Not Happening

I watched M Night Shyamalan’s The Happening tonight. I never like to speak poorly of something, so I will let one of the stars, Mark Wahlberg say it for me, as reported on the films Wikipedia page.

“Wahlberg offered his own opinion of The Happening in 2010, saying that Amy Adams, who was in consideration for the role of Alma Moore, had ‘dodged the bullet’ by not starring in the film. He said, ‘It was a really bad movie... F**k it. It is what it is... You can’t blame me for not wanting to try to play a science teacher. At least I wasn’t playing a cop or a crook.’”

Wikipedia goes on, “In 2019, Shyamalan said he takes some responsibility for the way the movie turned out: ‘I think it's a consistent kind of farce humor. You know, like The Blob. The campy, 1958 debut of actor Steve McQueen, featuring a mysterious, growing amoeba that takes over a small Pennsylvania town. The key to The Blob is that it just never takes itself that seriously. I think I was inconsistent. That's why they couldn't see it.’”

I like that honesty from Shyamalan. I think maybe the key difference was that the Blob was a blob. The only thing to know about it was that it was a blob, it was growing and if you didn’t run, it was going to get you. Simple. In The Happening, the source of the terror is left nebulous and airy, which gets the cast confused, panicked, suspicious and on the run, but leaves viewers and critics to speculate about deeper meanings or whatever. In a good B movie, you don’t want to have to think about things like that, you want to see how (or if) the people get out of the jam.

This kind of speculative, end-of-the-world movie feels like it can go the direction of Contagion or Melancholia to make people think. Or it can go the way of Cloverfield and Godzilla and let people have fun. Shyamalan tried to do both.