The Happening (2008) Review

Watching The Happening brought me back to an experience I remember well from my childhood. Walking into a local video joint, feverish with the excitement of cinematic possibility, and rushing from aisle to aisle, I often would come across something promising and new from a star I was familiar with. Perhaps the cover displayed Jackie Chan or even Steven Seagal; I’m a product of the 80s, after all. I would grab up these straight-to-video films and rush home expecting an Under Siege or a Rumble in the Bronx. Instead I was treated to bad acting, amateur direction and bland dialogue. I had been duped. Certainly these sorts of half-assed cash-ins haven’t disappeared, I’ve just gotten better at avoiding them. But The Happening made it to theaters.

Speaking from a wealth of experience, The Happening is the equivalent of a straight-to-video horror film, ushered to the big screen by a director who could apparently sell a bear the pelt off its back. It’s a baffling picture, and not in the respect it doesn’t make any sense, it’s that I don’t understand how it exists among the scores of respectable films now in theatres.

In New York’s Central Park people suddenly start behaving strangely. They stop what they’re doing and begin to hurt themselves to the point of death. We see construction workers leap off buildings, policemen shoot themselves in the head, and a woman stab herself in the neck with a hairpin. This bizarre behavior is spreading all over the East Coast, and, fearing some sort of terrorist attack, we follow high school science teacher Elliot (Mark Wahlberg,) his wife (Zooey Deschanel) and his friend (John Leguizamo) as they attempt to flee the rapidly spreading “attack.”

Now as a fan of horror, and I have no particular problem with the preposterous nature of the movie. The idea of involuntary suicide is a terrifying enough hook, and a few early sequences are well realized in that respect, even if they are strictly genre fare. But the emptiness with which everyone reacts to the phenomenon, and the subsequent lack of suspense that it brings, leaves the film floundering as we move from location to location outrunning an unseen threat. I considered the possibility that M. Night was trying to say something about our reactions to a terrifying unexplainable attack, but judging by the absurd dialogue, I’d never say these people were meant to be mistaken for realistic.

The dialogue is the top culprit here. M. Night often strives to be eerie and foreboding with wooden speeches and obtuse metaphors, but his cleverness comes off as condescending to any audience member who’s seen a horror film or two. Particularly as we approach the final act, and the entrance of an eccentric recluse who offers to take the protagonists in, the dialogue threatens to careen the picture headfirst into self-parody.

As for as the acting, it's more like overacting. Speaking as someone who tends to respect the work of Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel, their performances here are career lows. I can’t understand how they came to such terribly zombified performances, as they usually rise above the weaknesses of their lesser pictures, (see - The Big Hit or Hitchhikers Guide).

I feel I should stop at this point; the film isn’t going to get any better for all my whinging, and you certainly get the point that I thought it was terrible.This is the first Shyamalan movie I’ve seen since The Sixth Sense way back in 1999. I’ve managed to avoid his films based on word-of-mouth alone. But the premise and the promise of an exciting genre film fooled me. “M. Night’s first R-rated film!” wasn’t overly bloody by genre standards, and I don’t recall any cursing or sex, so I wonder how much of that campaign was to attract the ever expanding hard-horror audience into the theatre. Like those films in the video store of my childhood, this one had nice packaging but no filling.

A side note: while watching The Happening I was sure I was seeing the worst movie of the year. Then I saw The Love Guru. So I’d like to lessen my distaste for The Happening by about 10% accordingly.