The Happening
Directed and written
by M. Night Shyamalan
Starring Mark Wahlberg
and Zooey Deschanel
Classification: 14A
*
Being risibly bad, The Happening is at least worth a laugh. Exactly one laugh, by my reckoning, and completely unintended but no less full-throated for that. However, before we get to it, let's dispense with writer-director M. Night Shyamalan who, more to the point, is doing such a splendid job dispensing with himself. My, but his career has devolved into its own horror show, enjoying that early success with The Sixth Sense but falling off quickly with Unbreakable and Signs, then plunging precipitously through The Village and Lady in the Water and now this resounding splat.
On the surface of things - the preferred location for summertime fare - the happening in The Happening has a perversely appealing logic. Understandably distressed by our careless stewardship of the globe, the plant kingdom goes all vigilante on us. Trees and leaves of grass and most every form of vegetative matter are shooting back - exuding a viral toxin that, when breathed in by humankind, has the effect of "flipping our self-preservation switch." Translation: Just one sniff and good folks are seized by an irresistible impulse to off themselves, albeit not before posing prettily for the camera in a stylish freeze-frame. Yes, we're talking suicide as a contagious disease, prompted - who would have thought it possible? - by a phenomenon even more deadly than dull blockbusters.
Now, in M. Night's defence, it must be said that the premise does pose certain inherent problems. For example, how to dramatize the villains? I mean, any middling auteur can trump up a scare when working with a giant radioactive lizard or a skyscraper-sized monkey or even your standard-issue shark, but a patch of lethal petunias is a whole other brand of baddie. Mainly, M. Night settles for ignoring the killer petunias and fingering the innocent wind, which keeps gusting up to spread the invisible toxin and, come to think of it, to make my argument for me: Really, this flick is so much hot air.
Racing against the wind, of course, is the usual plucky band of potential survivors who, here as elsewhere in M. Night's fright canon, consist of a vulnerable child and a married couple experiencing domestic woes. Enter Elliot and Alma, one a science teacher with a healthy respect for inexplicable natural occurrences (a good thing too), the other a cellphone-toting wife fending off, in mid-planetary-peril, mash notes texted by some guy with a crush on her. Seems she had dinner with the fellow. Well, actually, just dessert.
On the strength of that heinous infidelity, the marital crisis does battle with the global crisis, a double bill that puts quite the strain on our stars, Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel. They do pretty well dodging the stuff wafting off the plants, but no mere actor could possibly escape the toxic dialogue oozing from M. Night's pen - that's merciless, and it threatens to kill both their reputations.
Speaking of death, there's no shortage here of victims who, in the absence of any dramatizable villainy, step in admirably to fill the vacuum. And since the plot demands that the stricken must all die by their own hands, M. Night has invested some considerable thought to the business of self-offing. In fact, this is quite the suicide primer. A better title might have been 50 Ways to Leave Your Once-Loving Self. Not to be morbid, but shall we cite just a few of the highlights? Applying a hairpin straight to the jugular. Leaping off a tall building - more mundane, but effective. Employing a cop's pistol just used by the cop on himself - imitative but also effective. Participating in a group hanging from a high bough - very strange fruit. Ah, but now for the risible pièce de résistance, and the lone laugh: racing off to the nearest zoo and feeding yourself to the lions. Post-snack, the pride looks proud indeed.
So, even beyond that gift of a guffaw, you might well argue that The Happening is magnanimous to a fault: Not merely a guaranteed recipe for deep depression, it also offers a generous selection of permanent antidotes.
9