Review: The Happening (Movie)
A Public Service Announcement regarding 'The Happening'
I saw this movie, figuring if I didn't see it tonight, I would pick up the entire plot by osmosis over the weekend and any big surprise plot elements would be spoiled.
**Contains detailed spoilers for the movie.**
The Happening... doesn't. Or at least it won't be happening any more now in theatres than it will be in several months when it shows up at the video store.
It's rambly and given the frequent death and end of the world stuff going on, it should have been tense as hell. It wasn't. Or at least not as much as it could have been. There was all of one jump moment for me, and that was a loud noise. There's some creative scenes of people offing themselves, but if you go to movies for that sort of moment, you will find them few and far between.
The acting: Hm. The kid was pretty believable, I think. The two main adults had quite a few "Sorry... what am I doing now?" out-of-character subtext moments that I'm inclined to blame the director for. Not that I'm a fan of either of the actors, it just seemed like they were acting in a state of confusion about what their characters were supposed to be doing and to me that says the director wasn't providing sufficient direction.
Short Recap: A teacher is pulled from environmentally significant science lesson about bees dying and told that school is being dismissed because of a "Happening" which authorities thing might be a terrorist attack. People are randomly commiting suicide. Effect is centered in progressively smaller and smaller population centers, starting in parks. People flee cities, effect starts happening in smaller towns. Theory is floated by kind of crackpot characters (sort of plant-worshipping couple that only eats hotdogs? I missed a bit there) that the plants have adapted to protect themselves from the walking environmental disaster that is mankind and are emitting something that's messing with people's heads. Protagonists flee with assorted eventual corpses in smaller and smaller groups, still operating on the plant-phermone theory. They come across an old lady (who's a bit on the freaky side) in the woods cut off from society. After some odd stuff with the old lady (during which I formulate the theory that it's not the plants, it's just people getting so depressed with how screwed the world is they suddenly decide to off themselves, and that by coming to the woman's place and informing her of events in the outside world, they've made her susceptible to it now, but whatever) the effect happens to her, and protagonists end up huddled together alone waiting to kill themselves... and then everything's back to normal. No big reveal, no real twist or surprise, just okay, it's over now. If the earlier parts of the movie had been as tense as they should have been, that might have worked. As it was it felt a bit "ho hum, here we are, waiting 'til the plants tell us to kill ourselves" to "ho hum, off to school you go, little niece". And then it starts again in another country. (Admittedly, the background people all freezing in place at the same time as the foreground person was cool.)
Death list, not in order, not complete: Multiple deaths by falling from building, single car collision with tree, wrist slashing, many many shootings, one kind of grimly cool (and probably intended to be thematically significant but I was too busy wondering where they'd got all the rope) scene where a bunch of people were hanging in trees, guy getting (very cheesily) ripped apart by caged lions, guy lying down in front of a ride-on lawnmower, woman ramming her head into the walls and windows of a house... Probably many I'm forgetting. Lot of mostly depressing death, not a whole lot of gore. Most of these seen in the promos.
What's 'Happening' really?: Suicide pollen, as theorized. Maybe. The plants want people dead so they stop messing up the environment, so they've adapted this nebulously explained phermone-something that makes people stop talking and then kill themselves. Or something. It's not concretely stated except by the character who has been noted previously as a possible nutbag, and implied in the "happening" starting in countries other than the US at the end in stereotypical "Leave it open for a sequel" horror movie style. That's what I got from it anyway, the soundtrack was very muddy.
I was snickering inappropriately through the latter half of the movie, with all the "The plants are out to get us" stuff, and the protagonist nervously talking to a potted plant that I believe turned out to be fake. Oh, also the wind that sprang up anytime they needed something to run from, or someone mentioned the plants. How would the plants cause a wind? That's the way it seemed sometimes anyway. "Uh oh. Humans are on to us, time to make wind. *whoosh*"
In the end it's a kind of soapboxy muddled environmental statement of some sort which probably doesn't even succeed in motivating anyone to take an action because the presentation is so darn ... meh.
Anyway, that's my opinion. I think I probably would have liked it okay as a one hour episode on something like the "Outer Limits" or "Fear Itself" or as a movie of the week (AKA something I didn't have to pay to see), but as the first movie theatre movie I've seen since last fall, it kind of sucked, and not in a fun 'go see it to mock it' way. A tepid, bland sort of suck which left me not liking it, but not caring enough to hate it. Just a very large meh.
Summary: Don't shell out to see this in a theatre; you will likely be disappointed.
I saw this movie, figuring if I didn't see it tonight, I would pick up the entire plot by osmosis over the weekend and any big surprise plot elements would be spoiled.
**Contains detailed spoilers for the movie.**
The Happening... doesn't. Or at least it won't be happening any more now in theatres than it will be in several months when it shows up at the video store.
It's rambly and given the frequent death and end of the world stuff going on, it should have been tense as hell. It wasn't. Or at least not as much as it could have been. There was all of one jump moment for me, and that was a loud noise. There's some creative scenes of people offing themselves, but if you go to movies for that sort of moment, you will find them few and far between.
The acting: Hm. The kid was pretty believable, I think. The two main adults had quite a few "Sorry... what am I doing now?" out-of-character subtext moments that I'm inclined to blame the director for. Not that I'm a fan of either of the actors, it just seemed like they were acting in a state of confusion about what their characters were supposed to be doing and to me that says the director wasn't providing sufficient direction.
Short Recap: A teacher is pulled from environmentally significant science lesson about bees dying and told that school is being dismissed because of a "Happening" which authorities thing might be a terrorist attack. People are randomly commiting suicide. Effect is centered in progressively smaller and smaller population centers, starting in parks. People flee cities, effect starts happening in smaller towns. Theory is floated by kind of crackpot characters (sort of plant-worshipping couple that only eats hotdogs? I missed a bit there) that the plants have adapted to protect themselves from the walking environmental disaster that is mankind and are emitting something that's messing with people's heads. Protagonists flee with assorted eventual corpses in smaller and smaller groups, still operating on the plant-phermone theory. They come across an old lady (who's a bit on the freaky side) in the woods cut off from society. After some odd stuff with the old lady (during which I formulate the theory that it's not the plants, it's just people getting so depressed with how screwed the world is they suddenly decide to off themselves, and that by coming to the woman's place and informing her of events in the outside world, they've made her susceptible to it now, but whatever) the effect happens to her, and protagonists end up huddled together alone waiting to kill themselves... and then everything's back to normal. No big reveal, no real twist or surprise, just okay, it's over now. If the earlier parts of the movie had been as tense as they should have been, that might have worked. As it was it felt a bit "ho hum, here we are, waiting 'til the plants tell us to kill ourselves" to "ho hum, off to school you go, little niece". And then it starts again in another country. (Admittedly, the background people all freezing in place at the same time as the foreground person was cool.)
Death list, not in order, not complete: Multiple deaths by falling from building, single car collision with tree, wrist slashing, many many shootings, one kind of grimly cool (and probably intended to be thematically significant but I was too busy wondering where they'd got all the rope) scene where a bunch of people were hanging in trees, guy getting (very cheesily) ripped apart by caged lions, guy lying down in front of a ride-on lawnmower, woman ramming her head into the walls and windows of a house... Probably many I'm forgetting. Lot of mostly depressing death, not a whole lot of gore. Most of these seen in the promos.
What's 'Happening' really?: Suicide pollen, as theorized. Maybe. The plants want people dead so they stop messing up the environment, so they've adapted this nebulously explained phermone-something that makes people stop talking and then kill themselves. Or something. It's not concretely stated except by the character who has been noted previously as a possible nutbag, and implied in the "happening" starting in countries other than the US at the end in stereotypical "Leave it open for a sequel" horror movie style. That's what I got from it anyway, the soundtrack was very muddy.
I was snickering inappropriately through the latter half of the movie, with all the "The plants are out to get us" stuff, and the protagonist nervously talking to a potted plant that I believe turned out to be fake. Oh, also the wind that sprang up anytime they needed something to run from, or someone mentioned the plants. How would the plants cause a wind? That's the way it seemed sometimes anyway. "Uh oh. Humans are on to us, time to make wind. *whoosh*"
In the end it's a kind of soapboxy muddled environmental statement of some sort which probably doesn't even succeed in motivating anyone to take an action because the presentation is so darn ... meh.
Anyway, that's my opinion. I think I probably would have liked it okay as a one hour episode on something like the "Outer Limits" or "Fear Itself" or as a movie of the week (AKA something I didn't have to pay to see), but as the first movie theatre movie I've seen since last fall, it kind of sucked, and not in a fun 'go see it to mock it' way. A tepid, bland sort of suck which left me not liking it, but not caring enough to hate it. Just a very large meh.
Summary: Don't shell out to see this in a theatre; you will likely be disappointed.