the happening (2008)

this might be my shortest review of a film. not because of the film but the fact that sometimes as a viewer of cinema and as a writer i must learn again to enter the viewing experience with no expectations. get zen i suppose and just let the movie be what it is. and then see what happens.

which i suppose i had done last night upon watching m. night shyamalan's first r-rated venture. i really expected the movie to suck big time, really suck, hard big donkey dicks. sure i'm a masochist who gets all hopped up when i learn of an obscure william shatner flick spoken in esperanto [there really is such a flick called incubus] but to willingly give over 90+ minutes of my life to another of shyamalan's lousy concoctions then surely i need therapy to cure myself of self-loathing.

okay, the movie is rather clunky in parts and the dialogue bordering on the atrocious but mark whalberg is such a likable fellow that even his bad acting is just this side of tolerable. whalberg plays a popular high school science teacher caught in the midst of what appears to be a terrorist attack. some sort of gas or agent breaks down the self-preservation instinct so that the sufferer does physical harm to him/ or herself to the point of death. zooey deschanel portrays his estranged wife.

but it's not the work of terrorists. whalberg believes the attack is the result of the trees and plants. such eco-minded horror is not unprecedant in the history of the genre. and the reviews i've read last summer disparaging certain scenes, such as whalberg and deschanel trying to outrun wind which is how the poison is administered worked fairly well. they don't outrun the wind. like many of shyamalan's set pieces he does a good job creating suspense but there is little pay-off in execution. outrunning wind is impossible but the panic of the protaganists is palpable to even try. the buildup of the wind was however rather goofy.

and that's the problem with shyamalin's film. there are moments of real creepiness, in all his movies, but he seems unable to connect those moments into a satisfying whole. also, the overall tone of the movie is bombastic and preachy. we done fucked up the planet and nature is giving us a little warning to shape up or it will take us out. how exactly is nature carrying out these attacks we don't know, but shyamalan has his characters continually repeat that nature is miraculous and utterly unknowable. there are more things in heaven and earth. . .which sounds more like a cop-out from the filmmaker rather than exploration of the twilight zone.

still, the movie surprised me. even though some of the language spoken in the film hurt my ears and the chemistry between whalberg and deschenal was at zero the film was provocative enough to keep me watching. the filmmaker would do well to have another writer clean up his scripts i think. as for the r-rating the movie was really not very bloody or violent. but the few set pieces, such as the lion attack, the jumpers off a roof and the music recital [which didn't make it into the final print but is included as an extra on the dvd] were beautifully choreographed. well, so much for making this review short. now to look for that shatner disc.