M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening: the critics will hate it

13 March 2008

John Howell

If I told you exactly what I discovered about M. Night Shyamalan’s upcoming supernatural thriller The Happening, you would understand the reason for this article’s title. A reviewer who read the shooting script at Gone Elsewhere claimed The Happening demonstrated that “M. Night had hit rock bottom,” adding that the movie features “the most moronic environmentalism in cinema history”.

He went on to say that the script contains numerous unintentional laugh out loud moments and that "The late night comedy guys are going to have a field day. It will be Christmas in July for the Shyamalan detractors of the world."

Unfortunately, after reading exactly what the movie was about in the script review, I'd have to agree. Given that M. Night Shyamalan wrote and directed what I think are two of the best science fiction and fantasy movies of the last decade, The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, this wasn’t what I was hoping for.

Starring Bruce Willis and Toni Collette,The Sixth Sense arguably featured the best twist in movie history, while the underrated Unbreakable pitted an indestructible Bruce Willis against a fragile Samuel L. Jackson in an expertly crafted comic book tale with an equally surprising ending.

The Happening stars Mark Wahlberg as a science teacher (Elliot Moore) with Zooey Deschanel as his estranged wife (Alma Moore) and John Leguizamo as Julian, Elliot’s close friend. Without revealing exactly what the plot is really about (there's a link to the script review at the end of the article if you want it) the movie tells the story of a family on the run from an apocalyptic crisis that threatens humanity. The threat appears to be an airborne virus that causes people to commit suicide. On the face of it, the world wide threat theme appears similar to what Shyamalan attempted in his third movie Signs.

Known for his stubbornness when it comes to making movies his own way, M. Night Shyamalan apparently took the unusual step of undertaking an extensive rewrite after meeting various studio heads. In the end, Shyamalan signed up with Fox. Fox Filmed Entertainment Chairman and CEO, Tom Rothman, was enthusiastic about the project. "Tom felt strongly about making this my first R rated picture," said Shyamalan. "We talked about trying to get the intensity that is present in Silence of the Lambs".

While it may seem premature to cast aspersions on a movie that has yet to make its way into the cinema, if you read the script review and discover "exactly" what the story is about, and given what seems to be the gradual reduction in M. Night Shyamalan’s directorial and scripting powers over time, it's not looking promising. Compared to his first two movies, Signs and theThe Village were mediocre at best, and his last release, The Lady in the Water, terrible. They lacked the polish and flair of the first two movies and seemed pale by comparison.

If you would like to read the script review, and in particular some of the plot details that produced such strong reactions in the script reviewer and myself, you can find it here, but remember there are major spoilers.

Let's hope this movie doesn’t demonstrate that M. Night Shyamalan has hit rock bottom, but the signs aren’t good.

Filmed in Philadelphia,The Happening has a budget of US$57 million and will be released on June 13, 2008.The first trailer from M Night Shyamalan’s The Happening is out and you can visit the official website here.

UPDATE!

You can now read SFFMedia's review of The Happening here

Related Articles

M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening: much worse than expecte...
The Happening is awful. The writer and director of the scien...