The Happening (2008)
I revisited M Night Shyamalan's The Happening recently to try and determine whether he is indeed suffering from Orson Welles syndrome. IE that he has made all his best work at the beginning of his career. Because he’s never quite recaptured the critical or artistic success of The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs. I was one of the few that actually liked The Lady in The water but I could see why viewers would assume that he had become a victim of his own style and technique with that particular movie. Casting yourself as an author whose work will reshape society and change the course of history is at the very least, a little egotistical and at worst an act of immense hubris. Then in recent years we have had The Last Airbender and After Earth, both of which have performed poorly. However I thought I'd give The Happening another chance as it remains the directors only R rated movie to date.
Elliot (Mark Wahlberg) and Alma Moore (Zooey Deschanel) are a married couple caught up in a mass panic spreading across the East Coast of the US. A wave of inexplicable suicides has started among the general public. They flee from New York with work colleague Julian (John Leguizamo) and his young daughter Jess, only to find that the disaster is spreading further West across the country and becoming more accurate in targeting humans. What was initially assumed to be an act of bio-terrorism turns out to have a far more esoteric answer. Writer and director M Night Shyamalan focuses on the perennial theme of how humans deal with extreme situations and threats to their own mortality. There are also some interesting ideas about the environment and nature being a living entity that responds when the balance is drastically altered. The topical matter of the ongoing decline of the honey bee is also a facet of the plot.
Sadly, while the initial premise is intriguing, its execution adds further weight to the argument that Shyamalan should defer to more accomplished screenwriters capable of developing his ideas more effectively. Despite a reliable cast of character actors, the dialogue is obvious and at times crass, leaving all concerned with little to do except emote sincerely. There is also an air of sanctimony about the screenplay that rather spoils the interesting premise. Once the ecological plot twist is revealed the narrative takes a somewhat didactic tone. The central characters are also somewhat weak and not especially likeable. A rift in the main protagonist's relationship turns out to be only minor. It would have been far more challenging if one was actually an adulterer, thus making their redemption harder to achieve. A greater sense of societal panic is also absent. The film needs clearer examples of social disorder and breakdown to reinforce the magnitude of events
Yet despite these criticisms, there are some sequences that show a great deal of creative flare. There's a shocking scene when construction workers start to hurl themselves from the roof of the building they're working on. A tracking shot following a Police officer's handgun as it is used in subsequent suicides, is also impressively realised. Once again, composer James Newton Howard embellishes Shyamalan's work with an exceptionally clever and subtle score. The two seem to have a very good creative relationship. Upon its initial release, the distributors made much of the film’s rating. Perhaps they saw this as it's only virtue. There is more violence compared to his other work. Given the subject matter this is understandable. Overall The Happening is a missed opportunity. Again I feel that Mr. Shyamalan's work would benefit from an additional writer to strengthen his weaknesses and curb his excesses. Sadly several movies on from The Happening and the same mistakes keep getting made.