The Happening
2008: M. Night Shyamalan
Rated R – 91 minutes
Vault Rating: 7
I liked M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Happening” better than most critics. Many of the spies likewise have noted that they had reservations about the film afterward and some found the film vaguely disturbing. But count the Vault as a devoted fan of the Pennsylvania based filmmaker.
All of Shyamalan’s films have a moral, and we like that. Usually the moral is wrapped in something creepy, like a modern day Grimm’s Fairy Tale. It usually isn’t something simple, though, like “If you don’t listen to your parents, a witch will eat you.” Shyamalan’s films fill a happy spot for us because he tries to wrap a human story in something weird.
In “Signs,” the story was about a preacher who had lost his faith at about the same time the aliens landed amid the crop circles.
In “The Village,” the real monster was a kind of religious fundamentalism aimed at keeping the larger, wicked world at bay.
Sure, these parables had their flaws, but we choose to look on the bright side of Shyamalan’s creepiness. We think the director would want it that way.
“The Happening,” today’s creep-fest which wraps a zombie theme in an ecological horror story goes one better.
Come with me now, as we examine “The Happening” in terms of a love story. Come on, get your finger off that mouse and give me a minute.
A love/horror story is not new. Take, for example, Alfred Hitchcock’s famous “The Birds.” In it, the natural world reacts violently to a family situation that is broken. The curse of the birds is not resolved until the main characters secure their love. At film’s end, the protagonists walk unharmed out of a house amid a menacing flock of birds which have mysteriously calmed.
Hitchcock’s natural world, in effect, pushes the protagonists together until a domestic life is made whole.
A similar dynamic is at work today between protagonists Elliott and Alma Moore (Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel).
Shyamalan introduces a nice twist on the zombie genre, where living humans are the fodder, zoning out unexpectedly to deadly effect. At the film’s opening in New York City’s Central Park, an ill wind blows on an otherwise lovely day. Suddenly a woman becomes disoriented and commits suicide. Suddenly, everyone’s doing it and bodies, in the most obvious of terrorist allusions, literally begin raining from the sky.
The news spreads rapidly to a public school in Philadelphia, where we find Wahlberg leading a science class discussion of the recent (and true) mystery surrounding a massive die-off of honey-bees across 28 states.
With the news of some kind of attack on New York, school is suddenly out and Philadelphians, running from they know not what, decide to flee to the countryside. It is quickly discovered, though, that something more mysterious is in play than a mere act of terrorism.
Is it something to do with cell phones and towers? Is it the planet earth trying to somehow correct a human population explosion? Is it merely that human populations in a given environment react no differently than any other organism when its population rounds the J-curve to unsustainable levels?
Throughout, Shyamalan’s affected human beings find ingenious ways to do themselves in and that is a part of the visceral fun of the film. But there is something unsettling in it too. There is a flawed thinking that causes suicide, and it might be that people don’t like the personal illogic of that kind of monster in their movies.
I think Shyamalan took on the subject in a sort of ham-handed way. I think he could have been more subtle and more chilling and still left the mystery on the table at film’s end. That said, the film is brief at 91 minutes and provides a good jolt or two and manages to keep the viewer interested.
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Here’s a few tidbits we’re planning in the weeks to come.
Recently, I took in a director’s cut of one of my favorite films. Upon review, I think I liked the original theatric release of Giuseppe Tornatore’s 1988 masterpiece, “Cinema Paradiso.”
It is a film that reeks of old Italy and is a heartfelt examination of a young boy’s passion that takes him from a village movie house to world renown.
The film is so evocative that it literally jerks tears out of you from beginning to end. With the upcoming review, we’re placing it among the Vault’s top 24 films of all time.
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Another charmer that must not be missed is “Young At Heart.”
Director Stephen Walker’s beautiful documentary follows the Young at Heart Chorus, a group of elderly men and women whose concerts give real depth to rock standards like “I Wanna Be Sedated” and “Golden Years.”
Literally singing for their lives, the Young At Heart Chorus are a towering reminder of the value of life and what it means to have something to continue to live for.
* * *
We were less than impressed by “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.”
The Jake Kasdan directed and Judd Apatow co-written rock-star bio-pic spoof is spot on in many instances, but the sheen of the film is too clean for the juvenile crotch humor Apatow has made his living at.
Some spark is missing in an otherwise decent movie. We like John C. Reilly in the lead. He’s a talented dude. And even while this film doesn’t take itself too seriously, it still takes itself more seriously than it should. This is where someone like Will Ferrell going way over the top (See “Ricky Bobby”) makes this fare much better. If you’re going to do spoof and play it dead-pan, you might be killing off some of your best laughs.
