by Franklin Beaumont

Created on: July 23, 2010   Last Updated: August 04, 2010

With "The Happening", M Night Shyamalan, once acclaimed as the next Spielberg following the success of his first three films - including his 1999 suspense classic "The Sixth Sense" - rebounded slightly from the abject failure of his last two films - "The Village" and "Lady in the Water", with 2008s "The Happening", a film with far more modest ambitions than his previous work, that just about managed to achieve them.

M Night Shyamalan said himself at the time of the film's release that his intention with "The Happening" was to make a b-movie, and in that regard we can say he succeeded. The movie, with a superficial ecological theme, theorizes what might happen if plant life, after years of humans abusing the natural resources of the Earth, decided to fight back on the Earth's behalf, eliminating us as a species as antibodies might eliminate a virus.

The plants emit a toxin that gives people the immediate urge to commit suicide; these incidents are shown in the first act as a series of vignettes which show that M Night Shyamalan, though he has lost his way as a filmmaker in some respects, has never lost his talent for visual direction, especially in a sequence of suspense. In the scene where a policeman shoots himself, the gun is picked up by another person who shoots themselves, and so on, M Night follows the journey of the gun in one of the most memorable scenes in the film.

Overall it's an interesting and timely concept to build an end-of-the-world horror film around, as long as the idea isn't taken too seriously. Unfortunately, M Night has always taken himself too seriously, and while there are many laughs to be had with "The Happening", the viewer is uncertain how many of them are intentional. There is an inherent absurdity to the idea, and when you have characters attempting to outrun the wind itself across a wheat field, you either become distracted by the ridiculousness of it all, or just go along for the ride.

It helps to have lead actors who can identify the tone of the piece and react accordingly, communicating that tone to the audience; whether the leads in this film manage that feat is a matter of debate. The film stars Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel; Wahlberg, an actor who seems to need a good director, spends most of the time looking confused, while Deschanel seems to walk through the entire film in a daze. Are these performances appropriate to the film? Well, at least they have the virtue of being unique. In too many films of this kind the lead characters take the situation in their stride and quickly ascend to the status of heroes. Here, the characters sort of stumble along, figuring things out step-by-step - as, I imagine, most real people would. Certainly I enjoy their odd performances and dynamic, and John Leguizamo makes the most of a sympathetic supporting role.

If "The Happening" hadn't been released with the baggage of being an M Night Shyamalan film, it may have enjoyed a better reception. People had certain expectations from M Night, based on the self-serious tone of his previous work, and the disastrous miscalculations of his last two films. It isn't a horror classic - and it isn't even among the best of M Night's own films - but it does succeed on its own humble terms, and I feel it may in the future gather its own cult following. As for M Night himself, the reception to his latest movie "The Last Airbender" leaves his career up in the air. Who knows what he will try his hand at next, but whatever it is, it guarantees to be interesting at the very least.

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