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"The Happening" Review

by Jane Boursaw on June 14th, 2008

I’ve been a big fan of Mark Wahlberg’s in recent years. Loved him in Shooter, Invincible, The Departed, and We Own the Night. This movie? Not so much. His performance has all the depth of a piece of plywood; then again, he doesn’t have much to work with. I think director/writer/producer M. Night Shyamalan was aiming for some message about global warming and/or mankind running roughshod over the earth. Or something.

More after the jump…

The movie’s official Web site uses the words “lightning-paced,” “heart-pounding,” and “paranoid thriller.” While there ARE a few heart-pounding moments, they’re not in the vein of “I see dead people” (harking back to one of M. Night Shyamalan’s GOOD thrillers, The Sixth Sense), they were more in the vein of, “Look, there’s dead people over there.” Just not the same.

The story jumps right in with odd happenings in a New York City park. People start freezing up mid-stride, then inexplicably killing themselves by whatever means is handy, be it jumping off a building or picking up a gun. Officials are quick to point the finger at terrorists, but it just doesn’t make sense.

As the “happening” continues to spread throughout the Northeast, Philadelphia high school science teacher Elliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg) decides to flee the city with wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel). Though they’re in the midst of a marital crisis, they hit the road, first by train, then by car, along with Elliot’s math teacher friend Julian (John Leguizamo, whom I kept thinking was David Eigenberg, the guy who played Steve on Sex and the City) and his 8-year-old daughter Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez).

When Julian heads back back to Princeton, New Jersey, to look for his wife, Elliot and Alma continue on with Jess, along with a rag-tag bunch of people, including Josh (Spencer Breslin, who’s not a kid anymore!) and his buddy Jared (Robert Bailey, Jr.).

Elliot hopes they’ll be save in the farmlands of Pennsylvania. Alas, no such luck, especially when they meet up with creepy Mrs. Jones (Betty Buckley), alone at her farm.

What did I hate about this movie? Let me count the ways…

First, Wahlberg’s performance, which had all the emotion of a rock. Second, the plot had you wondering for about five minutes, and then you just wanted it to be over. Third, the deaths were horribly sensationalized, like the filmmakers sat around thinking up different ways to kill people off — or rather, have them kill themselves off. And fourth, the ending fizzled with all the horror of The Village, which is to say it was really stupid and not at all worth $7.50 and 92 minutes of my precious time.

Maybe you can check this out if you stumble across it on a cable channel at 2 a.m. some night. Otherwise, save your hard-earned cash.

Images: The Happening, Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp., 2008

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