M.Night goes from stale to rotten with his latest

The Happening (2008)

Written & Directed by M. Night Shyamalan

1 Star

It’s happening. M. Night Shyamalan’s artistic ability and storytelling prowess are circling the drain. Ever since his breakthrough with The Sixth Sense (1999) his films have gotten progressively worse. Ideally, he should have abandoned the sci-fi/paranormal genre and tried something different following the decent Signs (2002). With his latest effort it’s more than safe to say his work has gone from stale in recent years to rotten with The Happening- a 90 minute thriller that feels like 2 hours because of its uneven narrative which spends too much time in the fields of small town Pennsylvania.

Probably the biggest flaw with this picture is its poor screenplay. I found myself laughing at things not intended for comedy. Elliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg) is your typical young high school teacher (science) trying to be the cool teacher with his students. Consider this cringe-inducing exchange between Elliot and a student:

Elliot Moore: You should be more interested in science, Jake. You know why? Because your face is perfect. The problem is, your face is perfect at 15. Now if you were interested in science, you would know facts like the human nose and ears grow a fraction of an inch each year. So a perfect balance of features now might not look so perfect five years from now, and might look down right whack ten years from now.

In another unintended hilarious bit of dialogue Elliot, his wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel) and others seek help from a local after the mysterious “toxin” claims more lives in the countryside. This might be the worst bit of dialog I have heard since Tom Cruise called his son a slang term for a part of the male anatomy (this is a family site so I’ll refrain from saying it) in War of the Worlds. If The Happening was intended to be a comedy (and added a few more jokes) then I'd give it two stars.

Nursery Owner: We're packing hot dogs for the road. You know hot dogs get a bad rap? They got a cool shape, they got protein. You like hot dogs right? By the way, I think I know what's causing this.
Elliot Moore: You do?
Nursery Owner: It's the plants. They can release chemicals.
[to his plants]
Nursery Owner: OK babies, we are going to be going, but we will be back soon, OK?
[to Elliot]
Nursery Owner: Oh, plants react to human stimulus, they've proved it in tests.
[to his wife]
Nursery Owner: You get the mustard?

These are just a few of the scenes in the film I chuckled at that weren’t intended to be funny. Another involves a shameless product placement for the Apple iPhone to show a man being dismembered by a tiger. There's also a few scenes in which people try to outrun the wind.

It’s really a shame that Shyalaman has fallen this far from a filmmaker once considered (perhaps unfairly) to be the next Spielberg. His ideas are not bad- mysterious toxin emitted by plants causes people to kill themselves. Admittedly, it’s a fascinating concept not that unlike Hitchcock’s The Birds (a Shyamalan favorite) but the execution is terrible. One cannot really fault Wahlberg, Deschanel and John Leguizamo (plays a co-worker and friend to Elliot) because the dialog is so bad. I wasn’t sure if the perpetual looks of angst on Wahlberg and Deschanel’s faces was acting or repulsion for the lines they were given. Perhaps it’s time Shyamalan works with a collaborator and tries something other than science fiction. He claims to be a HUGE Hitchcock fan so why not try a crime piece?

At this point in his career Shyamalan is stuck in neutral and is certainly not growing as a filmmaker. To his credit Shyamalan is skillful in creating a creepy atmosphere of dread and desperation. He just needs some help with the writing and maybe he should leave the familiar confines of Pennsylvania for shooting pictures.