The Happening: You Don't Mess With the Plants!

It takes a moment to realize it, but watching The Happening, I there was next to no special effects, and the special effects used were only because it was easier than make-up. (I make exception for one scene, which I will forever critize.) Writer-director M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense) shines with presenting a large-scale threat to humanity and making it fearful by keeping it almost entirely confined to what the couple we're following knows. The idea is simple, everything else is not.

There is something happening. "Event" is accurate, but only because it could be an "attack," "disaster," or really anything. People start killing themselves one-by-one in Central Park, NYC. It spreads over New York, starting at parks in the large cities and moving to smaller ones. People suddenly stop walking and start killing themselves. Traffic cops shoot themselves, construction works jump from their buildings, and drivers crash their cars.

Philadelphia is the start, where a science teacher, Elliott Moore (Mark Wahlberg) talks to uninterested students about possible reasons why honeybees are disappearing with the words on chalkboard, "If the bee disappeared from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live. --Albert Einstein" staring from behind him. (No, Albert Einstein never said that, but it's background effect is still the same.) After New York is "hit," Moore grabs his wife, Alma (Zooey Deschanel) and they head away from the Northwest with a friend, Julian (John Leguizamo) and his daughter who has gone silent. The train stops in a small town, the conductors saying they've lost all communication outside. At a cafe, they say it's spreading all over the Northeast and a panic fills. They drive off, and when the roads aren't safe, they start walking.

This sounds uneventful, but brings up the big question of what do we do when mankind might be at its end? Since 9/11 we've worried about biological weapons, nuclear war, global warming either flooding or storming, and terrorist attacks of all kinds. The Happening centers on the helplessness and invisibility of the attack. It does become more freightening. Like my foreign politics professor once pointed out, "If terrorists really wanted us to be afraid, they'd throw a dart at the map and pick a small town school to blow up." As the small towns start getting hit, everyone is afraid. As it occurs in smaller and smaller cities and populations, the question slowly comes up, where do you run next? Do you abandon what few people are with you? How paranoid do you become? When is it crazy to suggest the obsurd to avoid an unknown attacker? End the end, they're running from the wind, unsure if the wind is even bringing anything.

One person suggests it is plants, suddenly tired of humans cutting down their forests and walking on their grass that they've developed a chemical to release to shut down the part of our minds that prevents us from harming ourselves. This sounds as crazy as any idea, but also as reasonable. What does man do against such a sudden attack? It is like watching the opposite of War of the Worlds, where bacteria kills us rather than saves us.

The horror is effective. The "attacks" are so unheard and without warning, so close, we find walking through a door freightening. The personal drama between Elliott and Alma is rather flat and never fully developes. They can be easily narrowed to "husband" and "wife" characters, like Honeybunny and Pumpkin. They do have moments where they confess, joke, reveal their worries, and overall act with a good script for scenes, but unlike the psychiatrist in Sixth Sense or the family in Signs, I felt there was a level of depth, a history that molded them that remained missing. Elliott is a science teacher to the fullest extent. He believes in science, and like Julian's math teacher traits calm his nerves by doing advanced math problems, Elliott refers back to science to calm himself and to figure out what to do, but we never learned what happened to him to make him love science so much, and therefore he nevers is truly as close to us as he could be.

Is it entertaining? Yes. The idea is original and the characters carry us more than necessary, even if it is never fully about them.

Is it for everyone? Not everyone will find it interesting. Some would prefer to know more or have less walking. I feel it brings it home to make it as simple as it is.

Is it memorable? Mostly. While it is effective in its own brand of horror, a Rosemary's Baby kind of paranoia (are they just crazy?) I doubt it will be looked back upon as though to define our post millenium fears like Night of the Living Dead summarized our red-scare fears and racism during the Nixon administration.