The Happening

A suicide in a city park? Hey, we’re city kids, we’re used to that sort of thing. But entire waves of people stopping dead in their tracks and offing themselves would make even the most kohl-smeared goth devotee pause. Welcome to M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening.

In what will probably be his most vaguely-titled flick ever, the master of the last minute twist takes the forebodingly rich treatment style he’s used to great effect on his hits (The Sixth Sense, Signs) and flops (Unbreakable, Lady In The Water) and crafts his take on the time-honoured disaster movie: high school science teacher Elliot (Mark Wahlberg) and his wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel), with whom he has a strained relationship, try to make their way out of New York City when the mysterious suicides spark off panic amid suspicions of terrorists and chemical warfare. Along with them are Elliot’s best friend Julian (John Leguizamo, understated for once but also unfortunately underused) and his daughter Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez).

What follows is like one of the 50 little subplots in Deep Impact stretched out to an hour and a half. There’s no depiction of mass civilsation-levelling carnage, no ruined cities, just small groups of people running across fields getting spooked at … but that would be telling. Wahlberg and Deschanel are a bit too detached to either be panic-stricken or traumatized, and frankly, seeing Dirk Diggler pulling a mild-mannered Forrest Gump/Mr. Rogers hybrid is just wrong. Shyamalan also pulls the rug from under himself when he lets the cat out of the bag too early, and proceeds to hammer the plot point home incessantly for about 45 minutes til the movie’s conclusion. Now we know why he usually waits til his movie’s about five minutes away from the credits.

The Happening, like an episode of Seinfeld would like you to think, is a well-presented movie about nothing. It’s pretty, and pretty scary at times, but there’s no riveting resolution and therefore no clear sense that the protagonists prevailed against adversity. They just had to wait for the wind to die down.

Cast Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo Director M Night Shyamalan Runtime 91 mins Opens June 13

Text Azwan Mahzan