M. Night Shyamalan Breaks Wind: “The Happening”

Oh wow. Having watched The Happening, I can safely say that once the Wachowski brothers come to in pools of their own filth, they are going to feel so much better about Speed Racer. Yes, the movie is that bad. Yes, the summer season is that bad. It’s not even the 4^th of July yet and already we have two formidable competitors for “best bad film of 2008.” The only way this season could possibly get better is if we got a sequel to The Wicker Man (oh please…please…).

 

Okay, there are going to be major spoilers here in a minute, so if you’re sensitive to that sort of thing, why don’t you just hang out here a while?

 

So…The Happening. Okay, basically it begins with a lovely day in Central Park. The birds are singing. The grass is green. People are offing themselves…what? Yeah, everyone freezes up for a moment, then they just start killing themselves. Damndest thing.

 

Cut to Philadelphia where Elliot Moore (Mark Whalberg, who may or may not have been awake during the filming of this movie) is teaching what must be the easiest high school science class in the Universe.

 

After he tries to solicit theories from his class as to why the honeybees are disappearing he concludes with “We’ll never really know.” Uh, thanks scientist man. Elliot’s been having a rough go of it lately. His wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel, looking more like Elliot’s disaffected little sister than his wife) is struggling with her guilt over a recent matrimonial betrayal. Did she have an affair? No, she had dessert with a co-worker. Seriously, that’s the marital rift that must be mended by the end of the movie. It also provides one of the movie’s best lines when Alma takes a phone call from her dessert-buddy and snaps “It was just tiramisu! Stop acting crazy!” Oh tiramisu, that most forbidden of the lusty Italian desserts! Anyway, there is much tension in the marriage. Elliot’s best friend and co-worker Julian (John Leguizamo) has decided that Alma is the spawn of the devil and that Elliot should just ditch her. Julian is kind of a prick.

 

Oh yeah, people are killing themselves aren’t they? Soon, word of the mass-suicides in New York reaches the school and naturally everyone thinks it’s a terrorist attack (yes, they think it’s a terrorist attack that makes people kill themselves). So everyone decides to flee Philadelphia (not really clear on the logic behind that) and Elliot and Alma join Julian and his grade-school-aged daughter Jess on an Amtrak out of Dodge. Unfortunately, their travel plans get derailed (no pun intended) when the train stops in a small Pennsylvania town and refuses to go any further. “We’ve lost contact,” the conductor explains. “With who?” Elliot asks. “Everyone” the conductor replies solemnly. Apparently Amtrak has a whole mission control system it stays in constant communication with or something.

 

From here the group must make their across the perilous countryside as more and more reports of suicides come in. Pretty soon Elliot deduces that the suicides are being caused by…the trees! Well, actually a chemical that plant life is emitting that’s being carried on a wind they’re (I guess) causing. He comes to this conclusion in what must be the movie’s most unintentionally hilarious scene: While Alma freaks out, Elliot has a frantic monologue thinking out loud standing in a field as people around him are taking turns shooting themselves in the head:

 

“All right, be scientific, douchebag.”  

BLAM!

“Identify the… rules… design the experiment… “

BLAM!

“…careful observation, measurements, that’s what I’m trying to do…”

BLAM!

“…interpret the pattern…”

BLAM!

 

And it goes this way until Elliot comes up with a plan of action: “Just try and stay ahead of the wind!” (uh, what?) Fortunately, the wind has a leading edge to it—literally a line, like a wall of air—so they (and we the audience) can always tell when the wind is catching up to them. Just for good measure Shyamalan throws in a “wishhshhhshhooo” wind-noise sound effect to make it, um, I guess creepier is what he was going for.

 

And the evil tree/wind gradually winnows down the cast until it’s just Elliot, Alma and Jess. They hole up in a decrepit farm house (because wind, like the aliens in Signs can’t get through closed doors and shuttered windows) inhabited by some batshit-crazy old woman (Betty Buckley) who stomps around and accuses Elliot of wanting to rob her. Then the evil tree/wind gets her and she smashes her head through all the house’s windows. And then it pretty much just stops. No, it’s not really much of a climax.

 

The Happening gives further credence to the charge against Shyamalan that he’s a good director but a bad writer. What’s truly remarkable is how thoroughly Shyamalan plays to his weaknesses here. The Happening’s hook—people inexplicably stop and commit suicide—is great, but the story is ridiculous. It reads like a Twilight Zone episode Serling would have penned late in the season when he’d already cranked out 20 other episodes and had lost a third of his body weight from chain-smoking. Even at 85 or so tight minutes, the movie can’t keep its internal logic from disintegrating or the audience from realizing that wind isn’t, you know, all that scary. On top of this, the suicides grow more and more ludicrous culminating in the already-iconic bad scene in which a zookeeper lets a couple of tigers rip off his arms (zookeeper extends some very fake-looking arms which sorta fall off when the tigers paw at them).

 

In keeping the story tightly contained to a couple of characters, he further emphasizes his inability to create realistic characters and dialogue. Never for a moment does Elliot or Alma seem like remotely plausible. The trumped-up rocky patch in their marriage is laughable—I mean, tiramisu, for chrissakes! And the happy ending in which Elliot and Alma have now adopted Jess and Alma is pregnant and they moved into a great brownstone (he reigns it in before they can win the lottery and get elected Pope and Popestress) just makes you wonder what these people will be saying to each other on their next anniversary: “Isn’t it great there was that environmental tragedy in which hundreds of thousands of people died, so we could work through our dessert-related problems and rediscover our love for each other? Oh, and our friend died, so we got this awesome ready-made daughter out of it?”

 

Furthermore, by making the evil tree/wind the villain in the movie he forces himself to stage increasingly idiotic scenes of people running and hiding from…wind! I defy any director to make running away from wind scary, thrilling, or even logical.

 

Shyamalan is a talented director, but like the Wachowski brothers and George Lucas he’s developed an acute myopia to where his talents begin and end. Weirdly enough, he doesn’t even seem able to look back on his previous work and identify what worked and what didn’t. He just seems to be off in Shyamalan-land where narfs and scrunts play and the wind makes you want to kill yourself and couples exchange fourth-grade-reading-level dialogue about the evils of tiramisu.

 

So, as your faithful mine-shaft canary, let me end by saying if someone tries to convince you to see The Happening…run. Run like the wind (is chasing you)!