Night gets revenge on the critics a second time by murdering humanity.

Rating: 10/10 (30 March 2019)

The premise of suicide-inducing spores in audiences inspired the same reaction (you should have seen the reaction of the opening night crowd in 2008), in hindsight it now years later feels prophetic and right.
* You laugh at the bizarre timing and black humor of the deaths but I might put it that it shows death so horrifyingly banal that it was impossible to not be funny. Still I wonder if they did any test screenings at all, they must have known exactly which beats were missold as comic.
* Night's 'it's a B movie like The Blob just have a good time' argument at the time didn't stop the hate. But isn't that exactly what it is? As perfectly Hitchcockian as it is it retains its own original brand with the Fujimoto images, Newton Howard score, and MNS staging, I see the classic here as within his continuum.
* The 70s use of happenings, meant some kind of a gathering usually for some mind-expanding LSD binge. So what is the ritual here? The parallel to the hippies with the title is very occult; you can't ignore that at all with the hippie grounding in Aleister Crowley and Satanism. Fringe thinking points to a pattern where all these secret societies push on about overpopulation and climate danger. So beyond being a nihilistic catharsis following the unfair critical pannings, see how it unfolded ever since: today's whole idea of collectives completely mindwashed without independent thought, and it's information that is the weapon and here they so scramble for some information. Any. But there's none. Why did it seem the government left them all entirely to their own devices to just scramble about, then die? Military and martial law would come down so very quickly on it, wouldn't it? He is even aware of this sort of thinking, adding: 'most people believe it was the government.'
The sheer amount of extras and how they are portrayed as stupid and helpless and in a panic clues us into how Shyamalan viewed this film as some sort of ritual cleansing against humanity. Its motive aligns almost exactly with current day fringe thinking how the elite plan to usher in a transhumanist utopia; then so the 'happening' requires a cleansing first, a celebration of the slaughter before we 'merge together into enlightened thinking'. The film ending on that frightening reappearance of the happening shows some kind of coordination in events. It's not one event but part of the all seeing eye, watchful and invisible, who guide us and know better. This force is both cleansing and uniting in search of the worthy.
* One of the chessmaster elders in the Village is here as the bumbling idiot hotdog guy completely powerless against the greater evil which is metaphysical rather than Village's wicked but well meaning human control structure. Love saves the heroes in both, as the wind seems to read their intent like the mood rings, so spares the good. But love's function isn't cleansing as in that, here it goes with a different beat... meaning
* We have Deschanel's coldness and lovelessness manifesting as this 'plant nuclear war' testing against the uselessness of her husband until he proves himself, so the love can go on. This parallels nature being a symbol of her womanhood corrupted and testing the worth of humanity. Deschanel's wide eyes as opposed to Bryce Dallas Howard are not unifying but chilling. A deleted scene clues in this was all about Night's inferiority complex and fear of woman. The hot dog guy talks to the plants as if they're his children. Wahlberg talks to the plant, but it's plastic; a joke about the plasticity and empty childlessness of his marriage. The lemon drink woman is Deschanel's future, just one scene with her and Deschanel instantly goes to reveal vulnerability and fear, apologizing for infidelity and embracing her feelings for him.
* But the madness of the ending. Will you ever anywhere else hear chilling piano music playing over the couple's supposed happy ending that she's pregnant? It made me sit up...implying almost subliminally the shame this disease of humanity will continue.
* The wind reading you ala the mood ring is further proven how there's always one who doesn't freeze into hypnosis and questions it. Which brings all sorts of transhumanist 'worthy of living' eugenics arguments to the table here, that only the most noble and enlightened get to survive.
* On a more positive note, how cool and beautiful is it they embrace in the wind at the end? Entirely removed from context, it's just people walking through a breeze. To me that's the power of Night's conceptual genius.