The Happening
Danish Theatrical release poster
Directed by	M. Night Shyamalan
Produced by	Barry Mendel Sam Mercer M. Night Shyamalan
Written by	M. Night Shyamalan
Narrated by	Andrew Rhodes
Starring	Mark Wahlberg Zooey Deschanel John Leguizamo
Music by	James Newton Howard
Cinematography	Tak Fujimoto
Editing by	Conrad Buff
Distributed by	20th Century Fox (except India) UTV Software Communications
Release date(s)	June 11, 2008: Belgium, France June 13, 2008: United States, United Kingdom, India, Brazil
Running time	90 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	US $60 million
Gross revenue	Domestic $64,505,912 Foreign $98,834,810 Worldwide $163,340,722

The Happening is a 2008 American apocalyptic horror film written, co-produced and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. It stars Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel. Production began in August 2007 in Philadelphia.

[edit] Plot

In Central Park, New York City, people inexplicably begin committing mass suicide. First they become disoriented and motionless, before resorting to the most convenient means of killing themselves. Initially believed to be a bioterrorist attack, the epidemic quickly spreads across the northeastern United States.

Elliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg), a high school science teacher in Philadelphia, receives news of the epidemic at school and decides to leave the city by train with his estranged and well-nigh-unfaithful wife, Alma Moore (Zooey Deschanel). They are accompanied by his friend and fellow teacher Julian (John Leguizamo) and his eight-year-old daughter Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez). The train abruptly stops in the small town of Filbert, Pennsylvania, after the crew mysteriously loses radio contact with civilization. Suddenly unable to contact his wife via cellphone, Julian decides to leave his daughter with Elliot and Alma in order to travel to Princeton, New Jersey, to find her. It is by now clear that the epidemic is transmitted by air. Traveling in a Jeep, Julian and his fellow passengers fall victim to the epidemic soon after arriving in an already-hard-hit Princeton: the infected air filters through a hole in the vehicle's roof, compelling the driver first to bring it to a halt and then plunge it into a nearby tree. Only Julian appears to survive the crash, but, when he exits the car, apparently unharmed, and sits himself on the road, he proceeds to slit his wrists with a shard of glass.

Elliot, Alma and the now-fatherless Jess manage to hitch a ride with a botanist (Frank Collison) and his wife (Victoria Clark). The botanist believes that trees and plants are responsible, attacking people as a defense mechanism by releasing toxins into the air. Although initially skeptical, given his idiosyncrasies and apparent obsession with plant life, Alma and Elliot become increasingly enamored of this view. After driving for some time through the country, they find themselves at a desolate crossroads surrounded by infected towns. Other cars soon join them. A U.S. Army soldier suggests that they move away on foot from roads and populated centers, which he regards as obvious terrorist targets, to avoid being infected.

The survivors split into two groups and begin to travel across an open plain. The smaller group, in which Elliot, Alma and Jess find themselves, suddenly hears gunshots from the direction of the other group: they deduce correctly that the epidemic is upon them. An overwrought Elliot, striving to concentrate amidst the pandemonium, draws on his scientific creed to conclude that it is conveyed by an airborne neurotoxin exuded by grass and plants. He suspects that the larger the group of people the more likely it is to trigger the defense mechanism. With a menacing gale approaching, Elliot splits the group into smaller pockets, thus further isolating himself, Alma and Jess, although they are accompanied by two teenage boys, Josh (Spencer Breslin) and Jared (Robert Bailey, Jr.).

Elliot, looking for food, comes across an old house with survivors inside. He tries to communicate with them, but they are unwilling to open the doors. When the teenagers try aggressively to force entry, the denizens shoot them dead. Elliot, Alma and Jess, now completely on their own, continue to travel cross-country. They stumble upon the isolated house of one Mrs Jones (Betty Buckley), an elderly oddball who keeps no contact with the outside world and is, therefore, unaware of the happening. Although she permits the trio to sup with her and stay the night, she proves a harsh and paranoid host, constantly accusing them of conspiring to rob or murder her.

The following morning, while standing in her garden, impervious to Elliot's supplications, Mrs Jones becomes infected and commits suicide by smashing her head through the windows of the house. Terrified of sharing her fate, Elliot locks himself in the basement. He is separated from Alma and Jess, who are playing in the neighboring spring house. They are able to communicate, however, through an old speaking tube, with which Elliot warns them of the threat and has them shut the windows and doors. Conversing with his wife, Elliot expresses his love for her before deciding that, if he is to die, he would prefer to spend his remaining time with her. They all leave the safety of their buildings and embrace in the yard, surprised to find themselves unaffected by the neurotoxin. The outbreak seems to have abated as quickly as it began, just as a scientist predicted on a television show the previous day.

Three months later, Elliot and Alma have adjusted to their new life with Jess as their adopted daughter. On television, an expert interviewee, comparing the event to a red tide, warns that the epidemic may have only been a warning, like "the first spot of a rash". Elliot takes Jess to the bus stop for her first day of school while Alma stays at home, timing a pregnancy test, which turns out positive. When he returns, Alma embraces him with the news in front of their apartment.

In France, at the conclusion of the film, the pandemic appears to reoccur when people walking through a park suddenly cease to move as the wind rustles through the trees and the sky turns dark.

[edit] Cast

• Mark Wahlberg as Elliot Moore, a high school science teacher from the city of Philadelphia, who is married to Alma.
• Zooey Deschanel as Alma Moore, Elliot's estranged wife.
• John Leguizamo as Julian, a high school math teacher and Elliot's best friend.
• Ashlyn Sanchez as Jess, Julian's daughter.
• Spencer Breslin as Josh, a teenage boy who with his friend Jared joins up with Elliot, Alma, and Jess.
• Betty Buckley as Mrs. Jones, a woman who lives alone in an isolated house in rural Pennsylvania.
• Jeremy Strong as Private Auster, a Private First Class in the United States Army who fled from his base after finding all of the Soldiers there have killed themselves using barbed wire.
• M. Night Shyamalan is credited as "Joey", the man with whom Alma secretly meets, although the character does not appear on-screen.

[edit] Production

In January 2007, Shyamalan submitted a spec script entitled The Green Effect to various studios, but none expressed interest enough to purchase it. The director collected ideas and notes from meetings, returning home to Philadelphia to rewrite it, and finally 20th Century Fox greenlit the project.^[1] Now titled The Happening, the film was produced by Shyamalan and Barry Mendel and is the former's first R-rated project.^[2] Shyamalan compared the film to The Birds (1963) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).^[3]

Later in March, Wahlberg, with whom Shyamalan had been negotiating at the same time as his deal with Fox, was cast into the lead role of the $57 million project. Shyamalan had previously cast Wahlberg's brother Donnie in The Sixth Sense. An India-based company, UTV, co-financed fifty percent of the film's budget and distributed it in India, while Fox took care of other territories. Production began in August in Philadelphia.^[4] The release date was June 13, 2008, intentionally set for Friday the 13th to suit the thriller.^[4]

[edit] Critical reaction

The Happening has received mostly negative reviews from film critics.^[5] Rotten Tomatoes reported that only eighteen per cent, based on 198 reviews, gave positive appraisals.^[6] At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film has 34, based on 38 reviews.^[5]

Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter said the film lacked "cinematic intrigue and nail-biting tension" and that "the central menace [...] does not pan out as any kind of Friday night entertainment."^[7] Variety’s Justin Chang felt that it "covers territory already over-tilled by countless disaster epics and zombie movies, offering little in the way of suspense, visceral kicks or narrative vitality to warrant the retread."^[8] Mick LaSelle at San Francisco Chronicle felt that the film was entertaining but not scary. He commented, too, on Shyamalan's writing, opining that, "instead of letting his idea breathe and develop and see where it might go, he jumps all over it and prematurely shapes it into a story."^[9] Time's Richard Corliss saw the film as a "dispiriting indication that writer-director M. Night Shyamalan has lost the touch" ^[10] Chicago Tribune's Michael Phillips thought the film had a workable premise, but found the characters "gasbags or forgetful".^[11] Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal said that the film was a "woeful clunker of a paranoid thriller" and highlighted its "befuddling infelicities, insistent banalities, shambling pace and pervasive ineptitude".^[12]

Roger Ebert, of Chicago Sun-Times, awarding the movie 3 out of 4 stars, found it oddly touching: "It is no doubt too thoughtful for the summer action season, but I appreciate the quietly realistic way Shyamalan finds to tell a story about the possible death of man."^[13] The New York Times’s Manohla Dargis praised Wahlberg's lead performance, adding that the film "turns out to be a divertingly goofy thriller with an animistic bent, moments of shivery and twitchy suspense".^[14] Philipa Hawker of The Age gave it 3.5 out of 5 stars, commenting on "the mood of the film: a tantalising, sometimes frustrating parable about the menaces that human beings might face from unexpected quarters," drawing especial attention to "the sound of the breeze and the sight of it ruffling the trees or blowing across the grass - an image of tension that calls to mind Antonioni's Blowup."^[15]

[edit] Box office performance

On its opening day, The Happening grossed $13 million. Over the weekend, the total gross came in at $30,517,109 in 2,986 theaters in the United States and Canada, averaging to about $10,220 per venue, and ranking #3 at the box office, behind The Incredible Hulk and Kung Fu Panda.^[16] Foreign box office gross for opening weekend was an estimated $32.1 million.^[17] Total gross for that weekend was $62.7 million. The total lifetime gross of the film as of September 17, 2008 stands at $163.3 million.

[edit] Foreign releases

In France and the French-speaking part of Belgium, it was released under the name Phénomènes (Phenomena) on June 11, 2008 while in the province of Quebec in Canada, it is titled L'évènement (The Event). In Spain, the film is known as El Incidente (The Incident). In most Latin-American countries, it is known as El Fin de los Tiempos (The End of Times). In Italy, it is known as E venne il giorno (And Then Came The Day), while in Hungary the title is Az esemény (The Event). In Bulgaria the title is Явлението (The Event). In Turkey it is Mistik Olay (The Mystic Event). In Russia the film got the title Явление (The Phenomenon). In Israel the title is ביום שזה יקרה (The Day It Will Happen). In Germany and Sweden the original title was kept.

[edit] Home Media

The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on October 7, 2008. It appeared at the top of DVD / Home Video Rentals chart in its first week of release, beating out all other new releases. As of late November 2008, the DVD sales stand at $26,199,870.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Official site
• The Happening at the Internet Movie Database
• The Happening at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Happening at Metacritic

• The Happening at Box Office Mojo
• The Happening at Allmovie
• Script Review of The Green Effect, 01/07/07 draft by LatinoReview.com