Terrible Thursday: The Happening

The Happening
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, and John Leguizamo
Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan

Style: Unexplained happenings
Blood and Guts: 4
Fright Factor: 1
Laugh Factor: 4
Weapons of choice: Anything nearby to the afflicted
Overall rating: Terrible

Philadelphia has never been a wonderland of joy ever since Benjamin Franklin robbed that cobbler for the Washington Elite series clog. However, Elliot Moore (Wahlberg) finds himself having to flee the city after New York is hit by some sort of attack when people outside suddenly all kill themselves in whatever way happens to be handy. Soon, other cities and towns are affected, targeting smaller and smaller groups of individuals. Where can you escape to, if you can't go outside?

There are several fundamental problems with this film. Many people criticize its ridiculous nature, which Shyamalan has countered by saying he was making a B-movie. This seems like an excuse, but let's approach the film as a B-movie. We'll even ignore that the marketing department in that case mispromoted the heck out of that, because that's not Shyamalan's fault.

Firstly, Shyamalan took the completely wrong tone to his film for it to pass off as a B-movie. Yes, all of his actors are ridiculously over the top, from Wahlberg doing his best Napoleon Dynamite impression to Zooey Deschanel having moon eyes the entire film to Betty Buckley showing up as an batcrap insane recluse, everyone is hamming it up. Where this tone fails is that at no point does the movie insinuate that it is purposefully bad. There is no subtle wink to the audience. Combine this with the fact that the rest of the production strives to be realistic, down to graphic death scenes, and you have actors who look out of place rather than ones who are laughing it up.

Next, you have the fact that Shyamalan does not know how to do violence. In interviews he gave about this film, he talks about how he wants to break all conventions and hit audiences with things that they felt they would be safe from. This translates to I am going to kill kids in the film, and you'll never see it coming. Except for the fact that it happens when they are trying to break into an inhabited house and suddenly go from normal character kids to hooligan tactics. Not two minutes before, they were waxing philosophical about respect and relationships, and then they are trying to kick down doors. In fact, the first violent deaths occur about 2 minutes into the film, and the convention is set that when things go wrong, people will kill themselves. Knowing that convention tips his hand, and from then on, nothing we see will shock us as much because it's is completely and utterly expected. By the time you get to the lawnmower incident, the part of the trailer that people found most shocking, it is a ho-hum effect.

I'll skip the ridiculousness of the science in the film, because it is B-movie, so it doesn't matter, but what this film comes down to being is a very boring, rather uninventive movie about the possibility of humanity ceasing to exist. It's not fun, unless maybe you are very drunk. It's not exciting, because everything is telegraphed. And it's not scary, because nothing sneaks up on them. They are chased by wind in a scene reminiscent of when frost chased people in The Day After Tomorrow. So what is it then?

Terrible. Just terrible.