M. Night Shyamalan (aka the hardest name in show business) has a tendency to split audiences right down the middle. The Sixth Sense obviously was a huge success, rebooting Bruce Willis’ career for the 100th time and turning the ‘crucial plot twist’ into an art form. Unfortunately, his and Willis’ second outing, Unbreakable, as well as the Mel Gibson-starring Signs, had mixed receptions. However, audiences were fairly united in slamming Lady in The Water, thus leaving a big question mark over a director that has not had a bona fide hit in nearly 10 years.
The Happening centres around science teacher Elliot (Mark Wahlberg), who along with his wife (Zooey Deschanel) and best friend (John Leguizamo), go on the run when people begin killing themselves en masse and in extremely horrific ways. As their escape continues, they begin to realise that this phenomena is linked to a deadly toxin in the air being emitted from the Earth’s plant life, out for revenge for man’s abuse of nature.
There’s things one comes to expect from a Shyamalan film - the twist (either clever or bleeding obvious, depending on your view point), an ensemble cast led by a disillusioned male lead, and the inevitable cameo by the man himself. Unfortunately, his last two films have had another thing in common - they’re utter drivel. An early review described The Happening as “’The Birds’ without any birds’”, and that’s fairly spot on. It’s hard to see how Shyamalan pitched this - “ok, so there’s this family, and they’re on the run from...PLANTS!!!!” With the best will in the world, there’s only so much menace you can garner from stationary plant life.
What the director relies on for terror, then, is the horrific ways in which infected people kill themselves. Every conceivable, horrific death is played out in front of you, excessively and without much point other than to shock. Even films such as Saw and Hostel had some vague plot line tying all the gore together, yet we have mothers, children and pretty much everyone else punching their own ticket at the will of, er, plants. If you’re squeamish or at all sensitive, you may find it all a bit too much, but even the biggest gore fan may be scratching their head trying to find a point to all the nonsense.
As for acting talent, it’s crisis acting mostly i.e. running, shouting and generally looking shocked at all the CG horror. Wahlberg betrays his Planet of The Apes technique of looking slightly embarrassed to be there, whilst Leguizamo and Daschanel - usually worth the ticket price alone - struggle against the ludicrous situation they find themselves in.
Making The Day After Tomorrow look like An Inconvenient Truth, it's yet another step down in the decline of Shyamalan’s career. Almost offensive in its glorification of suicide, you’d leave the cinema angry if it wasn’t for the fact that the story is so incredibly moronic. Avoid.
The Happening is released 13 June.
