Posted: 06/22/08by Laura Tucker
I sat there while watching The Happening in the theater thinking how far horror flicks have come. We don't have a mama's boy sneaking up on someone in the shower, don't have the isolated caretaker of a hotel striking out against his family and axing through a door, and we don't have a once-institutionalized boy grown up to be a man whacking everyone every Halloween. We just don't seem to have these singular enemies anymore. Everything seems to happen on a much larger scale. True, Alfred Hitchcock had a whole flock of birds out destroying a whole town, but everything seems so much larger now.In The Happening, the horror they are faced with is indeed "an event" as they keep reminding us. Yet, it seemed to follow the basic format of what a good horror flick should be, and when I say a good horror flick, I mean those that sufficiently scare you and show the carnage left behind, but don't show people being ripped apart, sawed up, etc. Not slasher, but horror, where you watch through your hands over eyes not because you're grossed out, but because you're afraid of what's coming next.
The Happening features Mark Wahlberg as a science teacher, and as soon as we see him teaching his class, we know the enemy will be something scientific. We get even more clues listening to his lesson plan of the day, discussing Einstein's theory that if all bees disappeared off the face of the earth, then humankind would only have four years left. Asking his students for explanations of how this could happen, one suggests that it's an act of nature that we'll never fully understand.
Indeed, while Wahlberg is teaching his class in Philadelphia, Central Park is suffering through the beginning of "an event." And after it hits the park, it spreads to a few blocks away. The people all stop right where they're standing, become confused, then kill themselves in the worst ways imaginable, everything from policemen shooting themselves in the head to construction workers jumping to their deaths off scaffolding. Soon, similar events are happening in Boston and other larger towns in the northeastern United States.
People throughout the country begin to go on a full out panic, assuming this is the work of terrorists, escaping, although they don't know where they're going. Wahlberg makes his escape with his wife that everyone says he shouldn't trust (Zooey Deschanel), his fellow teacher at the high school (John Leguizamo), and the fellow teacher's young daughter (Ashlyn Sanchez). Leguizamo's wife is to join them later, and because this is following a typical horror flick format, we know as soon as he says that, that she'll never be heard from again.
This mysterious enemy begins spreading out from the larger populated areas and into smaller towns, and the train Wahlberg and his party were traveling on becomes stranded. Gathering together with others, and deciding to head west, people are separated from the larger main characters, wanting to go a separate way, and again, we know our horror movies, and know these people won't be seen from again.
The traveling party becomes smaller and smaller as everyone is being killed off, and just like all horror flicks, I got angry with the people here for doing stupid things, such as when women know suspect someone is in their house and they investigate alone, going downstairs, etc. Hearing that the enemy might be some mysterious illness that attacks people neurologically in three separate stages and is most likely airborne through plants, everyone drives around with their windows open and gets out of their cars wandering around. Why not ride it out inside the car with everything locked up? It's better than wandering aimlessly through empty fields.
There are also stray bits of humor strewn about The Happening, just to keep us not 100% scared all the time, such as Wahlberg trying to convince some people that he hasn't been affected by the mysterious illness yet, and wanting to prove he's still sane, he launches into a rousing chorus of The Doobie Brothers' Black Water.
The formula in The Happening was followed to the extent that once there were only a few people left, I knew I could wait to go to the bathroom, knowing I just had to wait it out fifteen to twenty mintues or so until the end. The very end, though, wasn't as scary as it should be, as normally films are wrapped up showing us it's not all okay yet, and giving us one last scare. The one last tidbit here wasn't anything to walk away from and think, "Uh-oh," and instead was just an, "Oh."
Having said all this, my 15-year-old son still left thoroughly scared. He did watch with his hands over his eyes nearly the entire time, and is now afraid to mow the lawn, slept with the light on last night, and forbade his father from bringing in the houseplants last night. I'll admit to covering my eyes in one part and jumping out of my seat during another, but I didn't leave terrified, and became more caught up during the film in trying to determine just what this mysterious illness was.
Laura Tucker is a freelance writer providing reviews of movies and television, among other things, at Viewpoints and Reality Shack, and operates a celebrity gossip blog, Troubled Hollywood. She is also an Associate Instructor and 1st dan black belt in tae kwon do with South Elgin Martial Arts.