The Happening
Dir. M. Knight Shyamalan
Rated R, 2008
Terrorism or an act of nature? What has suddenly struck New York causing thousands of deaths and panic across the Northeast? People become disoriented, and construction workers and early morning pedestrians commit suicide en masse. Suddenly, New York City is the site of another earth shattering event. Elliot (Mark Wahlberg) and Julian (John Leguizamo) are school teachers in nearby Philadelphia who have been alerted that an event has just taken place in New York and the schools have been closed indefinitely.
Elliot and Julian decide to pick up their families and flee the city and wait out whatever is happening. Julian's wife misses the train and is expected to meet up with them later. But as the train heads away from the city, news rolls in by cell phone and the Web that the attack has hit Philadelphia. Within minutes, the conductors halt the train, having lost all contact with the outside world and unsure how to proceed. Elliot and his wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel) and Julian and his daughter Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez) are stuck in a small town in rural Pennsylvania. No trains, no buses, and few cars are available to ferry out the train's passengers and the town's residents.
The media is completely confused about what is going on, but the best guesses suggest that the attack zone is confined to the Northeast. But our story's heroes are smack dab in the middle of it with no way out. They have no choice but to move west on foot.
Julian's wife has been stuck in Princeton, New Jersey, and Julian leaves Jess with Elliot and Alma and catches a ride back to Princeton. Elliot and Alma soon lose contact with him, and can only assume that he fell victim to whatever is happening. There appears to be no place to hide from this disaster. No one is safe. And there may be no place to run.
When it becomes clear to the authorities and to many people that the events could not possibly be a terrorist attack, Elliot, who is a biology teacher, turns to science to help explain the events and to figure out a way to survive. But will he succeed? Is their a discernible explanation for this enormous disaster? Is it possible for humans to survive?
The Happening isn't what many fans of M. Knight Shyamalan's work have come to see as his typical film in that it offers no shocking plot twist that characterized his popular early filmmaking efforts. Why would a filmmaker want to be stuck in that style, always trying and failing at re-shooting some version of The Sixth Sense? But The Happening just may be one of his better productions with some serious questions about how we live our lives to ponder.
