The Happening

The Plants Are PISSED!

2008

Review: July 11, 2008

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Starring: Mark Whalberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo, Betty Buckley

Sure!

THE SETUP:

People in major cities suddenly start killing themselves! Mark Whalberg and wife run!

DISCUSSION:

First, a little background. I saw The Sixth Sense and liked it, like everyone else. Then I HATED Unbreakable. Then I HATED Signs. Then I vowed never, EVER, to see an M. Night Shyamalan movie again. Then The Village got somewhat tepid reviews, then Lady in the Water tanked, and Shyamalan suddenly fell big—no one liked him anymore, and his films weren’t blockbusters. And then I found that, if his films aren’t blockbusters and no one’s calling him “the next Hitchcock” anymore, suddenly I can go see his movies again! I recently watched Lady in the Water [worse than I could have imagined], and once reviews were claiming that he had REALLY gone off his rocker this time, I was really keen to see this one! Now I am SO pissed I didn’t see it on opening night, as a sold-out audience laughing at it would have been a BLAST.

Okay! So we open with credits over roiling clouds. Ominous! Then we’re in Central Park, where a woman apparently holds her hair in place with a titanium spike. There’s a spooky wind, and suddenly the woman pulls her do-spike out of her hair and jabs it into her neck! Then we see that people are standing still, or walking backwards! Then we’re at a construction site a few blocks from Central Park, and construction workers start throwing themselves to their deaths! Then—cut to Whalberg!

Whalberg plays science teacher Elliott, first seen in the midst of asking his class about colony collapse disorder among bees, in which whole hives of bees suddenly vanish. I hope you’re making the ominous thematic connection with what’s about to follow. Anyway, one of his students offers up “It’s an act of nature and we’ll never fully understand it,” which resonantes with Elliott. Then the teachers are called to dismiss their classes for the day, given the disturbance in New York. Elliott hooks up with math teacher Julian, played by John Leguizamo, and makes arrangements to meet him and his daughter on a train to Harrisburg, with Elliott’s wife Alma, played by Zooey Deschanel. Soon they’re on a train, but unable to sit together. Some helpful woman shares a video she just received of a guy at the Philadelphia zoo who walked into the lion’s cage and gets his arms ripped off. This video is not exactly funny, but it’s also not exactly ominous or effective. Oh, by the way, we have gotten some instant science via newscast who says that the toxin in the air is an enzyme that reverses one’s instinct for self-preservation, making one kill oneself. If this is possible, I somehow doubt very much that the Pentagon is not pursuing it as some sort of weapon.

So Alma has a bit of a secret in that she’s receiving texts from a mysterious “Joey,” who she had an adulterous tiramisu with once. Strumpet! Julian’s daughter Jess doesn’t talk when she’s upset, causing Alma to exclaim “We’re so much the same, Jess! I don’t like to show my emotions either!” Does this explain her horrible performance? Then the train lets everyone off in the middle of nowhere, causing Elliott to say “We’re in a small town. Nothing can happen to us here.”

Julian soon gets a ride with people heading to Princeton, trying to find his wife, and leaving little Jess in the care of Elliott and Alma, who reaches for the little girl, only to have Julian seethe “Don’t take my daughter’s hand unless you mean it!” to which Alma replies “Well, I mean it! I need the little brat to get in the car!” Actually she doesn’t, but Jeez Julian, take a chill pill. Julian does indeed get the slo-mo treatment as he looks longingly back at his daughter, receeding in the distance. Touching! Touching like it MEANS it.

SPOILERS > > >
Julian doesn’t make it very far before the evil airbourne toxin carjacks their Jeep. Our trio hook up with this hippie couple who grow plants, and who first speculate that it’s the narked-off plants that are behind it all. But first, an inappropriate defense of proceesed meat foods: “We’re packing hot dogs. You know, hot dogs get a bad rap. They have a cool shape, and they’re a good source of protein!” Uh, aren’t you guys in imminent danger? Can we perhaps table rhetoric on ground up pig anuses until we see if we’re going to survive? Besides, I can think of something else that has a cool shape and is ALSO a good source of protein.

So the hippie mom, who we are led to believe is trying to keep cool so as not to upset emotionally-fragile little Jess, sees some lumps in the road ahead and shouts into her ear “It’s bodies, isn’t it? I knew it would be bodies!” then, soothingly follows with: “We’re just going to take a different route, okay honey?” One where there aren’t horrific mangled bodies, you mean? Around this time you start to think “Well if they know it’s in the air, why don’t they try to find a gas mask or better yet, scuba gear?”

Soon they must proceed on foot. The hippie guy announces that “Trees can communicate with bushes, and bushes with grass!” They then speculate that the plants are hunting large packs of humans, so they need to split into smaller groups. No sooner are they out of sight of another group when they start hearing the gunshots of those folks killing themselves. “We can’t just stand here are uninvolved observers!” Alma shouts.

Now come the scenes in which our heroes try to outrun gusts of wind. This is ludicrous in many ways, not least that I wouldn't think plants releasing biotoxins WOULD create wind, but could do this while standing still. Of course, then there would be nothing to SHOW, hence the wind. But all that aside—they’re going to outrun an airborne toxin? It’s a little like the people outrunning a drop in temperature in The Day After Tomorrow. For the rest of the movie we will be treated to the site of rustling leaves letting us know that the biotoxin is stalking fresh victims, and reaches its nadir in a shot toward the end in which Alma opens a barn door and a clump of grass right there rustles, as though the biotoxin is leaping at her!

Around this time, by the way, two blasé Sex and the City-type women [currently at epidemic levels in New York] wandered in late to the movie [possibly FROM Sex and the City] and laughed at me writing furiously in my notebook, trying to keep up with the horrible dialogue. “Did you see that guy, like, taking NOTES?” one of them laughed to the other.

After a rather shocking act of violence that brutally kills two children [have to keep the “jolts” coming regularly, since NOTHING else is going on], they arrive at a farmhouse owned by crazy lady Betty Buckley. She lets them stay and offers them dinner, periodically freaking out that they’re going to try to steal something. At one point little girl Jess reached for a cookie and Buckley smacked her hand, leading the black guy behind me to exclaim “Alright!” She spouts up with a nugget of exposition about how the house has a “talking tube” that allows people in the house to talk to those in this shed. Golly, I wonder if that tube will be used in the next three minutes?

In the end, nothing really happens. Elliott and Alma have a symbolic coming together in a field as the toxic wind, blow as it may, cannot shake their bond. But they later say that the toxin was gone by then. And you know, why do disasters always have to bring a drifting couple back together? Doesn’t it seem more plausible that a disaster would make you reflect on how you just can’t STAND her scream or how he’s such an OAF in tense situations, and make you hate each other all the more?

Then guy comes on TV and says he thinks all this was just a warning, but is pooh-poohed, we end with the beginning of an event in Paris [hey plants, what about China? If you want to get upset at someone…], and we out!
< < < SPOILERS END

There are many things wrong with this movie. The IDEA of plant revenge itself isn’t one of them, but the reality is that plant revenge, as it is presented here, is inherently uncinematic. That is: there’s NOTHING to show. We have an invisible gas emitted by stationary living things—how are you going to make that visually interesting? The solution they obviously went for here is to make the characters run from gusts of wind [the rustling leaves of doom!], which comes off as just ridiculous. Also killing the drama is that, if the plants are releasing toxins, there’s really not much you can DO. There’s no villain to physically fight, no one and nothing to lunge out at you or create tension in any way. Furthermore, if this toxin is in the air, there’s really just no avoiding it. To try to duck into pockets of [indistinguishable] clean air, as the characters do here, is just ludicrous. So it’s not a terrible idea, it’s just not suited to a movie presentation. I’m sure it would work a lot better as a short story.

Also a major problem for this movie is that really, there is no story. There’s the opening event, and after that the characters just proceed from point A to point B with very little variation. You can tell that there is zero narrative action by the desperation with which the movie tries to goose up the action by just peppering the film with suicides every few minutes. And personally, suicide is not something I find pleasant to watch. At least with a homocide you have a vicarious release of aggressive energy, but with a suicide, you just have something really unpleasant. Sure, maybe it’s all supposed to symbolize how we humans are killing ourselves by not caring for the environment, but the rest of the movie would have to work better for us to get thinking about that seriously.

Given the script, it’s incredible that Whalberg can make a character out of this at all. I thought he was fine, and deserves some sort of medal for making something out of the precious, ostentatious, first-time screenwriter dialogue. Zooey Deschanel, however, does not fare so well. She seems to have decided that the solution to delivering lines such as “We’re so alike, Jess. I don’t like to show my emotions either!” is to just push them out, with no attempt to engage in or vary her character throughout at all. She really comes off as awful. Leguizamo manages okay, and Buckley provides a shot of crazy energy, which only serves to underline the total pointlessness of her character.

I think that’s about it. Shyamalan seems to have thought that the idea of plant revenge would be enough to generate interest for an entire movie, because that’s really about all there is here—that one idea. No interesting development, no interesting characters, no compelling villain, and ultimately no ending. This is really a treatment that got made into a movie. A mistake all around.

SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?

If you want to see it out of curiousity. If you are interested in seeing a good movie, or at least being genuinely entertained, steer clear.