The Happening (15)
We've Sensed It. We've Seen The Signs. Now... It's Happening.
I hadn't read up on the plot before going to see this latest offering from director M. Night Shyamalan, so I didn't really know what to expect from it. The opening few minutes were suitable creepy, a busy morning in Central Park coming to a halt as people become confused, disoriented and are then taken over by an irresistible urge to harm and kill themselves. The tension grows as the pandemic spreads throughout the city...
...then we meet the characters and it all begins to fall apart. The lead character Elliot Moore, played by Mark Wahlberg, is a high school science teacher who appears to treat everyone as if they are about eight years old. His wife, Alma Moore (Zooey Deschanel), appears to suffer from an inability to grasp the situation as she never appears genuinely phased by what is going on throughout the entire film. Personally I found the pair of them very irritating, which made it difficult to get properly involved in the film.
As the film goes on and the plot unfolds we begin to find out that what is happening is a natural disaster. Plants and trees have evolved and begun to release chemicals designed to counter their new greatest threat - humans. The only way to escape it is for people to split in to smaller and smaller groups, thus making them harder for the surrounding vegetation to detect. Unfortunately as the main characters head out on their own the tension gradually evaporates, and is only regained at all in the closing scenes of the film.
All in all it's an interesting take on the environmental disaster movie, but the strained script and weak acting really let it down. It can make for an entertaining enough few hours on a dull afternoon, but you really need set your expectations more towards B-movie than Hollywood blockbuster.
