The Happening (2008)

Here’s a picture by director and writer M. Night Shyamalan I might have liked more if I’d caught up with it during the pandemic. It’s not necessarily a virus in this movie that is ravaging humanity along the US northeastern seaboard, but eventually they get to it as a theory (before gaily passing it by). The first theory is terrorism, which is soon discarded first for a virus and then, very strangely, in favor of an idea that plants and the wind have organized a strange attack. Who could have possibly anticipated?! What it looks like: people grow confused in public, stop moving and stand in place, and then commit suicide in various grotesque ways. Watch out for the guy who sets a riding mower to run over him. Usually it’s more like shots to the head, in one case with a shared gun. Much of it is tastefully left offscreen but the picture still got an R rating. A virus makes much more sense to me than the plants-and-wind thing, and it particularly would have in the context of the actual pandemic, which is why I should have caught up with it five years ago, right? I’m just working with what we’re given. The Happening is a tidy 90 minutes, a point in its favor. But people generally don’t seem to like it that much—224,000 on IMDb gave it an aggregate rating of 5.0 (note: on a 1-10 scale, not a 1-5). I guess I’m inclined to agree. Various points about the picture are effectively unnerving and even shocking, notably the suicides, but ultimately it hit me more as lame than anything. Mark Wahlberg is science teacher Elliot Moore and spends most of the picture walking around in an empty-headed brain fog, trying to keep people calm. Zooey Deschanel is his wife Alma, who may or may not be an intriguing character, but she’s drawn so poorly by Shyamalan’s script that she’s just exasperatingly out of focus. Something is off about her. That’s about all we get. Other elements, such as a mood ring that is represented as important, or semi-abandoned houses encountered on walking journeys fleeing across the countryside, are so nonsensical there’s a temptation to believe that Shyamalan is just playing us for reactions. Well, I mean, yeah, that’s what he’s usually doing. That’s what most filmmakers are usually doing. But usually he and they are doing it better. The Happening is eminently skippable.