Nothing happens in The Happening

Rating: 3/10 (1 September 2008)

Yes. This movie is disturbing, but for all the wrong reasons. No. This movie is not good. I can almost see what probably went down when Mr. Shyamalan got the green light to make his first ever R-Rated film. It must've been on the lines of a child at a candy store, but instead of taking all the candy he could with his hands, he was finally given a bag. Now he could try some different candy, give his taste buds some variety, and even be bold by trying things no other kids would.
But there's a reason why no one else does what M. Night Shyamalan does, because it doesn't work. Ever since his stunning thriller, The Sixth Sense, his touch for directing and writing has been unraveling very quickly. The Happening is not scary, and it's almost painful to notice how hard Shyamalan is trying. What Hitchcock did with The Birds was something only a master could pull off. Shyamalan attempted to mimic Hitchcock's tension of the unpredictability of the nature of birds and the rest of the wild with images of the wind blowing against the trees and making the tall grass sway. Seriously? Are we supposed to be scared of wind? Because this was his first R-Rated film, Shyamalan constructed a series of very disturbing deaths, which I assume he spent almost all of his energy in. If he wanted to make these death scenes a memorable aspect of The Happening, then he succeeded. Did he purposely make the rest of the film suck to accomplish that? Who knows. But the truth is there are only a handful of bright moments throughout this extremely dull film.
One of the bright moments would be the occasional comical relief one-liners that brought out some laughter throughout the audience. But I would say that half of the time there was laughter, it was the result of horribly written dialog and completely ridiculous reactions between characters. That's an alarming sign for a bad film, when it's unintentionally hilarious. The only other bright moment I can dig up is John Leguizamo's performance. While the rest of the cast was forcing every line written in the script, Leguizamo was able to make his character jump off of the page and seem natural. Almost any film would be blessed to have the talents of Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel in their cast, but this film is a great example of how important the screenplay is. I cannot fault the actors with their choppy and two-dimensional performances, simply because of the horrendous script.
Overall, there will be a minority who will find the movie entertaining at best. Popular opinion will say The Happening is boring, stupid, and a waste of an hour and a half. And even though The Happening packs a very strong environmental message, Shyamalan seems to assume his audience is unable to detect the message unless he states exactly what he's trying to tell you. Isn't that a Screen writing 101 no-no? SHOW don't TELL. Well, Shyamalan might have to go back to class. How bad is it? Let's just say the racism message in Crash was less subtle than the environmental message in The Happening. But I guess Shyamalan didn't want to risk his message going over anyone's head. So the moral of the story is: If you mess with the environment, it will retaliate and kill you. Shyamalan tried to scare people to do the right thing. In my opinion, Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth is a lot scarier than The Happening.