East Carolinian

Issue date: 6/18/08 Section: Features

Media Credit: staff photo

Spoiler alert folks: the film The Happening is about killer trees and plants, very similar to the recently released film, The Ruins.

The pre-school level message of the film is that if the human race continues to be cruel to nature…nature will eventually fight back. In case you miss this, despite having it hammered into your brain for two hours; do not despair--the film's characters spell it out for you throughout the whole film.

The script starts off strong with some truly horrific moments of violence. Unfortunately, once the nature of the film's antagonist becomes clear, things get funny very quickly and no amount of bloodshed can change that. Trying to understand the thought process of writer and director M. Night Shyamalan is akin to analyzing Jell-O. What keeps it wiggling and what binds it together?

As for the basis of the plot, one fall morning, people begin to exhibit strange behavior before inexplicably killing themselves. In Central Park, a woman reading a book suddenly stabs herself in the throat with a hairpin. Blocks away, workers on a construction site just casually walk off the iron skeleton of a skyscraper, plummeting to their deaths. Meanwhile, in a downtown Philadelphia apartment, Elliot (Mark Wahlberg) and Alma (Zooey Deschanel) are having an argument. After months of trying, Alma realizes that their marriage is no longer working and is preparing to leave Elliot. Elliot, however, feels that there is still hope that they can repair their relationship. Alma disagrees. As reports of strange deaths begin to come in from cities around the world, some believe that the mysterious deaths are part of a coordinated terrorist attack. The school where Elliot teaches science is dismissed and Elliott races home to collect Alma and meet his friend Julian (John Leguizamo) and his daughter Jessica at Philadelphia's 30th Street Station in order to head out to the presumed safety of the New Jersey countryside.

Soon after leaving Philadelphia, Elliot begins to realize that the deaths aren't the result of a terrorist attack, but are being caused by the release of a toxin by the surrounding plant life in an evolutionary attempt to protect themselves from the human race. Again, keep in mind: the film is about killer trees and killer plants.

However, the characters in this film somehow always end up surrounded by the nature that is trying to kill them.

Continued...

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