The Happening Movie Review

First, let me start by saying that I love M. Night Shyamalan. I think he is different and unique in a way that always allows me to take something from all his movies that I love. Even if they aren't my favorite movies of all time, I always leave them having enjoyed the movie and picked out lots of things that I liked.

I read about this movie and his thought process behind it before I went to see it. I always like to see where he was coming from. For me, there were several things mentioned on the front page of the website that stuck out to me as interesting and appealing: 1 - the idea of "have we gone too far as humans," what if nature develops a survival mechanism at the same time that we lose our survival mechanism; 2 - this loss of our survival mechanism, the idea of it is pretty terrifying, if we lose this innate desire to stay alive and instead go to the opposite extreme immediately; 3 - the way that the movie (and all of his movies really) focus on the relationship between people and the struggle as humans that we have to just maintain a balance with each other. I just liked the ideas behind everything and was interested in the way he would do it.

The movie did not disappoint me. I am a huge fan of Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel going back to The Basketball Diaries, Fear and The Big Hit for Wahlberg and Almost Famous and The Good Girl for Deschanel. I've been following both of them from the beginning. Although I have heard arguments that Mark Wahlberg cannot play the science teacher as well as he can play the bad ass, I still maintain that he was wonderful in this movie. He does tend to have an almost cheesy aura to him when he's playing the nice guy (see RockStar, Fear - the beginning of it, The Big Hit, I Heart Huckabees) but I still think he can pull off anything. And not just because he looks like that. As far as storyline and development of the movie goes, I thought it was fabulous. It's risky territory to make your bad guys "nature" or "the plants" but Shyamalan pulled it off in a genuine way where I was never thinking, "omg this is so ridiculous." And the movie is at its core about the way that we as humans have become a threat to the planet, but also about how we overcome and rise up in the midst of tragedy. One of my favorite scenes was where Alma (Deschanel) was watching Elliot and Jess (Wahlberg and Ashlyn Sanchez) mourn. I cried probably 5 times in this movie. But it was also a bad day for me, so maybe that's why I cried. haha

Either way, I highly recommend the movie, but go into it with an open mind.