The Happening
Reviewed By : M A Jick

Release Year : 2008

Directed By : M Night Shyamalan

Written By : M NIght Shyamalan

Starring : Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo

Related Links : IMDB, Official Site

 

Lowest common denominator movie making sees people going mad and killing themselves for no apparent reason, everyone blaming terrorists, and loads of blatantly underlined clues to the real reason being delivered to the audience thick and fast so that even the most moronic coke guzzling couch potato can solve the mystery inside the opening 10 minutes and feel a sense of achievement. Of course, it takes the cast at least 1/2 the film to get an inkling of what's happening, but that's the movies for ya.

There are some great set piece scenes - like the raining construction workers - you could edit together one kick ass trailer for this and everybody would be wowed, get their hopes up, be expecting a great movie. Then they'd watch it in their droves, and all leave the cinemas dejected at the realization that a good idea and a few nice scenes could be so utterly ruined by limp characters and an overwhelming feeling that the audience were being treated like idiots who didn't possess a brain cell between them. Oh, come to think of it, that's just what did happen.

Mark Wahlberg looks terminally constipated in any scene requiring a display of emotion, perhaps a subconscious reaction to the shit dialogue that both he and the rest of the cast were given to work with. Still, he gets to talk to a plastic houseplant and attempt to soothe savage survivalists by singing a little ditty, so I guess his day wasn't all bad. As for everyone else, they bang on about terrorists a lot, look shocked, and even many of the sane ones act like they got a dose of the 'crazy gas'.

As a piece of movie making, it's muddled twaddle, clumsily parodying and playing upon twin obsessions with eco issues and terrorism. Opportunites for tension, suspense, fear, or anything that would make it worth watching are totally squandered at every turn. There's just no feeling of anything other than a good idea and a few set pieces, all delivered with bland, repetitive, moronic ineptitude and aimed at not taxing the brain of even the most idiotic and inbred pig farmer from the backwoods of Pigtown, Pensylvania.

Inept trash, more notable as a portrayal of everything that is wrong with the horror mainstream today than as a film. Perhaps M Night did it deliberately, it's a statement on just how low horror is sinking of late, a wake up call to everybody that the banality cannot continue - else, like nature did in the movie, the viewer will turn on the studios and destroy them. Of course, the plants probably have more brains that us viewers, we'll keep going back sheeplike to the shit they serve us up in the vain hopes of discovering a gem.