The Happening
In coming up with a way to review M. Night Shyamalan’s latest thriller, I’ve found myself in a bit of a quandry as to how to discuss the movie without revealing all of its’ secrets. Well, to start out- he should consider himself redeemed somewhat for his dreadful “Lady in the Water” and the flimsy and disappointing subtext of “The Village.” The performances are a bit too dry and the story is a bit too vague for a complete return to form for Shyamalan. But the writer-director wunderkind of “The Sixth Sense,” “Unbreakable,” and “Signs” goes against his nature to tell a straightforward thriller story in the vein of Hitchcock.
Like Hitch, the one connective thread between all of Shyamalan’s best films- one that’s brought to the fore here as well- is the staple idea of an ordinary person brought into a situation that’s anything but. The psychologist whose young patient sees the dead in “The Sixth Sense.” The security guard who’s the lone survivor of a train crash in “Unbreakable” (which arguably holds up better than any other Shyamalan film to date). The lapsed minister and widowed father of “Signs.”
Add to this group Elliot, the science teacher played by Mark Wahlberg in “The Happening.” He has a tenuous marriage to his shy wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel) and a pretty rebellious streak as a teacher when trying to get through to his students; he’s pretty in-your-face, but not to the point of inappropriate. He confides when pushed by his fellow teacher and friend Julian (John Leguizamo) about things with Alma, but otherwise his life is a model of normalcy.
One day, odd things begin to happen. People begin to halt in their tracks. Repeat things they’ve just said. And then, kill themselves. To say it’s not something you see everyday is an understatement. Immediate reaction screams terrorist attack with biological and chemical weapons. But how would they control it to where no one would know? And why is it spreading from New York to the entire Northeast? Elliot and Alma take up Julian’s offer to go with his wife and daughter to her mother’s place outside of town. But will it be far enough? Will they make it out in enough time?
In all honesty, this isn’t that hard of a situation to figure out when you have all of the clues. There’s no big revelation or twist at the end of it all- just a theory that seems right out of modern political concerns. In that way, it feels similar to “The Village,” but the film “The Happening” is really modeled after is Hitchcock’s “The Birds,” and in its’ best moments, it evokes that same sense of unexplainable dread as that Hitchcock horror classic.
Part of that is due to his continually fruitful collaboration with James Newton Howard, generally an action composer known for relatively standard scores (with exceptions like his Oscar-nominated work for “The Fugitive” and his underrated effort for “King Kong”) who gets his artistic juices flowing for Shyamalan’s films. “The Happening” allows for the same sense of creative adventurousness, though the score is less memorable and more tone-perfect for the big-screen. Which is what good film music is supposed to be.
But while a less-memorable musical motif can still work to a film’s advantage, muted performances are somewhat more problematic, which leads me to the biggest beef of “The Happening”- the acting. We know from other movies how good Wahlberg and Deschanel can be (see “The Departed” and “The Italian Job” for Wahlberg, “Failure to Launch” and “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” for Deschanel), but there’s something very dry about their performances. They feel less like lived-in portrayals of characters and more like people brought in to feed lines. This makes their performances hard to gauge; their immediate appeal as actors is evident, and the characters and their dynamic are well-written. But Shyamalan seems to want to take any “acting touches” out of their performances to make them more believable, and in doing so makes them less so. Maybe in another movie. It’s a credit to everyone involved- most especially the writer-director who made it- that such flaws don’t sink the film, but make it- oddly enough- more intriguing. I look forward to seeing how this film hits me the second viewing.
