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1 star*

The Happening has a very important message, about acting now to save our planet before we destroy it, but it waits until the last few minutes to get this across. Unfortunately, by then we’re so uninterested that we almost think ‘sod the planet, let’s go home.’ If we’d got the message earlier, we wouldn’t be wondering what might happen at the end of the film. Nothing did happen, in the event, of any interest. Instead of making us actually think about our planet we really couldn’t care less at that moment.

The Happening is a 2008 American apocalyptic film written, co-produced and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. It stars Mark Wahlberg (who was terrific in The Departed) and Zooey Deschanel. People become disoriented, then stop moving, and finally find the quickest way to kill themselves. The pandemic starts in parks, and rapidly spreads to nearby population centers. It is at first thought to be a bioterrorist attack, but this is ruled out as the events increase in regularity.

Following the Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, I thought that a M. Night Shyamalan movie would be good to see. I wasn’t keen on Signs, but mostly his films are completely entertaining. He’s noted for his twists and turns, but in The Happening, it didn’t happen.

In fact, not a lot happened. All screenplay writers are taught to consider the main three acts of a film (even if they mess around with them a little or a lot). The opening act lays out the ground plan of who we’re going to be watching and why; the second act takes us through the various stages of conflict and partial resolution and the third act wraps up all of the plots and sub plots and leaves us with the ending that works. We were offered the typical Hollywood nice ending here, but even that appeared to be out of touch with the rest of the movie. It didn’t gel.

Unfortunately, this movie just about managed act one, act two didn’t take us anywhere; it was just same, same and more same. Act three almost didn’t occur. There wasn’t a resolution because the film’s message couldn’t allow one. I can see what the director was trying to get across, that act three might not happen if we don’t all take action and save our planet now, but did this movie push us in to action? No.

Perhaps his message was best left to a documentary that might have proved interesting. Perhaps if he’d told us the message at the start of the movie we might have understood why we weren’t going to get an ending and didn’t need to spend an hour wondering what it might be.

When you left the great 5 star movie ‘The Accused’ you knew, and more importantly, men knew, that rape was not acceptable in any society on this planet. You thought about it, you talked about it. The Accused had ‘shown’ us exactly what it’s like and why it must not take place. After the Happening there was nothing but the feeling of having been bored for over an hour and wondering how quickly we could get out of the drive in and what we were going to have for dinner.

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