On the Big Screen

Suspense filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan has formed an impressive career out self-written, produced and directed thrillers, drawing inspiration and comparisons to Hitchcockian fare. Shyamalan’s latest movie, “The Happening” is one of the grandest disaster films in years … but not in ways the filmmakers had intended. A travesty on every front, “The Happening” is a poorly written exercise chock-full of forced dialogue, ham-fisted acting from Marky Mark and his funky bunch, and hackneyed plot devices.
The film spotlights Eastern coastal states as an unexplainable natural phenomenon sweeps through cities, towns and the countryside. The phenomenon in question is an airborne threat that basically causes people to kill themselves when they come in contact with it. Shyamalan throws a bunch of scientific key words and mushy explanations into the “how” of this ridiculous premise, but the explanations usually come from a constipated-looking Mark Wahlberg, so they’re a little hard to accept.
The majority of the film follows Wahlberg, his wife and a few other tacked-on supporting characters as they journey into the barren fields of the country because, of course, the fatal toxins only kill large groups of people. What follows is the most shockingly awful train wreck of plotting and scripting in recent memory. In an attempt to create a “green horror” film, Shyamalan reduces the menace of the film to the wind — for it carries the deadly poison. This wouldn’t have been a big deal, except that he also tries to force some confrontations between man and his invisible foe. So in a series of laughable and embarrassing sequences, characters actually run from the breeze. It plays out as ridiculous as it sounds. The fact that it is never explained why only certain people are susceptible to the threat, or why it is contained only to certain areas, is really demeaning to the audience. It doesn’t create a sense of mystery; it creates a sense of animosity toward Shyamalan that he would stiff his loyal moviegoers and refuse them their rights to coherent structure and elucidation.
There has been a lot of buzz about the film’s R rating — Shyamalan’s first film to earn the restricted stamp. When the infected citizens off themselves, it’s generally bloody and deserving of the harsh rating, but not gory or offensive. This is mainly because of the ludicrous nature of the deaths — one man stands in a zoo and has his limbs torn off by a lion while he placidly looks on. It might have been intended to distance the film from its predecessors, or give it a hook, but there seems to be no purpose. The R-rated material acts as little more than the cheap plastic toy in a cereal box — it’s an unnecessary addition that operates solely as a gimmick to gain attraction, but it does nothing to enhance the actual product.
Shyamalan is eight films into his career and incites serious concerns about his writing. He is no doubt a competent director, but his ability to manipulate actors and write effective material will be his downfall if the trend continues. His move to licensed material (his next film is an adaptation of a popular animated series) may be his saving grace. Directing other people’s material might give him the time to rejuvenate his own creative abilities. Here’s hoping that he recovers his talents, and that I will never have to outrun the wind.