The Happening

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Horror

SPOILER ALERT: The following review contains spoilers. If you have not watched this movie yet, it might be better for you not to proceed with this review.

= = = = = = = = = =

Count on M. Night Shyamalan to make the tragic appear terrifying. Very terrifying.

The plot is really simple. For some unknown reason, people in the Northeastern part of the United States begin killing themselves. As the "self-killing spree" spreads, people begin to move westwards in an effort to escape it. In the process it catches up with most of them, except of course the protagonist of the story, his love interest and a cute little child (bigger children were not spared.)

In the middle of the story, it is revealed that the culprit is a neurotoxin released by plants that simply turns off the human instinct to keep oneself alive. The theory was that plants have the ability to communicate among themselves for mutual protection, and somewhere along the way, they figured that human beings were threatening them. The neurotoxins first targeted large groups of people, but later on worked towards smaller groups, until finally even individuals were already being targeted.

While any other director would have used this plot for a medical fiction movie, M. Night Shyamalan succeeded in turning it into a horror movie. For sure, there is indeed something to fear about large-scale suicide. But it is a detached and rational fear - and not the terrifyingly creeping fear that is usually associated with people killing other people (and not people killing themselves.)

The scariest part for me was the scene where construction workers began leaping off the building. The facial expression of the ground floor crew member said it all. "Mother of God... what in God's name is happening?..." That's what I would say too if I saw people dropping from the sky to their deaths... as well as people having themselves get eaten - limb by limb - by zoo lions, hanging themselves en masse with electric cables, and shooting themselves in the head (among other things).

As always, I like the originality that Shyamalan brings into his movies. Sixth Sense and Unbreakable were masterfully original depictions of the overused themes of ghosts and super-powered beings, respectively. Now he brings his own version of the dark side of a natural epidemic. (Funny how this could be characterized as "dark" when almost 90% of the scenes occur in daytime. I suppose that's a mark of a good filmmaker - making the figurative overwhelm the literal.)

There are of course aspects that could have been improved. My main observation is the fact that the neurotoxin was only supposed to turn off the survival instinct of humanity, but it should not have made people overtly seek ways of killing themselves. The immediate symptom was consistent enough - people speaking incoherently and even walking a few steps backwards before stopping altogether in a blank stare. But one would expect people to die this way by simply being dangerously careless (or "carefree", in the most extreme usage of the word) by, say, stepping on the path of a moving vehicle, or stepping off the edge of a high-rise construction site.

The sight of all those incoherent people taking turns shooting themselves in the head using just one gun is too far-fetched, using the parameters set. The very act of taking turns is a mark of conscious thought - and this could not have been possible in a neurotoxin-induced trance. Other examples are a zookeeper urging lions to tear off his limbs, and a man who goes through all the trouble of starting a heavy-duty grass trimmer and waits a few seconds before lying in its path to be minced underneath by its blades.

Nevertheless, it was a better movie than the Incredible Hulk, which I viewed after this one. Worth watching if you are the type who wants a bit more substance in horror movies.