The Happening
Dir: M. Night Shyamalan
Stars: Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo
** 1 / 2
There was once a punk rock novelty song recorded by a fellow named John Otway with the unlikely title Beware Of The Flowers �Cos I�m Sure They�re Gonna Get You Yeah. It was a daft rave-up that still managed to keep your head bobbing even after the humour of the chorus had worn off, but no one ever imagined that someone would make a whole movie based on its premise. This little gag � a very little one, I�ll shamefully admit - was the only thing that kept me smiling once the pivotal premise of The Happening revealed itself.
The very great problem with M. Night Shyamalan�s films is that once he departs from the nameless dread so painstakingly created in their setup, they�ve lost most of their reason to exist. He�s a horror director uninterested in shocking you silly as well as a maker of thrillers with one big plot point on which everything pivots, instead of a few dozen smaller ones meant to keep you intrigued. Sadly, once you�ve passed over the fulcrum of that pivot, his films often disintegrate into unintentional humour.
The Happening begins with a high school science teacher (Mark Wahlberg) quizzing his students about some inexplicable and ominous disturbances in nature�s balance, just as several cities in the U.S. northeast are being hit with what looks like a chemical attack. Things get serious fast, and he flees the city with his wife (Zooey Deschanel) and best friend (John Leguizamo), and they quickly find themselves stranded in the country as the suicide-inducing contagion closes in on them.
The film is a bit of a departure for the director, since he reveals the big premise early on, sparing the audience the eye-rolling revelations that made Signs and The Village so retroactively disappointing. Unfortunately that means you can start rolling your eyes and giggling earlier... at the first film that makes itself the punch line to global warming�s joke.
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