The Happening

Dippy characters + ecological terror + true suspense = mixed bag of tricks better left until video

I like Shyamalan's movies; they are a good, clever thrill. I'm not one of those people who will claim to "see it coming"--he 'gets me' every time and I like him better for it. I'd also like to give the guy credit for being brave enough to make an ecological thriller--how many other people could pitch a plot like that successfully?

I'm glad that I was there to see the movie opening weekend, before someone ruined the plot twist for me. The problem was that the "twist" was more of a "swerve" and that we had all heard about it before we entered the theater. I'm not sure what I was expecting, other than to be thrilled by the suspense, but I didn't leave feeling satisfied. Yup, there were some very stressful moments in that movie that had me cringing in my seat (in a that delightfully tense way that has you worrying about the characters in peril), but I don't really feel like that was enough to satisfy even the vaguest of expectations.

Undoubtedly Lunanshee will expound on our shared opinion that there was too much gore in the movie. Part of what makes Shyamalan so good is that he leaves us to imagine the boogeyman; he doesn't show it (think The Village). Showing the horror is cheap, but leaving it up to our imaginations is the higher art (thank you, Hitchcock).

Zooey Deschanel is fabulously zany (think 2nd season of Weeds) and lovely in a remote and ethereal way (Almost Famous), but none of that really worked here. Her character didn't deserve that much sympathy, in my opinion. She did grow throughout the narrative, but the pitch of things was slightly off, particularly any time her character and John Leguizamo's interacted. I did expect a better performance than she gave.
Mark Wahlburg did a great job of being an Everyman who thinks through the problem to find a solution. Sometimes characters are just too smart to be believable (I love you Harry Potter, but you are guilty of this, even if you are emotionally stunted), but his science teacher was just right, I think.

My favorite character was Frank Collison's Nursury Owner; a little "out there", but a likable guy reacting as best he could to an unthinkable situation. I think his exit came too soon, but that I was more affected by it because I liked his character.

My prediction is that word-of-mouth will kill this movie, kind of like Lady in the Water. I expect that the box office for this movie in its second and subsequent weeks will taper off really quickly. Having said that, I will most likely be in the theater for Shyamalan's next outing, even though I didn't care for this one.