The Happening

It's easy to give a bad score to an M. Night Shyamalan movie. Critics at large have found in him an excuse to make a big deal out of themselves by putting down him and his projects, because, good or bad, an M. Night Shyamalan movie still makes headlines. Somehow, the media has managed to turn Shyamalan into a giving tree of sorts; he puts serious time and effort into providing us with thought-provoking entertainment, and we take it in, decide it's not good enough, and scream for more, like greedy children on Christmas morning. 

These movies require, even beg for a deeper look into them. Shyamalan doesn't make movies to scare us, he makes scary movies to prove a point to us, to further explore human nature and how it may be applied or react given certain circumstances. Besides, what would the Mona Lisa be if nobody had pondered what that little enigmatic smirk meant? She might've faded into obscurity shortly after her completion, but somebody realized that there may be something more to her.

The Happening is a movie functioning on many levels at once. On one level, Shyamalan plays on the fear of terrorism, the threat du jour, showing how jumpy and exposed we still may be in our current state. Our reliance on the media for any information is on full display in this film. All news regarding developments in the events comes from either a television or radio. The Happening is also a study in human dynamics and interaction -- the relationships between humans, the relationship between humans and nature, and the relationship between nature's characters. Not only that, but it explores how we affect the world on even the most fundamental of levels, how one person's mood can make a difference, how just our energies can actually change what goes on around us. Even taking this movie at face value, it accomplishes what it says it will: suspense, gore, and mystery all run rampant throughout the 106 minute running time.

The plot-line meanders along at such a pace that the unfurling events feel perfectly spaced apart. The characters accurately portray (I'd imagine) how confused and clueless we'd actually be were an event such as this actually to happen. The Happening is very suspenseful, taking viewers through a number of heart-pounding scenes where tension rises until seemingly something catastrophic will happen, and sometimes does. Surprisingly, this movie has a good amount of humor in it. Shyamalan uses humor in a unique way that doesn't come across as cheesy, and somehow plays into the somber tone of the movie. One thing about this film that sets it apart from most of Shyamalan's previous efforts is the fact that in most scenes, there is some sort of musical mood-setter, whereas many of his other films are content to let you sit in silence, your imagination running wild with what is about to happen. This isn't necessarily negative, and in some cases probably more adequately presents how dire, traumatic, or dramatic the situation is. Overall, James Newton Howard has brought forth another award-worthy soundtrack for a Shyamalan movie.

Most movie-goers will probably write The Happening off as another M. Night Shyamalan summer flop, but I think we should give credit where credit is due. The man has a vision, and is at least trying to do something to change an industry that drastically needs it. Don't let someone who actually has something new to say, convoluted though it may be sometimes, become the Uwe Boll of his genre.

6/7