It’s not Quite Happening, Man

Fans of M. Night Shyamalan’s character-centered, Philadelphia-based thrillers, with their trademark spookiness and plot twists near the end, have long been waiting for him to equal his breakthrough film, “The Sixth Sense.” Many hoped his Friday the 13th release, “The Happening,” would be it, but most were disappointed, quite a few of them bitterly so, to judge from user comments on the imdb.
I won’t give away any “surprises,” but suffice to say that his reputation for unexpected twists is starting to dilute the surprise factor because it makes audiences try all the harder to predict something that might well be more surprising than what actually happens.

Like many if not most of his films after “The Sixth Sense,” Shyamalan’s latest production is a strongly personal statement that does not fit neatly into the typical Hollywood mass-market formula. Like his later films, “The Village” and “Lady in the Water,” it has many strong and compelling moments, and other moments that are almost guaranteed to turn off many viewers.

“The Happening” (absolutely no relation to the 1967 crime comedy of the same name) is really Shyamalan’s variation on Steven Spielberg’s revisionist version of “War of the Worlds.” It’s a post-9/11 drama of a displaced and dysfunctional family struggling to survive an inexplicable mass disaster amidst widespread panic.

The film follows the adventures of Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, and youngster Ashlyn Sanchez as the three main characters: an earnest high school science teacher, his somewhat distant wife, and their sensitive eight-year-old niece.
At the beginning there is a palpable tension between them all, an uncomfortable reluctance to connect with each other that gradually breaks down as a result of their traumatic experiences together.

The three, especially the little girl, turn in some very good performances, building well towards the last third of the film that gives them some moving scenes together. The script has some truly interesting developments involving them and John Leguizamo as Wahlberg’s overly concerned brother (Sanchez’s father).

Shyamalan is not just exploring individual personal relationships here, however. Like Spielberg in “War of the Worlds,” he takes a look at mass hysteria and group reactions under extreme pressure. And like the sci-fi thrillers of the 1950s, he uses his plot as a platform for not too thinly disguised sociopolitical allegory, in this case a rather heavy-handed environmental warning, along with such concerns as Americans’ general paranoia about terrorism, government biomedical experimentation, nuclear power safety, teen respect for elders, and more.

As a director, Shyamalan again proves he is an expert at manipulating audience emotions and expectations. As the screenwriter, however, he doesn’t quite pull his issues into a believable, coherent conclusion, something he should have recognized as one of the producers. The result is a film with a gripping opening but an otherwise slightly awkward first act, a strangely fascinating and compelling middle section, but a “does he actually believe we’ll take this seriously” third act, even with what apparently is meant to pass as its obligatory “twist” before the closing credits.

“The Happening” is nowhere near as bad as its most vocal critics are lamenting, but like his other work it’s far from a mass appeal film. As a character drama, it’s not bad at all. As a suspense thriller, it’s a pretty good effort with memorable sections but a rather disappointing conclusion. As a diatribe on environmental concerns, the film is a moderately interesting curiosity, far from persuasive, and unusual enough to become unintentional camp for many viewers, who are more likely to see it as a preachy, second-rate variation on Hitchcock’s “The Birds.”

In other words, Shyamalan’s “The Happening” is a passable bargain matinee movie, and well worth seeing when it gets to the dollar theatre, but once it’s on video, it’s more likely a rental than a purchase.