful.
However, that doesn’t mean The Happening is a good movie. It’s a misunderstood movie - and I’m afraid one of the people who doesn’t understand it is Shyamalan himself.
The writer-director has said that he tried to make a B-movie, but what’s on the screen doesn’t bear that out. A B movie has second tier actors, a thin, pulpy screenplay and cheap production values that can be used to good effect. The Happening has at least one very well known actor in Mark Wahlberg, and Zooey Deschanel and John Leguizamo are recognizable too. The screenplay isn’t so much thin as it is inconsistent, and the production values, aside from a couple of cheesy effects shots, are top-notch.
So what kind of movie is this? Shyamalan doesn’t seem to know. At times it tries to be a schlocky disaster movie, about people fleeing a weird poison that makes people want to kill themselves.
On the other hand, it also plays as a Hitchcockian thriller, reminiscent of The Birds, wherein people don’t understand why they’re being attacked. But even the Hitchcock references are schizophrenic. There’s another scene toward the end of The Happening that very clearly echoes the climax of Psycho, when Vera Miles finds “Mrs. Bates” in the basement.
The Happening also tries to be a message movie, a morality play about not messing with Mother Nature. Oh, and it’s also Shyamalan’s version of Steven Spielberg’s take on War of the Worlds, in which we view a widespread attack from the viewpoint of a family on the brink of collapse.
Confused yet? I certainly was.
Yet for all of that disorientation, Shyamalan retains a knack for staging effective sequences. Most of the mass suicides are chilling. A scary sequence in which Wahlberg and company try to reason with frightened residents who won’t let them take shelter in their house, shows just how effective The Happening might have been had it stuck with the idea of people becoming rash during a catastrophe.
The Happening is such a weird jumble of genres that it’s actually kind of intriguing to watch it lurch from one tone to another. I can safely say I’ve never seen a movie quite like it. The variety of styles, at the very least, keeps it from being the disaster that Lady in the Water was.
Still, the inconsistency ultimately sinks The Happening. Deschanel, with her offbeat charm, manages to fit in with the oddball shifts in tone. No movie with her can be altogether bad. But a miscast Wahlberg doesn’t seem to know what direction to take, so he goes over the top. That butts up against Leguizamo, who plays his role relatively straight. And for every sequence Shyamalan stages well, there are at least two more that are comically ineffective.
Unlike some other people, I’m not ready to write off Shyamalan yet. I still see enough talent here to believe that he can redeem himself. The Happening is a fascinating mess, but it’s a mess all the same.
GRADE: C
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