The Happening (2008 film)

The Happening
File:Thehappening1 large.jpg Danish Theatrical release poster
Directed by	M. Night Shyamalan
Written by	M. Night Shyamalan
Produced by	Barry Mendel Sam Mercer M. Night Shyamalan
Starring	Mark Wahlberg Zooey Deschanel John Leguizamo
Cinematography	Tak Fujimoto
Edited by	Conrad Buff
Music by	James Newton Howard
Distributed by	20th Century Fox (except India and Netherlands) UTV Software Communications Warner Bros.
Release dates	June 11 2008: Belgium, France June 13 2008: United States, United Kingdom, India, Brazil
Running time	90 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	US $60 million
Box office	Domestic $64,505,912 Foreign $98,834,810 Worldwide $163,340,722

The Happening is a 2008 American apocalyptic film written, co-produced and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. It stars Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel. Production began in August 2007 in Philadelphia.

Plot

At the very beginning of the opening credits, we see a clear blue sky turn into a dark and overcast sky throughout the rest of the credits.

In the Northeastern U.S., people inexplicably begin committing suicide altogether. First they become disoriented, then stop moving, and finally find the quickest way to kill themselves. The pandemic begins in parks, and quickly spreads to nearby population centers. Initially believed to be a bioterrorist attack, it later seems less likely, as the events increase in ever smaller population centers.

Elliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg) is a high school science teacher in Philadelphia discussing with his students the sudden disappearance of the honey bee. When news of the sudden mass suicides spreads, school is cancelled, and he decides to leave the city by train with his wife, Alma Moore (Zooey Deschanel), his friend and fellow teacher, Julian (John Leguizamo) and Julian's eight-year-old daughter, Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez). The train services stop in the small town of Filbert in western Pennsylvania, after the crew loses contact with "everyone." Julian finds out that the "attacks" have affected Princeton, New Jersey, where his wife was located, and leaves Jess with Elliot while he hitches a ride in an attempt to find her. Soon after arriving in Princeton, he and his fellow passengers fall victim to the strange calamity, and promptly commit suicide by crashing their vehicle into a tree.

Meanwhile, Elliot, Alma, and Jess manage to hitchhike with a botanist and his wife; the man explains his theory that plants are attacking people as a defense mechanism. He elaborates on the complex mechanisms that often seem to appear spontaneously, involving strategies such as attracting predators to kill off specific threats and fostering communication between different species of plants. As they drive, they find themselves surrounded on all sides by affected towns. A number of other cars arrive in the same crossroads, all fleeing places hit by the suicide pandemic. A U.S. Army Soldier, Private First Class Auster, suggests moving away from the population centers on foot to avoid being affected, as the effect has been occurring in smaller and smaller populations.

The group of survivors splits into two, with Elliot, Alma, and Jess in a smaller group. Auster's group, arguing amongst themselves are caught within the effect, and Elliot, hearing the other group kill themselves one after another with a single pistol, concludes that it is likely caused by an airborne neurotoxin exuded by the surrounding plants. The larger the group of people, the more likely it is to trigger the defense mechanism. Elliot makes the group split into three smaller ones with Elliot, Alma, Jess, and two teenage boys staying together.

While looking for food for Jess, Elliot's group come across a boarded up house with survivors inside, still believing the pandemic to be a terrorist attack. They are unwilling to open the doors, and when the two teenage boys begin to aggressively force an entry, they are shot dead and Elliot's group is forced to leave. They make their way to the house of a woman living in complete isolation; thus, she is ignorant of the pandemic. Though she allows them to stay, she proves to be a harsh and paranoid host. In the morning, Elliot finds himself alone; going downstairs, he hears the voices of Alma and Jess but cannot find them. He inadvertently enters the old woman's room and she angrily insists that they leave immediately.

The woman storms out of the house into the garden, where she becomes affected, and kills herself by smashing her head through the windows of the house, exposing Elliot to the neurotoxin. Realizing that the defense mechanism has become even more sensitive, affecting individuals, Elliot shuts himself inside the house. Elliot finds himself in a room where he can hear Alma and Jess. He finds a speaking tube, which leads to a spring house some distance from the house. Conversing with his wife, he decides that if he is to die, he would prefer to spend his remaining time with her. They leave the safety of their buildings, meeting in the yard between the two, but are surprised to find themselves unaffected by the neurotoxin. The effect seems to have abated as quickly as it began.

Three months later, Elliot and Alma have adjusted to a new life with Jess as their adopted daughter. On television, an environmentalist warns that the pandemic may only have been a warning, like a rash that precedes an infection. Elliot takes Jess to the bus stop for the first day of school while Alma stays at home, timing a home pregnancy test. When he returns, Alma greets him with a smile, and they embrace.

In France, the effect appears to happen once again as everyone in sight suddenly stops moving as the wind suddenly moves the trees, and the sky turns dark and cloudy

Cast

• Mark Wahlberg as Elliot Moore, a high school science teacher from Philadelphia, who is married to Alma.
• Zooey Deschanel as Alma Moore, Elliot's estranged wife.
• John Leguizamo as Julian, a high school math teacher and Elliot's friend.
• Ashlyn Sanchez as Jess, Julian's daughter.
• Spencer Breslin as Josh, a teenage boy who with his friend Jared temporarily travels with Elliot, Alma, and Jess.
• Betty Buckley as Mrs. Jones, a woman who lives in an isolated home in rural Pennsylvania.
• Jeremy Strong as Private Auster, a private in the US Army who fled from his station after finding all of the soldiers having killed themselves in the barbwire.
• M. Night Shyamalan is credited as "Joey", the man with whom Alma secretly meets, although the character does not appear on-screen

Production

In January 2007 Shyamalan submitted a spec script entitled The Green Effect to various studios, but none expressed enough interest to purchase the script. The director collected ideas and notes from meetings, returning home to Philadelphia to rewrite the script, and 20th Century Fox greenlit the project. Now titled The Happening, the film was produced by Shyamalan and Barry Mendel and was the director's first R-rated project. Shyamalan compared the film to The Birds (1963) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).

Later in March, Wahlberg, with whom Shyamalan had been negotiating at the same time as his deal with Fox, was cast into the lead role of the $57 million project. Shyamalan had previously cast Wahlberg's brother Donnie in The Sixth Sense. An India-based company, UTV, co-financed 50 percent of the film's budget and distribute the film in India, with Fox distributing in the rest of the territories. Production began in August in Philadelphia. The release date for The Happening was on June 13, 2008, intentionally set for Friday the 13th to suit the thriller.

Critical reaction

The Happening has received mostly negative reviews from film critics. Rotten Tomatoes reported that 19% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based upon 162 reviews. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film has received generally negative reviews of 34/100, based on 38 reviews.

Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter said the film lacked "cinematic intrigue and nail-biting tension" and that "the central menace ... does not pan out as any kind of Friday night entertainment." Variety 's Justin Chang thought the story "... covers territory already over-tilled by countless disaster epics and zombie movies, offering little in the way of suspense, visceral kicks or narrative vitality to warrant the retread." Mick LaSelle at San Francisco Chronicle felt the film was entertaining but not scary. He commented on Shyamalan's writing, saying "... instead of letting his idea breathe and develop and see where it might go, he jumps all over it and prematurely shapes it into a story." Time's Richard Corliss saw the film as "dispiriting indication that writer-director M. Night Shyamalan has lost the touch" Chicago Tribune's Michael Phillips thought the film had workable premise, but found the characters "gasbags or forgetful". Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal said the film was "woeful clunker of a paranoid thriller" and described it as "befuddling infelicities, insistent banalities, shambling pace and pervasive ineptitude".

Roger Ebert, of Chicago Sun-Times awarding the movie 3 out of 4 stars, found it oddly touching and commented that "It is no doubt too thoughtful for the summer action season, but I appreciate the quietly realistic way Shyamalan finds to tell a story about the possible death of man." The New York Times's Manohla Dargis praised Mark Wahlberg's lead performance and said " [the film] turns out to be a divertingly goofy thriller with an animistic bent, moments of shivery and twitchy suspense". Philipa Hawker of The Age gave it 3.5 out of 5 stars, commenting on "the mood of the film: a tantalising, sometimes frustrating parable about the menaces that human beings might face from unexpected quarters" and highlighted "sinister recurring moments is the sound of the breeze and the sight of it ruffling the trees or blowing across the grass - an image of tension that calls to mind Antonioni's Blowup."

Box office performance

On its opening day, The Happening grossed $13 million. Over the weekend, the total gross came in at $30,517,109 in 2,986 theaters in the United States and Canada, averaging to about $10,220 per venue, and ranking #3 at the box office, behind The Incredible Hulk and Kung Fu Panda. Foreign box office gross for opening weekend was an estimated $32.1 million. Total gross for that weekend was $62.7 million. The total lifetime gross of the film as of 17th September 2008 stands at $163.3 million.

Foreign releases

In France and the French-speaking part of Belgium, it was released under the name Phénomènes (Phenomena) on June 11, 2008 while in the province of Quebec in Canada, it is titled L'évènement (The Event). In Spain, the film is known as El Incidente (The Incident). In most Latin-American countries, it is known as El Fin de los Tiempos (The End of Times). In Italy, it is known as E venne il giorno (The Day Has Come), in Hungary the title is Az esemény (The Event). In Bulgaria the title is Явлението (The Event). In Turkey it is Mistik Olay (The Mystic Event). In Russia the film got the title Явление (The Phenomenon). In Germany and Sweden the original title was kept.

Home Media

The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on October 7th, 2008.

External links

• Official site
• The Happening at IMDb
• The Happening at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Happening at Metacritic
• The Happening at Box Office Mojo
• The Happening at AllMovie
• Script Review of The Green Effect, 01/07/07 draft by LatinoReview.com