Product Description

Stars:Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel
Item Type: DVD Movie
Item Rating: R
Street Date: 10/07/08
Wide Screen: yes
Director Cut: no
Special Edition: no
Language: ENGLISH
Foreign Film: noSubtitles: no
Dubbed: no
Full Frame: no
Re-Release: no
Packaging: Sleeve

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12597 in DVD
• Brand: Fox
• Released on: 2008-10-07
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, French, Spanish
• Dubbed in: French, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 1.20 pounds
• Running time: 91 minutes

Amazon.com
You'd expect the end of the world to be no day in the park, but in M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening, a day in the park is where the end begins. One otherwise peaceful summer morning, New Yorkers strolling in Central Park come to a halt in unison, then begin killing themselves by any means at hand. At a high-rise construction site a few blocks over, it's raining bodies as workers step off girders into space. And all the while, the city is so quiet you can hear the gentle breeze in the trees. That breeze carries a neurotoxin, and what or who put it there (terrorists?) is a question raised periodically as the film unfolds. But the question that really matters is how and whether anybody in the Middle Atlantic states is going to stay alive. The Happening is Shyamalan's best film since The Sixth Sense, partly because he avoids the kind of egregious misjudgment that derailed The Village and Lady in the Water, but mostly because the whole thing has been structured and imagined to keep faith with the point of view of regular, unheroic folks confronted with a mammoth crisis. Focal characters are a Philadelphia high-school science teacher (Mark Wahlberg, excellent), his wife (Zooey Deschanel) and math-teacher colleague (John Leguizamo), and the latter’s little girl (Ashlyn Sanchez). Instinct says get out of the cities and move west; most of the film takes place in the delicately picturesque Pennsylvania countryside, with menace hovering somewhere in the haze. There are no special effects (apart from a wind machine and some breakaway glass), but the movie manages to be deeply unsettling in the matter-of-factness of its storytelling. Especially effective is its feel for what we might call the surrealism of banality. One warning sign that someone has been infected by the neurotoxin is irrational or erratic speech and behavior, yet Shyamalan has a genius for dialogue that sounds normal and everyday as it's spoken, yet flies apart grenade-like a second later as its logic (or illogic) sinks in. Then there's Deschanel's eye-rolling dodginess about the messages some guy has been leaving on her cellphone. Or the fellow (Frank Collis) who addresses his greenhouse plants as though they were his children--has a stray toxic zephyr wafted his way, or is this just his idea of normal? --Richard T. Jameson

Beyond The Happening on DVD

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Stills from The Happening (Click for larger image)

Customer Reviews

Is it happening?
OK...Umm...Uh...OK, just stall words to keep me from getting started. OK, here goes.

First the negative: "The Happening" just is not happening as a successful film. Did M. Night really think a movie with the wind blowing trees and grasses would be frightening? Or that the addition of music as a character with the wind would be ominous enough? Perhaps it is with Mark Wahlberg that he expected the movie to be scary. After all, Wahlberg is noted for his intense acting and those serious facial contortions. One scene shows a side view of his face all screwed up. All I could think was how deeply creased his forehead would one day be! A scary movie should not allow me to think that!

However, one of the few really scary parts occurred when the greenhouse guy was in the scene. First, he tells us that plants respond to human voices (true, long-time studies have confirmed this) and that they can respond negatively as well--deep foreshadowing! After the close-up of his misaligned facial features, I fully expected this dude to be hit with neurotoxins and go beserk. Didn't happen. Red herring!

Another really scary part involved the old woman living in isolation, who revealed herself to be beserk without help of neurotoxins. Maybe that was M Night's point: Nature needs to help along the deletion of unsavory human beings, especially including Average Joe (the construction site jumpers--it is no telling what they have done to the plant world!!), but also the truly insane (the old woman who wisely chose to live in the safety of isolation).

I'm going to leave the last three months alone. I could tear into the problems there, too.

Now the positive: Some of these comments are just the reverse of my negative ones. For example, the addition of Wahlberg in the film was a plus because of his intensity. He pretty much makes the whole plant thing believable--well, almost believable. I was even convinced his and Alma's love stopped the neurotoxins. Actually, because of the mystery entwined throughout the story, there is no reason not to think their love stopped the toxins. In other scenes the galloping fear of toxins seemingly increased the plant rampage.

Overcast skies, wind and music, discordance between words and actions, palpable fear, Wahlberg's panic attack, the Hitchcock-like house and old woman--all lent themselves to an increasing sense of unease to dis-ease. The film does work in some ways.

I leave further arguments to others.

The Day the 'Night' Stood Still
American cities of the northeast are plagued by an apparent terrorist attack in which people become confused then suicidal - leaping off skyscrapers, shooting themselves, impaling themselves with hairpins. As high-school science teacher Elliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg) and his unhappy wife and colleague flee to the country, it becomes evident the threat is more likely environmental. Nature is fighting back, with plants releasing some kind of toxin to defend themselves against the human industrial onslaught...

M. Night Shyamalan executes on this charming premise with a deliberate eye to the sci-fi B-movie, both in style and theme, with lashings of gore, a cheesy score, and expository dialogue that at times sounds more like a textbook. Sadly, however, it doesn't entirely work. Shyamalan's no fool. He wouldn't make a B-movie without a specific intention. So what's going on here? Is the substance connected to the style? Does Shyamalan want us to go back to the 1950s? Is he trying to tell us that cities are bad? Is he echoing E. F. Schumacher's cry that "small is beautiful"? Or is this a response to misplaced moral hysteria around 9/11? Falling bodies around 9.00am on a New York Tuesday certainly stir the echoes. Is he saying there are bigger threats to worry about than a few ideologues in planes; that 9/11, though a tragic event for those involved, is ultimately a miniscule blip compared to our disastrous global environmental trajectory? Or is it simply a musing on the fragility of humankind and the paucity of our knowledge? He'd be right on all counts, of course. But his intention is never clear.

As an argument the film isn't very convincing, and as a piece of entertainment it's worse. Shyamalan's core skills as a writer-director seem to have deserted him - there is no suspense, no real drama, no trademark twist, not even any really nice shots (except the chilling iconic beauty of the falling workmen). It offers just a vague kind of discomfort that's regularly undermined by the near-comic suicide scenes. Shyamalan seems creatively paralysed himself. Still, the film's not entirely without merit. Its difference to standard summer fare makes it reasonably engaging for much of its short duration, and the wheels only really fall off when Moore and family let the power of love trump the power of self-preservation with a very convenient outcome.

I think Shyamalan's also a victim of his own success - expectations are incredibly high for anything he does. From a young, first-time writer-director, this might be seen as competent Hollywood fare with an eye to tradition. From Shyamalan, it's well below par. Wahlberg is probably the strongest element here. He's regularly undermined by appalling dialogue, but his earnestness is endearing. Knowing where he's come from, as an actor and a person, to see him playing this kind of character in this kind of movie is nice.

Terrible
This movie is a complete disappointment. There is no "twist" in the plot which would have made it a little interesting, like the previous Shyamalan films. Terrible acting which is probably a result from worse directing. Do not waste your time nor money on this film.