by Author Name Withheld 182

Created on: June 21, 2008

There comes a time in every director's life when it is time to fold up the fancy chair with your name on it and stop making movies. For M. Night Shyamalan, that time was right after the release of his single hit The Sixth Sense. Had he stopped while he was ahead, Shyamalan might have spared us the drivel that he so fondly titled The Happening.
Of all the pointless, ridiculous, and un-frightening movies ever made, The Happening is right up there with I Know What You Did Last Summer and Scream. The film, set on the northeast coast of the United States, features Mark Wahlberg as quirky science teacher Elliot Moore and Zooey Deschanel as his strange and possibly cheating wife Alma. The pair, along with family friend Julian, played by John Leguizamo, and his daughter Jess flee with millions of other Americans the toxin that causes its victims to commit suicide in disturbing and gruesome ways. As it is revealed not too far into the film, the toxin is released by plants as a survival mechanism against the human threat to Mother Nature, and the higher the concentration of people together, the more likely the plants are to attack. As the movie continues, groups of people must get smaller and smaller to survive the attack, until one human alone is enough to trigger the toxin.

This was clearly M. Night Shyamalan's version of An Inconvenient Truth, with the added aspect of the gruesome suicides.
Several points of this movie made no sense, the biggest being how the plants could suddenly release a toxin in unison, and the second biggest being why people would kill themselves gruesomely. Clearly, it was a way to make the movie scary, but there was really no plot base for it.
I actually found myself laughing out loud at some of the more absurd moments. When they group are stranded in a highway between several affected area, the daughter-suicide scene just struck me as poor filming. First the mother is hysterical about her daughter's safety, then says "Oh dear, you're acting so strangely, let me give my phone to Mark Wahlberg so he can put it on speaker and let the audience in on the plot twist." Ridiculous. My second laugh out loud moment was in the field when Wahlberg announced, "oh no, those two groups are coming together." What's going to happen, Mark Wahlberg, please tell me I have no idea! My goodness, they've all killed themselves. I didn't see that coming.
Oh wait, yes I did.
All in all, The Happening was not scary, not thrilling, and not good. It is perhaps a good time for Shyamalan to take a moment and reconsider his career choice. Become a doctor M. Night and leave the movie making to the professionals.

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