The Happening

Imagine working on a building site and having the horror of seeing one of your best friends fall from a building onto the floor dying instantly. Worse still imagine watching on in horror as nearly every one of your work colleagues fall from the sky hitting the floor and dying straight away. No warnings, no time to say goodbye; there one minute gone the next.

 

This is the horrific opening to M. Night Shyamalan’s new movie The Happening, and in the flip a coin style basis of the writer/directors career this is a good movie. It’s not been since 30 Days Of Night that I have seen anything quite this dark and sinister, Stephen King’s The Mist went part way, but The Happening takes us on very dark territory; this is by far Shyamalan’s most dark and sinister work.

 

I think what makes this offering so effective is that it is based around a horror that we all know, expect, and feel. The events of 9/11 and the London bombings bring the thought of terrorism home to us, the audacity of these horrific events lead us to believe that anything is possible. Shymalan’s movie goes out of its way to indicate that the horror in this movie is based in the roots of terrorism.

 

The cast is led by Mark Wahlberg who plays lecturer Elliot Moore, who one day while working at school comes to discover that the world he knew had changed during the course of a lesson. There is something most strange about watching Wahlberg teach, it’s an incredible piece of casting, he really looks and acts the part.

 

When it becomes evident that the effect of the “terrorism” is regional, Elliot decides to get his wife and family out of the city and head for safety. In typical Shyamalan style there are a series of strange and sometimes unexplained subplots weaved into this as Elliot’s wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel) starts the movie as she means to go on, slightly weird. Julian (John Leguizamo) too is a little bit weird, with cagey behaviour and a feeling of disconnection between his character and the real world. It’s actually rather bizarre that the only constant in the movie is Elliot, who remains strong, steadfast, and loyal to the movies end. Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez) is the daughter of Julian and to be fair she is like the movies big red herring, you have all sorts of expectations regarding her that are never really met, she is simply the child thrown into the piece in order for you to feel concerned about her, but there is no character development to follow it up, she is just simply present.

 

The illness, or infection if you prefer in the movie is not the routine type that you see in movies, no walking zombies or deliberate acts of violence on others, once infected the only course of action is to exit this life. I was not frightened but disturbed by the harshness of the death in the movie, people having behaved normal suddenly slicing their wrists, hanging themselves, or blowing their own heads of with guns. And while to be honest you don’t really see anything, this is very much a case of less being more and your imagination is enough to make this an incredibly dark movie.

 

Unlike The Sixth Sense or The Village, both of which in my opinion are the best of the directors work; The Happening does not have one of those shock twist endings, yes there is bite back; but nothing to put a tingle in your spine, though in fairness watching the movie throughout puts enough tingles in your spine that to be honest with you, a shock ending is not needed.

 

The Happening is rather like the character of Julian a really disconnected movie, Elliot is warm but there is this big void in both his and everyone else’s personality, presumably to add more suspense to the piece. The only way to describe the shell of the movie is hollow, you really feel like you’re on the outside looking in, not allowed at any point to be sucked into the movie like you’re going along for the ride, I’m not sure if this is a good or bad thing.

 

As a whole the movie really impressed me and is one of the best Shyamalan movies, but there are the odd thing that occurs that cheapens this otherwise big impressive looking movie. The worst offender of this is a man seen on iPhone while Elliot and the others are stranded in the middle of nowhere. “Oh my God my sister just sent me this!” a woman screams, and as people gather round mobile phones we see a tiger handler attempting to perform a trick with his pets, however they rip his arms off, but with remarkable ease, none of this slow tearing simple pulling off with little effort put into it at all. It was at this point that I thought the film had veered off into cheap Z movie standards, it was just so terribly out of place, but then when I thought about it a little Shyamalan is very capable of bringing suspense, but his history of special effects has been dramatically less impressive.

 

The performers all do a great job, if you forgive the deliberate detachment of emotion, there are some great blink or you’ll miss it cameos; Ferris Buellers Alan Ruck swings by to talk about “The Happening”, M. Night Shyamalan does his usual cameo role as effectively the enemy, French Dogma star Stephane Debac gives a brief cameo as a bicycle enthusiast, while 70’s video nasty star Stephen Singer gives television watchers a harsh wake up call.

 

While not a twisted surprise the movie ends with a last wake up call for anyone thinking that this one might be different from the usual Shyamalan fare. While the director is often criticised for his varied output, you cannot deny that he does put considerable thought into his movies, The Happening is certainly no exception. And most importantly for me, it brings us the biggest blockbuster chill of the year.

 

The Happening is at cinemas now.