The Happening (2008)

Before I watched The Happening I already heard a lot of bad stories about it. M. Night Shyamalan supposedly was losing his magic touch he once possessed. Of course I like to make up my own mind about things, so decided to watch The Happening myself.
A word of warning: Normally I try not to spoil too much about what happens in a movie, but for this one I’m going to make a big exception. So if you don’t want to read spoilers stop reading now.

The movie starts well, by introducing the viewer to a situation in which people in New York all start committing suicide. The cause of this isn’t exactly clear and you’ll be wondering what could be causing this.

After this introduction we are transported to a town a couple of hundred kilometers from New York. Two teachers, Elliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg) and Julian (John Leguizamo), hear about the news and the first explanation of it is terrorist gas attack. The school is evacuated and the men decide to leave the town by train. Elliot is joined by his wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel) and Julian brings his daughter. During the train ride they get information about other suicides, not strictly in New York, which makes it clear that something else seems to be going on.

They end up stranded in a little town and hear the actual cause of the suicides, which happened way too soon in this movie. Because of it the suspense that was built up completely disappears and the movie almost seems to change into a dark comedy as the cause of it seems to be some sort of toxin that’s being released by plants. Because of it people can no longer control their impulses and commit suicide. The concept itself is interesting and not as strange as it sound. I can remember seeing a documentary on the BBC in which one insect took control of another insect by injecting something making it do things it normally wouldn’t.

When the mystery disappears, so does everything else and the movie turns into a “run from the plants” film which really was a shame. I really think that the concept of the movie could have worked if someone like Hitchcock made it.
Once you see Mark Wahlberg actually talking to a plant it really seems like the whole movie crew actually was infected by a toxin forcing them to make a horrible film. To make the “enemy” visible a decision was made to use the wind going through grass. I really have no words to describe the scenes in which people run across a field because they see the wind coming.

As it turns out there is also some issue between Elliot and Alma, but it just doesn’t seem to fit the movie. I though that part of the reason it didn’t work was Zooey Deschanel’s acting. In 500 Days of Summer she played a somewhat strange character, but seeing this I was wondering if she’s not able to play a different character. It’s the same feeling I always have when I see Lisa Kudrow.

The hopes I had for The Happening to be good disappeared quickly. I hoped to be able to say others were wrong in their judgement of this, but they were not. The Happening left me disappointed.

Score: 3