After the critical drubbing and behind the scenes controversy that had plagued Lady In The Water, I was keen for M Night Shyamalan to be seen to get back to top form (something I'd never felt he'd left in the first place, to be honest). The Happening sounded like the movie to do that; a horror, thriller with an A-list cast and important ecological message. Alas it was not to be as The Happening is a complete cluster fuck. Well, nearly.
It looks, plays, talks and feels like an M Night Shyamalan movie. Just less so. Visually the long takes are still in place...just less of them. There's less of the clever, inconspicuous compositions that inhabit his best work. The cinematography is strangely flat while James Newton Howard's score is his least effective of all the Shyamalan collaborations.
On a story level, you can see the cogs working, but it never achieves the subtlety of Unbreakable or The Village. Once again there's a story of faith, in this case of a society that's lost it's faith in science (thanks to it's own greed and arrogance) and of a couple that's lost faith in each other. There's some interesting subtext about communication, or lack of it, as presented in Zooey Deshenal's emotion suppressing girlfriend, the near mute little girl and the cottage rooms you can talk though via the connecting pipe. It's an interesting statement about how we can live together (man and woman / man and nature) if we're prepared to pay attention and communicate.
With so much at work under the surface, why doesn't it work? Well, there's a couple of reasons. It lacks momentum and tension...and both are faults of Shyamalan as writer and director. You never really feel like the cast are about to die. You never really believe in the 'cause' of threat (the wind or the trees) even though you're aware a threat exists. As a director, he never solves the problem of making the trees, the breeze and the grass menacing...or even when he does (like a rip in the roof of John Legozamo's ride) he doesn't milk the tension for all it's worth. Maybe it's studio interference, after all this is a Fox movie. Maybe they told him to dumb down the script and direction after the alleged pretentiousness of Lady In The Water.
Perhaps. But that doesn't really explain the next issue. The legendary issue.
Mark Whalberg is shit. Overwhelmingly awful. He's like an amateur who, never having an acting lesson in his life, can only project two emotions (concerned and confused)...and then only doing that extremely badly. It's like a car crash to watch, and on my initial viewing, couldn't quite comprehend what Whalberg was doing. His entire performance is delivered with a gasping, nasally, high pitched whine. Together with his furrowed brow... it's just embarrassingly uncomfortable to watch. But in moment's where he's required to be sincere (see the scene where he convinces the old lady he's not a thief) Whalberg hilariously descends into unintentional farce. He's really, really bad (which is unexpected after his scene stealing in The Departed)
If it was just Whalberg I'd pin the blame directly on him (he's bad in any leading man role anyway...see Planet of the Apes or The Italian Job). But Zooey Deschenal looks like she's giving Marky Mark a run for his money too. Her delivery is stilted and wooden...far from the likable, quirky actress we've come to know and love. It's like she knows her character is supposed to be bottled up emotionally, but has been on the piss the night before, and hasn't bothered to learn how to act that particular personality trait. Again, amateurish....but ugly and annoyingly so.
So if it's both of them, did Shyamalan direct them to act in such a misjudged way.? Was he just not into the whole affair, so gave up on his cast too?
At least he presents a few of knockout scenes in the early stages of the film as the 'attacks' take hold. The best of these, as construction workers plummet from a high rise building is 'classic' Shyamalan (long steady takes, building tension and the feeling of goosebumps as a character slowly realises the horror of what they're witnessing). But they're few and far between and often outweighed by misjudged scenes of attempted humour (Whalberg talking to a plastic house plant should be chucklesom but it backfires as the plant obviously has more acting credibility than the movie star).
A frustrating movie; you can see the intent and the signature storytelling devices in play, yet it frequently fails to work at all. As for Whalberg, he ought to stick to supporting roles. For all our sakes.
