The Happening / The Crappening

Writing a CF review of this Hollywood cash and burn is kinda like picking on the retarded kid at school. Aside from John Boorman (Zardoz, The Exorcist II), I can think of no other Hollywood director that has gone from being considered a brilliant new voice to out-of-his-mind in such a short span of time. Sure, lots of brilliant directors have made bad films, but Shyamalan has made two in a row. In fact, The Happening takes things a step down to the lows dredged by Lady in the Water.

The plot is ludicrous, but on paper, it actually sounds as though it would make a pretty cool low-grade science fiction movie, like the ones they cranked out back in the ‘50s and ‘60s. People mysteriously go into trances and begin killing themselves in major East Coast cities. Is it biological terrorism? Urban nihilism? A covert government test? Unfortunately, the cause isn’t nearly as interesting as any of those scenarios – it’s (ludicrously) the trees and plants, which have suddenly decided that they hate humans and have evolved ways to get rid of us.

Mark Wahlberg, who is not necessarily a bad actor, is our everyman, and even he doesn’t really seem to know what to do with the material he’s offered. The opening scene with him playing a high school science teacher is painful, and I wondered if they hadn’t slipped in some rehearsal footage by mistake. His brother will come off looking cooler in front of a half-empty stadium during the New Kids on the Block reunion tour.

It’s not all Marky Mark’s fault. The dialogue is such that Knight basically sent his actors down the road in a car with square wheels. What we have is a clear violation of screenwriting rule #1 – “show, don’t tell.” One scene, for instance, has a group of people being shot, and we see Wahlberg close his eyes and tell himself, “Think you’re a scientist, look at the variables…”

You expect straight-to-video movies to be bad, but it’s rare when a major Hollywood director ends up making something as Mystery Science Theater-worthy as The Happening turns out to be. This movie is so poorly-directed and acted that if you took all of the scenes that actually worked and combined them, you may get a minute and a half of running time. Shyamalan’s first mistake was believing in his heart when the whole world told him he was brilliant. Yes, The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable are well-made films, but Knight’s hubris clearly got the better of him, and one wonders whether he even passes his scripts off to editors any more. When the public began to get skeptical of his films, Knight got a bit snarky. Disney turned this one down after reading the script, and it has been reported that his own assistant was not confident in the script.
Towards the end of the film, the plot veers into gothic horror territory. Wahlberg, Deschanel and the kid with them stumble across a decrepit farmhouse that time forgot, complete with the standard crazy doll-collecting caretaker who may or may not have something to hide.
Unfortunately, Shyamalan’s stilted dialogue and inept scene structuring ruin what could have been a few effective scares. The set piece really doesn’t mesh well with the rest of the movie; I actually wonder if Shyamalan was having difficulty stretching the killer trees and weeds plot into a feature film, then added this sequence as an afterthought.

Is this movie worth your $2?: The Happening is one of those that really should be viewed for its monumental flameout value, if nothing else. You almost wish Shyamalan would have checked himself before he wrecked himself, because only the most mean-spirited among us would really want to see him fail. It is certainly not good, nor is it entertaining or interesting enough to be bad-good. Masochists need apply.