The Happening

I mentioned yesterday that Jessica and I were going to see M. Knight Shyamalan's lastest film, The Happening. As mentioned, I have really enjoyed all of M's previous movies. They are all original ideas and usually have a big shocker at end. Bruce Willis is already dead, Samuel L Jackson is the main villian, etc. Some of the films are a bit 'out there' but if you can appreciate a good story, M knight tells some of the best. Anyway, The Happening probably won't go down as the greatest film ever, but I liked it. I can understand how some people may not like it because it requires some suspension of disbelief. It's a pretty intense film though. Some gore, some funniness, some action. I don't really want to go into what all happens, because Betsy wanted to see it, but it kind of makes you think about where our world is heading. The ending is a little anti-climactic, but all in all the movie was pretty intense. I also saw an X-Files movie trailer. I'm not sure how I feel about this after the X-Files have been on the shelf for so long. I'm sure I will see it, but will probably wait for NetFlix to send it to me. Oh and Zooey Deschanel has the most beautiful blue eyes. I give The Happening a B, but can see how others might not like it.

I guess I can go into the story a little. I had already figured out most of what was going to happen from the previews. Stop reading if you don't want to know.

OK. Basically, people living on the east coast start killing themselves due to a toxin in the air. If you've seen the previews, you see people jumping off roofs, stabbing themselves, jumping into lion's cages, etc. A lot of the deaths are pretty graphic and gross. The toxin first starts in large populace areas, so everyone starts leaving the cities and towns, but then it starts spreading. You follow Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel as they try to survive. They basically find evidence of the toxin wherever they try to go (seeing dead people), so they keep trying to evade it. It's a good thing that this movie was kind of short or else I would have gotten tired of seeing Mark and Zooey running all over the place seeing dead people. All in all The Happening is M Knight's 'save the planet' message. The toxin is occuring naturally from plants where people are, like Mother Nature warning us they she can kill us if we don't stop our distructive ways. Also, it shows how people are really kind of crappy to each other as everyone adopts a "save yourself" kind of attitude. The acting wasn't great, the ending was ho-hum, but the story and suspense made this movie worth the watch for me. No big shocker though, like in some of M's other films. You basically figure out where the toxin is coming from about half way through the movie.