Shocktober 2024 - The Happening (2008)

“What if they're targeting us as threats? This part of the field may not have been set off. Something in this field could be releasing the chemical into the air when there's too many of us together. Let's just stay ahead of the wind!” – Elliot Moore

Horror is subjective. We all know that, right? What creeps one person out, the next might find laughable. Humour is pretty much the same. What reduces one person finds hysterically funny might offend another. The Happening is one of those films that you either love or you just hate. I’m very much in that first category. I find this movie irresistible. But yet, on its release sixteen years ago – it tanked at the box office, and film critics were pretty sneery as well. If it was released today, its reception might well be different because the world has moved on, and this eco-chiller written, produced and directed by M. Night Shyamalan might well be seen as eerily prophetic. Its sense of impending menace certainly is. The years and real-world events have in their own twisted way, been kind to it.

So, let’s get drilling down. How come I appear to be swimming against the tide so much on this one? Why is THIS practically my favourite Shyamalan movie? After all, the guy has released several really tremendous movies. But to me, this one stands out, and it all starts with the title sequence. Which comprises of the titles being show over footage of speeded up cloud formations. That caught my eye because it immediately took me back to the mood setting clouds on the titles of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers (1956). There’s something about it that’s both serene, as clouds are, and menacing. I’ve probably seen too many of those paranoia inducing sci-fi movies of the fifties, because it’s long been a thing of mine that when I look up at the sky, be it night or day, I tend to wonder what’s looking back down at me. Even in writing that sentence down, I’m taken back to two lines of dialogue from two of my most influential favourites from the fifties; “Watch the skies. Everywhere. Keep looking. Keep watching the skies” from The Thing from Another World (1951) and this;” sometimes you think that the wind gets in the wires, and hums, and listens and talks. Just like what we're hearing now” from It Came from Outer Space (1953). Both are pretty much regarded as “B” movies, and at its heart – I guess The Happening is one too.

We open on a view of Central Park in New York City. People going about their normal business, when suddenly – they stop. They stand still mostly, some start walking backward and talking nonsense – and they succumb to mass suicide for no apparent reason. Next, we’re at another NY location, a building site – where the construction workers start to simply walk off the building they’re working on, plummeting to their deaths.

We switch to Philadelphia, where high school science teacher Elliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg) is pulled out of his class to be told that the school is closing immediately due to a terrorist attack on New York. The spread of whatever is causing the mass suicides reaches Philly as the city is being evacuated. Elliot leaves with his wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel) and his best friend Julian (John Leguizamo) and Julian’s young daughter Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez) aboard a train with Julian’s wife set to follow on.

The train doesn’t get to its destination, as the ride is terminated in the middle of the countryside due to a total loss of contact with everybody.

So, what exactly IS going on? Is it a nerve gas released by a terrorist group, or a hostile nation?

Although we’re never told exactly what’s happening, it’s surmised by a plant nursery owner the Moores meet that it’s the plants. As he explains; “You know plants have the ability to target specific threats. Tobacco plants when attacked by heliothid caterpillars will send out a chemical attracting wasps to kill just those caterpillars. We don't know how plants obtain these abilities; they just evolve very rapidly.” He goes on; “Plants have the ability to communicate with other species of plants. Trees can communicate with bushes, and bushes with grass, and everything in between.” I’m by no means a scientist but within the parameters of the story being told here – isn’t that a chilling concept?

We’ve finally pushed our luck with nature so far, nature itself decides to teach the human race a lesson in who actually rules the planet – and it’s not us. The human race is reduced to running from an invisible killer that can strike at any time. It has no conscience; it can’t be reasoned with. It’s carried on the air, and as long as we breathe – we’re susceptible. We can’t avoid it. And we’ve all been through something similar during the world-wide pandemic of 2020. Covid-19 couldn’t be outrun, stay indoors – as long as air gets in your house, the virus can get in. And I remember very well how helpless we all felt back then. This movie foresaw that level of panic and paranoia twelve years before it happened. (Even now, I marvel at how quickly the world locked down, and how the skies cleared, the canals in Venice depolluted and so on. How the planet seemed to recover when the human race was made to be still and stop for a few weeks.) And this is what I mean when I said at the beginning that real-world events had given this movie a resonance it didn’t have at the time of its release.

I’ve always found random horror to be the most disturbing. Halloween (1978) was great when we thought that Michael Myers was targeting Laurie Strode due to some sixth supernatural sense that she was his sister. But when in the recent trilogy, that plot element was wiped out and it was established that there was nothing supernatural about it, Laurie was just a random victim chosen by Myers for no reason other than he noticed her – it becomes more chilling for its sheer lack of being personal. Being in a particular place at a particular time and being a target because of that is perhaps the most chilling horror concept of all.

With the (I guess) virus being released by the plants and being carried on the wind, anybody can be a target – until we see that there’s a malicious intelligence at work here. We see instances of larger groups being hit, while small groups are left alone – for a while. Eventually, the plants begin to release their toxin on smaller groups, even individuals. Nobody is safe.

The film doesn’t concentrate on the rapid breakdown of society, we pretty much stay with the Moores but after around 48 hours, the attacks stop – and the world goes back to normal for now. Did nature just fire a warning shot across the course we’re on? It hardly matters – we’re the human race, and as the film shows, three months down the line, we’ve pretty much forgotten what happened – just like in reality, we have with Covid, and we’re back to our foolish arrogance, convinced of our unshakeable dominion over the planet. Until in a park in Paris – it begins again.

Maybe not a Halloween movie in traditional sense, but a movie that seems retrospectively fitting, packing a punch in our brave new post lockdown world. No demons, monsters, killers, ghosts or ghouls – but a palpable sense of menace in every single frame. This is a movie to make you wary of a slight breeze in a meadow on a clear day, and if THAT’S not horrifying…