We just saw The Happening, the new film by M. Night Shyamalan. Let me state up front that I really like his previous movies. The excellence of The Sixth Sense goes without saying but I loved Signs and The Village also and certainly enjoyed Unbreakable and Lady in the Water. Hence it pains me to say that his newest film is really not very good. Coming from any lesser filmmaker it would be so-so; coming from him it’s a major disappointment.
I’m not going to say much about the plot since I personally hate it when someone spoils the plot of a movie for me. I suppose, though, that this review is something of a spoiler in itself. What I’ll say is this: it has a (mostly) very good, strange, suspense-laden build-up, and then it utterly fails to deliver. In retrospect it comes off as a few interesting ideas and some resulting odd situations thrown together in the framework of two plots competing for supremacy, and the competition ends in a draw.
I will say this: if you have any interest in seeing it, you might as well see it in a theater rather than waiting for the DVD. There are some nice bits of cinematography (although nothing as spectacular as, say, the night scene in The Village with the villagers moving through the houses with the dolly camera tracking them) whose impact would be diminished to nearly nothing on a small screen. On the other hand, those scenes might not be worth the trip to the theater. There were certain aspects of the camera work that I found annoying. I was entirely weary of the close-up-on-face-through-wide-angle-lens gimmick even before the film ended. That’s the first time I can recall being actually annoyed by camera work in one of his films.
Mark Wahlberg might be the movie’s strongest point. He’s a good actor; given his youth he might well be an excellent actor down the road. His character is at least convincing, which is more than can be said for many of the others. James Newton Howard did a nice job on the score. It’s not stunning but it works.
I dunno. Maybe I missed the point altogether, but as far as we could tell, if the movie had a point, it’s been made many times over in much simpler ways, and without completely letting down the audience.
I’ll make a couple of other pithy comments in the Comments section which will probably be spoilers, so don’t look at the Comments for this post until you’ve seen the movie, if you think you’re going to do so.
Here are a couple of details about the movie which competely puzzle me:
Why is the train conductor so completely nonchalant when he’s telling Wahlberg why the train has stopped? He–and the rest of the train crew–are in the same boat as everyone else. They should be just as disconcerted as everyone else. Instead he’s actually smiling. This scene is early in the film; the audience has no idea what’s going on, nor do the characters. His indifference is mysterious in itself: it seems to imply that he knows something that other people don’t. And yet we never see him again, so we’re left with the conclusion that he’s just a profoundly bad actor (or a profoundly badly directed actor).
In the closing scenes, if this is the first day that schools are back in session (and would it really only take three months for that to happen?), why isn’t Wahlberg at work, teaching?
Why is the little girl built up as such a prominent character, when ultimately she does nothing at all? In some sense her significance is even dimished by the film’s closing scenes. Kids tend to have unusual significance in M. Night’s movies, and this one certainly gets the build-up with the disappearance of her parents, the close-ups, etc. and yet, really, she doesn’t do much of anything. She doesn’t draw Wahlberg and his estranged wife closer together; they’re clearly doing that all by themselves. And what’s with her parents, anyway? Would Dad really allow himself to be separated from Mom in that manner, and would he really leave the kid to go back for her? Seems unlikely to me.
Wahlberg’s logic in the scene in the field is flawed. This scene seems to be foreshadowed by his introduction as a teacher of science and hence a logical thinker, but his thought process doesn’t hold together. If the targets are shifting from large population centers to smaller urban areas to smaller groups, then dividing the group just creates more targets–it doesn’t protect anyone. In fact, the logical conclusion is that ultimately individuals will be targets (a conclusion which is borne up by the crazy woman) so the size of the group of which the individual may be a member is irrelevant.
Maybe we’re supposed to see that his logic is flawed. The opening scene makes the point (somewhat heavy-handedly) that science doesn’t hold all the answers and that some events will never be understood. This point is revisited in the news broadcast near the end. But if that’s the case, then that means that we’re supposed to see that the ostensible strength of Walhberg’s character–his capacity for objective reasoning–is flawed.
So maybe that’s the point: science doesn’t have all of the answers, and Wahlberg’s moment of triumph is not in the field, but when he realizes that he’d rather die in the arms of his beloved (or while trying to reach those arms) than to die alone. Okay, fine. But isn’t that the point, generally speaking, that was made when the little girl’s dad when back for his wife?
I could go on, but you get the idea. Feel free to tell me if you see this movie differently than I do. I’d love to have my faith in M. Night Shyamalan restored, because right now it’s pretty much gone.
I look at his films this way: strange and mysterious circumstances put the characters into a situation of conflict in which they must manage to the best of their abilities, and through this challenge they come to some sense of realization about themselves and the relative importance of different people and aspects of their lives. By the end of the movie, the audience may not have answers to all of their questions (which is fine) but at least they have some sense of completion and an appreciation for how the characters were motivated and what they did in response to that motivation–they get the point, in short. (Sometimes the point is delivered in a pretty subtle manner; the point of Signs is delivered during a brief conversation between Mel Gibson and Joachim Phoenix.) I suppose that’s a description of pretty much any movie. Anyway, this movie has the strange and mysterious circumstances, but it has no “aha!” moment, and it leaves plenty of unanswered questions. I fail to see the point.
There could be two points. One could be the point that estranged couples need to re-examine their situation and their interaction, but that’s a point that’s been made so many times it’s a cliche. The other could be that we’re ruining the planet and it’s going to fight back sooner or later, in strange and mysterious ways. That’s a point worth making, but if this is M. Night’s attempt to awaken us to an inconvenient truth, I’m afraid that it’s simply not very compelling.