When plants attack

For many, “The Happening” was M. Night Shyamalan’s last chance to straighten up and fly right. Whatever fond memories we had of the “Sixth Sense” were beginning to fade in comparison to letdowns like “The Village” or “Lady in the Water.” Unfortunately, in “The Happening,” Shyamalan hasn’t redeemed himself, and we’re left to wonder if he’s simply the most overrated one-trick pony in Hollywood.

In “The Happening,” groups of people are suddenly and mysteriously driven to suicide. Mark Wahlberg stars as Elliot Moore, a science teacher who flees the city with his friend Julian (a fellow teacher played by John Leguizamo), Elliot’s wife and Julian’s daughter. There, they try to survive this event and flee the state, to where they think it will be safer.

Contrary to the style of most Shyamalan movies, there isn’t some “What a twist!” moment. He’s abandoned it in favor of creating a pervading and omnipresent threat. We find out in the first 15 minutes that somehow, plants are behind the attacks. It is this central point upon which Shyamalan balances his movie, and unfortunately it manages to fail spectacularly. We are shown menacing scenes of trees and bushes as the wind blows through them, and what’s meant to be disturbing and frightening becomes unintentionally hilarious.

Making us afraid of plants was an ambitious attempt, and had Shyamalan actually pulled it off, it would have made for a truly frightening effect. Unfortunately, he fails to achieve it, and the movie is left to spiral into the ground.

We see Shyamalan’s talent only at certain parts and at a microscopic level. This was Shyamalan’s first R-rated movie, and as such we are treated to some genuinely frightening moments. However, you get the sense that these scenes are essentially what inspired the movie, and the rest is just a vehicle to tie them together. It doesn’t help that Wahlberg’s performance seems wooden, or that his wife, played by Zooey Deschanel, gives him nothing to work with.

“The Happening,” like many of Shyamalan’s movies, is about a group of people sorting out their problems while trying to survive whatever the outside world is throwing at them. We get the sense that this sort of surreal, confused acting is what Shyamalan wanted, but it ultimately detriments our cause to care about the characters.
Toward the end, a viewer begins to abandon concern for what the characters are doing in favor of trying to ascertain what is going on. Once we figure it out, we sit nonplussed, and leave the theater with the same surreal confusion that beset the film’s actors.