Being an M. Night Shyamalan movie, it’s hard to know how much of the plot I can reveal without giving the whole story away. Try describing The Sixth Sense without giving the ending away and not making the whole thing sound lame. Sure, The Happening isn’t like The Sixth Sense where the ending is the movie – in fact, some may find the ending of The Happening a little easy, convenient and perhaps a tad disappointing – but there are some things that should remain a surprise, otherwise, what’s the point of even going to see an M. Night film in the first place?
It all begins in New York’s Central Park where people mysteriously start killing themselves en masse for no apparent reason. Within minutes, instances of mass random suicides spread across the city. Media reports reveal that a neurotoxin has been released into the air causing the human survival mechanism in the brain to mis-fire and reverse its self-preservation function. Trippy stuff!
In Philadelphia, estranged couple Elliot (Mark Wahlberg) and Alma Moore (Zooey Deschanel), along with close friend, Julian (John Leguizamo) and his daughter, flee to what they hope is safer territory. But, with instances of mass suicides growing throughout the north east corner of the country, their out-bound train is halted at a small town in the middle of nowhere and the passengers are left to fend for themselves.
Not far into the film we discover the culprit of this chemical release. Naturally the media jumps on rumours of terrorist attacks, government chemical testing and so on, but based on nothing but gut instinct, a random creepy-looking small-town hick horticulturist and a badly acted high school science teacher (Wahlberg) discover what’s really going on.
It might be a bit sketchy on how these two guys get to know what’s happening, but it’s actually a believable enough scenario, and that’s what makes it so unnerving. Not since my first viewing of Hitchcock’s The Birds (which was ashamedly only a few years back) have I left a cinema and felt so unsettled.
The Happening works on many levels, if you really want it to. On the surface it’s an awesome thriller/suspense with splashes of well-placed horror and a slightly realistic sci-fi style premise thrown in the mix. It’s thought-provoking if you want it to be, neatly touching on environmental, sociological, and population issues in a way that’s not at all preach-y. But essentially, at its core, The Happening, like most of M. Night’s films, is a nicely crafted relationship drama where a couple on the brink of separation are brought together by a shared freakish experience that makes them realise what they really have between them.