The Happening (2008)

Tagline: “We've
Sensed It. We've Seen The Signs. Now... It's Happening.” The smug
shit who wrote this tagline, referring to Shyamalan's films The Sixth
Sense and Signs, either needs kicking in the nuts or buying a beer. I
can't decide.
Premise: People
begin killing themselves for no reason. En masse. Turns out it's some
sort of plague, which isn't to give anything away I assure you.
Execution: I
first watched The
Happening on a DVD, projected onto my living room wall, when
I lived in New Cross, after splitting up with a girlfriend (I do a
lot of that). Funny how films stick in your memory with all these
other circumstantial details. I remember rather liking it, too, which
given its score of 5.0/10 on IMDb is not unlike me considering the
gruesome subject matter and my love of a bad film.
After
said plague hits and builders dive (a little unconvincingly, the CGI
has dated a bit) off the top of a building, people rush to get away
from this invisible enemy, which has to be a metaphor for something
clever, but I'm too tired to work it out. It's late on a Friday and
I'm stuffed with curry. It's either something clever, or they just
thought it's raining men was a directive, not a sassy song.
Mark
Wahlberg, who I'm going to out myself right now as a fan of, Zooey
Deschanel (ditto) and John Leguizamo's (ditto again, I'm starting to
see why I liked this first time around) characters head off on a kind
of let's not commit hari-kari today, eh, road trip. It's all chipper
and upbeat, as members of the public continue to randomly off
themselves in scenes I'd only before conjured up mentally during a
rush hour commute.
There's
a sort of love story, which feels a bit out of place, but some of the
scenes are genuinely inventive and a touch affecting. It's got a very
70's Sci-Fi vibe, unpredictable, not at all perfect but who wants
perfection in a film with this premise?
Bedsit
it? Depends hugely on your taste in films, if you like
risking things and the sound of what I've described above, then yeah
sure. It's better than most of the superhero dross. At least The
Happening is trying new things. Ten years ago. 7/10
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