SusannahTHE HAPPENING
March 15th 2009 01:09
THE HAPPENING (2008)
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo.
Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan.
The Happening is a non-event. There is nothing good about this film. It is not even so bad that it is good. It is just plain bad. The Crappening? The Shattening? Those are perhaps more apt titles for something that is so bereft of anything worthwhile. The plot is bad, the directing is bad, the acting is bad, the effects are bad, hell, even the cinematography is bad. I knew the film was going to be bad, but even I was not prepared for the sheer level of shit it attained.
Continuing the constant downward trajectory that his career seems hellbent upon, Shyamalan has made his worst film to date, and that is saying a lot considering what a despicable waste of space Lady in the Water was.
The premise is not even good: plants secreting chemicals into the air that make you kill yourself? Whatever. This spontaneous evolution of several plants at once creating these suicidal chemicals that apparently only kill people and bees (because, you know, we are harming the planet, environment, green stuff, etc, and the bees are....who knows.) only seems to work when the wind blows the chemicals in your direction. What? So these chemicals are not as efficient as an airborne gas, or even pollen. Apparently, according to some crazy character who talks about hotdogs and grows plants in a greenhouse; trees, bushes and grass can all communicate telepathically. What? Who comes up with this crap? Oh yeah, M. Night.
The scenes where people kill themselves are unintentionally hilarious. The scene where a man lies down in front of a harvester is a classic, laugh out loud moment. The gun tag at the start is just plain stupid. To remind us of how scared we are supposed to be M. Night keeps inserting “terrifying” shots of tree branches blowing in the wind. Tree branches!!! Noooooooooo. Day of the Triffids this film is not.
Every single opportunity to create any kind of tension is completely wasted. Take the opening, for example. Two women are sitting on a bench in a park. We do not know who they are or what they are about. They talk briefly. One of them looks around (but we don’t see what she sees) and she says: why is everyone clawing at themselves and bleeding? (Presumably our horrified imaginations are meant to envisage this happening as we are not shown what she sees). The woman’s friend then starts to oddly repeat the last thing that she has spoken, and begins reaching into her hair for a bizarrely lethal hairclip. It then cuts to the people in the park, who are neither clawing at themselves, nor bleeding. They are all standing motionless, except one of them walks backwards. Huh? That’s not what she said they were doing at all. The woman with the hairclip kills herself, and that’s the end of that scene. All of this only takes like two minutes. It is a tension-free scene that exists in a vacuum.
As for the acting, Mark Wahlberg looks like he wants to die, as his character possesses neither motive nor reason for any of his actions. It is not entirely his fault. If you watch the “gag reel” on the special features on the DVD, one bit that is supposed to be “funny,” is where Mark Wahlberg asks M. Night why his character would go to a completely boarded up house expecting to find groceries there. M. Night does a silly little giggle and then says “I have two words for you: canned goods.” Mark looks crushed as he has probably tried (yet again) to bring some kind of logic to Shyamalan’s script.
The real nadir, though, is Zooey Deschanel. I don’t care how hot people think she is; she cannot act. She stinks up the screen in every scene she is in. Wahlberg has to stoop to her level in every scene they share. She constantly looks conscious of the fact that she is acting, with an oddly composed expression on her face of what she thinks her character is supposed to be feeling at the time. Her line delivery is awful. She spouts her lines like English is a second language.
The worst scene is one of the deleted ones, which was supposed to be the original opening to the film. It is a ten minute long scene between Deschanel and Wahlberg where they discuss their relationship in some of the most banal, neurotic, and pop psychological drivel of dialogue ever written. If the film had opened like this, and I had been sitting in a cinema watching it, I would have walked out, it is that bad. I believe the scene is supposed to be partly M. Night’s attempt at humour, but he is so not funny. It is not a humour anyone but him understands. In the scene Wahlberg compares the differences in their relationship to one of them liking rocky road ice cream and the other not. For some reason, throughout the movie, Deschanel has to keep mentioning tiramisu. Again, what???
The worst scene in the actual film is where two groups are crossing a field (grass!!! Noooooooooooo!). And the first group suddenly stop and get that sort of look about them like they want to die (you know, similar to everyone who is watching this film). Wahlberg and Deschanel are in the second group, but they (unfortunately) have not been affected by the suicide chemicals. Everyone starts to harass Wahlberg, telling him that he should do something, but apart from that they all seem pretty calm. I mean, wouldn’t you start to panic, or run away because you might be next? Deschanel then delivers her classic line: “We can’t just stand here as uninvolved observers.” Who writes lines like that? M. Night. That’s who.
To top it all off, they overcome the killer chemicals by waiting it out. Apparently, all incidents of this nature always peak out and fade away, so all they have to do is wait. Huh? Why, if these plants have developed a killer chemical spontaneously would they suddenly just stop producing it? That does not make any sense, like the rest of this film. In conclusion, avoid The Happening if only for the sake of your sanity.
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo.
Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan.
The Happening is a non-event. There is nothing good about this film. It is not even so bad that it is good. It is just plain bad. The Crappening? The Shattening? Those are perhaps more apt titles for something that is so bereft of anything worthwhile. The plot is bad, the directing is bad, the acting is bad, the effects are bad, hell, even the cinematography is bad. I knew the film was going to be bad, but even I was not prepared for the sheer level of shit it attained.
Continuing the constant downward trajectory that his career seems hellbent upon, Shyamalan has made his worst film to date, and that is saying a lot considering what a despicable waste of space Lady in the Water was.
The premise is not even good: plants secreting chemicals into the air that make you kill yourself? Whatever. This spontaneous evolution of several plants at once creating these suicidal chemicals that apparently only kill people and bees (because, you know, we are harming the planet, environment, green stuff, etc, and the bees are....who knows.) only seems to work when the wind blows the chemicals in your direction. What? So these chemicals are not as efficient as an airborne gas, or even pollen. Apparently, according to some crazy character who talks about hotdogs and grows plants in a greenhouse; trees, bushes and grass can all communicate telepathically. What? Who comes up with this crap? Oh yeah, M. Night.
The scenes where people kill themselves are unintentionally hilarious. The scene where a man lies down in front of a harvester is a classic, laugh out loud moment. The gun tag at the start is just plain stupid. To remind us of how scared we are supposed to be M. Night keeps inserting “terrifying” shots of tree branches blowing in the wind. Tree branches!!! Noooooooooo. Day of the Triffids this film is not.
Every single opportunity to create any kind of tension is completely wasted. Take the opening, for example. Two women are sitting on a bench in a park. We do not know who they are or what they are about. They talk briefly. One of them looks around (but we don’t see what she sees) and she says: why is everyone clawing at themselves and bleeding? (Presumably our horrified imaginations are meant to envisage this happening as we are not shown what she sees). The woman’s friend then starts to oddly repeat the last thing that she has spoken, and begins reaching into her hair for a bizarrely lethal hairclip. It then cuts to the people in the park, who are neither clawing at themselves, nor bleeding. They are all standing motionless, except one of them walks backwards. Huh? That’s not what she said they were doing at all. The woman with the hairclip kills herself, and that’s the end of that scene. All of this only takes like two minutes. It is a tension-free scene that exists in a vacuum.
As for the acting, Mark Wahlberg looks like he wants to die, as his character possesses neither motive nor reason for any of his actions. It is not entirely his fault. If you watch the “gag reel” on the special features on the DVD, one bit that is supposed to be “funny,” is where Mark Wahlberg asks M. Night why his character would go to a completely boarded up house expecting to find groceries there. M. Night does a silly little giggle and then says “I have two words for you: canned goods.” Mark looks crushed as he has probably tried (yet again) to bring some kind of logic to Shyamalan’s script.
The real nadir, though, is Zooey Deschanel. I don’t care how hot people think she is; she cannot act. She stinks up the screen in every scene she is in. Wahlberg has to stoop to her level in every scene they share. She constantly looks conscious of the fact that she is acting, with an oddly composed expression on her face of what she thinks her character is supposed to be feeling at the time. Her line delivery is awful. She spouts her lines like English is a second language.
The worst scene is one of the deleted ones, which was supposed to be the original opening to the film. It is a ten minute long scene between Deschanel and Wahlberg where they discuss their relationship in some of the most banal, neurotic, and pop psychological drivel of dialogue ever written. If the film had opened like this, and I had been sitting in a cinema watching it, I would have walked out, it is that bad. I believe the scene is supposed to be partly M. Night’s attempt at humour, but he is so not funny. It is not a humour anyone but him understands. In the scene Wahlberg compares the differences in their relationship to one of them liking rocky road ice cream and the other not. For some reason, throughout the movie, Deschanel has to keep mentioning tiramisu. Again, what???
The worst scene in the actual film is where two groups are crossing a field (grass!!! Noooooooooooo!). And the first group suddenly stop and get that sort of look about them like they want to die (you know, similar to everyone who is watching this film). Wahlberg and Deschanel are in the second group, but they (unfortunately) have not been affected by the suicide chemicals. Everyone starts to harass Wahlberg, telling him that he should do something, but apart from that they all seem pretty calm. I mean, wouldn’t you start to panic, or run away because you might be next? Deschanel then delivers her classic line: “We can’t just stand here as uninvolved observers.” Who writes lines like that? M. Night. That’s who.
To top it all off, they overcome the killer chemicals by waiting it out. Apparently, all incidents of this nature always peak out and fade away, so all they have to do is wait. Huh? Why, if these plants have developed a killer chemical spontaneously would they suddenly just stop producing it? That does not make any sense, like the rest of this film. In conclusion, avoid The Happening if only for the sake of your sanity.
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