Something Lethal Lurks in the Rustling Trees
The knives had been out and sharpened long before M. Night Shyamalan’s latest movie, “The Happening,” opened on Friday. A fine craftsman with aspirations to the canon, this would-be auteur has, in the last few years, experienced a sensational fall from critical and commercial grace, partly through his own doing — by making bad movies and then, even after those movies failed, by continuing to feed his ego publicly — and partly through the entertainment media that, once they smell weakness, will always bite the hand they once slathered in drool.
The signal-to-noise ratio has become so lopsided when it comes to Mr. Shyamalan that “The Happening” was marked for failure even before it had a chance to fail — or succeed. Its worth as a cultural and aesthetic object had been rendered moot, never mind that it turns out to be a divertingly goofy thriller with an animistic bent, moments of shivery and twitchy suspense and a solid lead performance from Mark Wahlberg. Much like Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix in “Signs,” which this film resembles in mood, effectiveness and flaws, Mr. Wahlberg fits into the Shyamalan universe comfortably. He rides the spooky stuff with as much ease as he does the jokes, the manufactured sincerity and cornball messages.
I won’t say too much about the gimmick that Mr. Shyamalan has come up with this time around, only that it’s funny, dark and weird and involves some nasty payback from the natural world. The story opens on a bustlingly bright New York day with two women sharing a bench in Central Park. One hears something, the other doesn’t, and before you know it, one benchwarmer has slipped a hair stick out of her do and into her own neck. The blood continues to trickle, but soon runs into the streets as men and women across the city commit similarly inexplicable acts of self-annihilation, with bullets to the head or, in a queasy, presumably intentional visual echo of Sept. 11, plunges from on high.
This is the first R-rated feature from Mr. Shyamalan, who’s left the PG-13 world behind presumably to entice that much-coveted demographic, the young male bloodsucker. Going graphic has neither hurt nor harmed him, though from all the inventive ways he’s found to do away with characters, it’s hard not to wonder if he’s not extracting symbolic revenge on the fickle moviegoing public. Whatever the case, the opening’s body count works to his foundational purposes, creating an uneasy, unsettled atmosphere. Mr. Shyamalan’s words consistently fail him, as they have in the past. But working again with the cinematographer Tak Fujimoto (a longtime shooter for Jonathan Demme), he creates images — bodies falling, trees rustling — that at their most potent speak louder and more eloquently than those words.
As the suicides rage like the plague, Mr. Wahlberg’s Elliot, a Philadelphia high-school science teacher, heads out of town on a train with his wife, Alma (an oddly miscast, loony-looking Zooey Deschanel, working her big blue peepers like mad), and another teacher, Julian (John Leguizamo), who brings along his young daughter, Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez). The train conductors soon lose contact with the outside world, forcing passengers into the Pennsylvania backwoods. This allows Mr. Shyamalan to focus on his leads (and indulge in witless marital shtick); pick up a couple of crack scene stealers (Frank Collison and Betty Buckley); and frolic in the great outdoors with zippy cameras and special effects. Something wicked this way comes though, really, they’re already heeere.
Mr. Wahlberg’s earnest, committed presence anchors the story, giving it a sense of purpose (a reason to care). Unlike Ms. Deschanel, who looks mighty surprised to be in this movie or mighty alarmed, you hang on to Mr. Wahlberg, who smoothly navigates the broad, lurching comedy (notably a wonderfully eccentric and comic monologue) as well as the pockets of dread. Mr. Shyamalan’s bag of tricks is awfully familiar — the camera races forward, the characters stand locked in place, a child’s empty swing sways in the wind, eyes widen, mouths gape — but it’s time-tested and, with the right actors, effectual. There is, after all, real pleasure to be had from watching a magician pull even a mangy rabbit out of a battered top hat.
Mr. Shyamalan has come up with a doozy of a premise for “The Happening,” one that will appeal to the doomsday scenarist in every pessimist, so it’s a shame he doesn’t know what to do with it other than mow people down. One of his strengths, evident in his best film, “The Sixth Sense,” and even in misfires like “Lady in the Water,” is that he knows how to withhold enough information — goosing the quiet with well-timed boos and bangs — to keep you asking that crucial storytelling question: What happens next? But here, caught up in art-directing all this death, he forgets to set up the question from scene to scene. The movie unwinds like a series of ghastly tableaux vivants pasted together with sloppy domestic comedy.
By the time the story shifts to a town where people are hanging from trees in overly neat formation, the image of mass suicides has been drained of its shock, and a human calamity is revealed to be an aesthetic choice. Something is happening, all right, but Mr. Shyamalan, who certainly appears to enjoy playing God, doesn’t seem to care much. But what is happening, exactly? Is it the end of the world, a blip on the green screen, a Chernobyl rerun, Al Gore’s worst nightmare? Mr. Shyamalan tells us, more or less, letting the kitty out of the bag early. But here’s the thing about doomsday scenarios: They require an escape hatch or the weight of tragedy. Just knocking off the world because you’re mad at it isn’t enough.
“The Happening” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Bloody death.
THE HAPPENING
Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan; director of photography, Tak Fujimoto; edited by Conrad Buff; music by James Newton Howard; production designer, Jeannine Oppewall; produced by Mr. Shyamalan, Sam Mercer and Barry Mendel; released by 20th Century Fox. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes.
WITH: Mark Wahlberg (Elliot Moore), Zooey Deschanel (Alma Moore), John Leguizamo (Julian), Betty Buckley (Mrs. Jones), Frank Collison (Nursery Owner) and Ashlyn Sanchez (Jess).