The Gauntlet Presents: The Happening

 Normally, I would qualify true gauntlet movies as those which are of the lower-budget, less-publicized variety. However, it has been said, and I think everyone can affirm, that you can’t polish a turd. No matter how good your production values, some pieces of cinema are turds of such magnitude that they splosh like depth charges, forever soiling the rim of your TV with the brownest, nastiest, most feculent audiovisual poo-water imaginable. For the sake of completeness, I have such a movie for today’s gauntlet.

Title: The Happening

Genre: Shyamalania – a genre of contrived plot twists and tepid horror writing all its own.

Tag Line: We’ve sensed it. We’ve seen the signs. Now…it’s happening.

Filmed In: The great state of Pennsylvania.

Year of Release: 2008

Cast: Marky Mark ‘Boxer Briefs’ Wahlberg, Zooey ‘Anime Eyes’ Deschanel, John ‘The Violator’ Leguizamo, Betty ‘I was the gym teacher in Carrie’ Buckley, Alan ‘Ferris Bueller, you’re my hero’ Ruck

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Writer: M. Night Shyamalan

Producer: M. Night Shyamalan

Raging Egomaniac: M. Night Shyamalan

Running Time: 91 minutes

Plot: One morning people throughout the Northeastern United States start doing a dance that shall henceforth be forever known as the ‘Happening Hokey Pokey.’ You stop and stand still. Then you take a couple steps backward. Babble to yourself randomly (this is optional). Then you kill yourself with whatever’s handy. If nothing obvious comes to mind immediately, improvise with whatever elements are around…the side of a house (great for headbutting!), a shard of glass (for you eco-nerds, it counts as recycling!), or a handy caged lion (tapirs are not a recommended substitute) will do nicely. If you’re a high school science teacher like Mr. Wahlberg, stop flirting with your fifteen your old male students long enough to flee Philadelphia with your wife, your best friend and said friend’s six year old daughter for points west. On the way there, run from 2nd unit footage of trees swaying in evil winds. Randomly conjecture about what may be causing all this with fellow ignoramuses, and for the sake of convenience you all happen to be right – the trees are doing it! Oh those evil heartless trees are the ones making innocent people off themselves! We’ve befouled their air and water, and the trees are mad as hell, and they’re not going to take it anymore!

Breaking Point: Oh dear God, where do I begin? The WHOLE FILM stretches credulity so badly, I can’t believe my head didn’t cave in just from watching it. But the worst moment has to be the scene where Marky Mark talks to a houseplant, and tries to convince it not to kill him.
 
Similar Films:  The Day of the Triffids, The Trigger Effect, various Twilight Zone episodes

Pain Equivalency: Like killing yourself by using a potato peeler on your face. Hey…if I ever do a movie where people randomly start killing themselves, that’s totally going in there.

Review: For a movie called ‘The Happening,’ there isn’t one event, one character in the whole damned mess who feels important. As in, something happens to them, and it matters. If you’re watching a movie featuring mass suicides and it feels like nothing of consequence is going on, somebody really wasn’t doing their job.

The movie opens in Central Park. Two extras from the Sex and the City movie are reading on a bench when…something eerie happens. That something eerie…is the wind blowing. That’s the scariest thing that they could come up with for this movie…trees swaying in the breeze. You see it LOTS of times, and the music and editing lets you know that it’s evil wind coming from evil trees.  Unfortunately for one of SATC girls, she kept a knitting needle in her hair, which she abruptly uses to pierce her carotid. If only she’d worn a less fashionable scrunchie instead, she might still be alive…it’d be pretty hard to strangle yourself with one of those.

So we cut to Philadelphia, and Marky Mark is teaching his 10th grade science class. It’s hard to say WHAT he’s teaching them exactly, because he yammers on a bit about the mysterious honeybee die-off that occurred, then teases a 15-year old about his looks, ultimately reassuring him that he’ll always be handsome. When we later learn that Marky Mark and his wife are having marital difficulties, it’s not at all surprising since in this scene it’s not hard to imagine him performing other kinds of experiments with his teenage male students. Pretty boy has the one theory about the bee die-off that Marky Mark likes, that it’s an act of nature and we’ll never fully understand it. I wonder if that idea will pay off later.

The vice principal shows up, and after mocking her like one of the asswipes he teaches, Marky Mark goes to a special meeting held by the principal, played by none other than Ferris Bueller’s best bud, Cameron Frye. I don’t know which makes me sorrier for Cameron, the fact that he wrecked his asshole dad’s Ferrari, or the fact that this movie is the first time in ten years that I’ve seen him in anything.

So the meeting tells the teachers about the mass suicides in New York, and that the school is closing down in response and everyone is going home. After Cameron explains it I was half expecting all the teachers to leave, then Matthew Broderick would duck out from behind a curtain, look into camera, and say, ‘They bought it.’ But no, instead we get Marky Mark and John Leguizamo planning to leave Philly for Laguizamo’s mother’s house in Western Pennsylvania. Because nothing makes more sense in a global disaster then leaving in a half-assed hurry for a place over a hundred miles away on public transportation with no provisions whatsoever. And bringing Leguizamo’s timid six-year-old daughter into that situation is ever so much more commendable.

And despite the fact that terrorists may have concocted some evil suicide poison, Marky Mark is worried about his relationship with his wife Zooey Deschanel. Which he should be because…gasp…she had tiramisu with some guy from her office! Apparently, this guy thinks that having tiramisu entitles you to other things that are moist and delicious. He’s continually calling her on her cell phone, but the big surprise isn’t that we never see him…it’s that his character was supposed to be M. Night’s big cameo moment in the film! But even though M. Night doesn’t appear, he still gets a screen credit somehow! Is it because he was off camera speaking into a prop phone, telling Zooey how much he wanted to eat more tiramisu with her? How he was the best at eating tiramisu, how his tongue was so nimble and didn’t miss a dollop of the creamy filling, how he could go on and on eating tiramisu for an hour and a half and his jaw wouldn’t get tired? M. Night clearly thinks a lot of himself as a director…I wouldn’t be shocked if he considered himself a world-class tiramisu eater. Or at least a good enough one to make Zooey’s big blue eyes roll back in her head.

Before Marky Mark and Zooey flee to the train station, he makes sure to bring his mood ring. Which, believe it or not, turns out to be a recurring though unimportant plot point. The TV reports how in NY the world’s fastest autopsies were performed and indicate the people were poisoned. So if the sight of people jumping off buildings in groups hadn’t evoked 9/11 before, it should be obvious to even the most fundamentally challenged.

Marky Mark, Leguizamo and his kid and Zooey get the fuck out of Philly in the proverbial nick of time, because as their train pulls out of the station…the evil wind shows up. People stop and stand like they’re extras in an old Radiohead video before taking turns using a cop’s gun to blow their own brains out. But more importantly, Zooey is getting another call from M. Night’s tiramisu stalker while she rides the train! Because awkward unwanted romantic advances are much more interesting than mass suicide any day.

On the train, the news hits that Philly is now victim to the evil wind, and so is Boston. Does the evil wind figure that Connecticut and New Jersey already suck enough that most people already want to kill themselves?

So Marky Mark and the other passengers get stranded by the train crew in an East Bumblefuck style town. But he isn’t worried; he reasons ‘We’re in a small town. Nothing will happen to us here,’ thereby inviting God to dickslap him across the face with a cock the size of a sequoia. No one from the train can think of anything better to do than go to a diner, which is where we see the most epically stupid moment of the movie thus far (don’t worry, it will top itself before long). A cell phone video is apparently in circulation from the Philadelphia zoo of a keeper feeding himself to the lions. The scene encapsulates what is wrong with the video perfectly. Instead of being scared, or shocked, or grossed out, I was laughing. The footage, while undoubtedly better shot, looked like it could have been an unfortunate outtake from a Jackass movie; swap in Steve-O for the zookeeper and you’re there. The bonus features on the dvd include an extended cut of the lion attack, which was obviously trimmed to keep the audience from laughing themselves into hernias.

The people in the diner all freak out and decide to keep moving west as fast as they can. Rather than ride with Marky Mark, Leguizamo decides to go look for his wife who was in Princeton the last time she texted him. His daughter goes with Marky Mark and Zooey but you don’t need to see the next ten minutes to know that he’s on a one way trip. And to make us extra certain he even says ‘I’m gonna find you guys soon.’

So Marky Mark, Zooey and Leguizamo’s kid hitch a ride from a bearded guy who owns a plant nursery. Plant guy conveniently has a theory, because M. Night can’t think of a better way to give his characters a clue than to have someone explain things to them, no matter how contrived it sounds. Plant guy of course thinks it’s plants. Plant guy also digs hotdogs. ‘You know hotdogs get a bad rep? They got a cool shape. They got protein.’ I was half-hoping for the evil wind to get plant guy during the above dialogue so we could see him use a hotdog to kill himself somehow, ideally by inserting it into his windpipe in an act outwardly resembling fellatio.

But now it’s time for the obligatory check-in with Leguizamo. Of course all the people in Princeton have been hanging themselves from trees like human piñatas. And Leguizamo and the people in the jeep are screwed because a hole in the roof lets in the evil wind! The driver attempts to take all of them out but Leguizamo lives long enough to take some glass to his wrists instead. Silly Leguizamo, even dopey poetry majors know that you cut down the road, NOT across the street!

Meanwhile, plant guy has to stop his car because there may be bodies in the road ahead. Fortunately, his wife reminds him that he’s a peeping tom and they have binoculars in their car (seriously, I’m NOT joking, it’s in the dialogue!). And yes those are bodies. So they turn around but before they can go down the other nearby roads, people come down them telling them that people are offing themselves in those directions too.

So Marky Mark and the highest ranking military presence, a private in a humvee, try to formulate a strategy. Plant man theorizes that the plants are putting out the poison as an evolutionary defense against extinction caused by humans. He’s full of useful bits like that for no justifiable reason. Their solution, in a nutshell, is to go where there aren’t any people. So rather than take relatively airtight cars, including a humvee which can go offroad, everybody standing in the road starts marching across an empty field to see if they can find safety someplace deserted. Which won’t be deserted when their group of fifty fucking people gets there.

So when they’re all fleeing for their wives, Zooey decides it’s the perfect time to tell Marky Mark about her almost infidelity. About which even he doesn’t seem to give a steaming crap. But hey, it’s a good thing he didn’t let that slow down the pace for him and his smaller group, because the evil wind has caught up to plant guy, the private and a bunch of nameless collateral damage. The evil wind isn’t enough to warn plant man they’re in trouble, though, it takes the private shouting ‘My firearm is my friend!’ like Private Pyle in Full Metal Jacket to do that. Adios plant man, but don’t fret, for the rest of the movie Marky Mark will provide all the unjustified exposition from here on.

So Marky Mark and his group hear the people killing themselves and realize the evil wind is close. Then they can see it coming for them! AND THEN THEY FUCKING RUN FROM IT! Like a group of five year olds on a school playground, Marky Mark, his wife, the daughter, and two random fourteen year olds run through the fields trying to outrace the wind. Boy they must have felt silly for leaving THEIR WORKING FUCKING CARS BEHIND!!!!!!

So the group takes shelter in a model home for a housing development, but quickly realize they have to move on. At which point Marky Mark spots a houseplant sinisterly squatting in a corner. And he talks to it like it’s a jihadist wearing a suicide vest. ‘Please don’t kill us Mr. Plant, we’re just here to use the bathroom and then we’ll leave you in peace, I’m sorry for carving my initials into your great grandfather, I swear.’ Or words to that effect. The he realizes the tree is plastic, and despite being completely inorganic, it still proves to have a more interesting character arc than he does.

Marky Mark informs the group that the nature of events like these is that they will crest and stop-see, I told you the contrived plot point bullshit would start coming out of his mouth! Another large group in sight of Marky Mark and co. fall victim to the evil wind soon after they leave the house, resulting in our most novel and humorous suicide yet-one of the victims starts a riding mower, then lays down in front of it. At this point, the violence has progressed from Jackass to being on par with Itchy and Scratchy in terms of both conception and humor.

The two fourteen year olds are obviously Sex and the City fans, the way they question Marky Mark about his relationship. And speaking of unnecessary bullshit, Marky Mark decides to put Zooey’s tits in the wringer by telling her a story about an imaginary pharmacy girl he never flirted with. Yes, the world may be ending, but it’s still the perfect time for petty revenge by fucking with his wife’s head.

Then they arrive at a boarded up farmhouse inhabited by isolationists who won’t help and clearly do NOT want to be fucked with, so of course the two fourteen year old boys fuck with them. Hey, Marky Mark and Zooey are about as far from parental authority as you can get, so calling strangers ‘bitch’ and ‘pussy’ is the least they could be doing. I’m surprised they weren’t doing bumps of crank off each others’ ass cracks. Marky Mark meanwhile acts like a pussified bitch and tries to prove how normal he is to the hostile people inside by singing ‘Old Black Water’ (again, I’m NOT making this shit up, it actually happens!). But before the Doobie Brothers’ lyrics can work any magic, the fourteen year olds push their luck too far and get shohtgunned off the front porch. Time to run again, but at least it’s from something FUCKING TANGIBLE this time.

At this time the action gets interrupted for some exposition that Marky Mark can’t possibly provide, so it comes from a TV network anchor, whose dialogue we hear over shots of old ladies wearing gas masks, families huddled together, survivalists getting ready for Armageddon by loading up guns, and scenes of general assholishness. The helpful news anchor tells us that the event will likely intensify overnight and then abruptly cease around 9:30 the following morning. End of contrived plot bullshit interlude.

So Marky Mark Zooey and the kid find a farmhouse occupied by delightful old bat Betty Buckley, who doesn’t care at all for electricity, other people or modern conveniences like mail delivery. She moved to the middle of nowhere to get away from all those things. And after playing the stepmom on Eight Is Enough, who could blame her for never wanting to see another human being? If I had to look after eight miserable brats who weren’t mine I’d probably set up a mine field in my front yard. So when Marky Mark shows up on her porch and eyes her lemon drink suspiciously (her words! I don’t have to hyperbolize so much of this fucking review, thank you M. Night!) it’s her first human contact in a long while. So while she remembers the basics of social interaction, she’s a paranoid old bat who hates them all and thinks they’re going to murder her and steal some bullshit dusty old thing she has hidden away. She shows them the house, including the ‘speaking tube’ used to communicate with a nearby shed during the underground railroad days in a bit of foreshadowing more obvious than the ending of Titanic (oh yeah, if you haven’t seen that one, the boat sinks).

The next morning, after Marky Mark goes to talk to her and commits the unforgivable sin of finding the lifesize mannequin she keeps in her bed (it’s in the movie! I fucking swear!) she flips out on him and runs into her garden, at the precise moment the evil wind shows up. Now it’s going after individual people, so Marky Mark dare not go outside. So Betty Buckley starts headbutting the house to kill herself and bring the evil wind inside to get him, but he closes the door on it all scientific-like. But oh no, the voices of his wife and the little girl weren’t coming from the next room, they were coming from the speaking tube! They’re trapped now in the shed where he can’t get to them! Oh Horror! But he can’t bear to live without them, so he goes outside to face the evil wind and end it all! But Zooey can’t bear to live without him either, so she goes outside too! But sadly, it’s after 9:30 am, so the two people I was honestly hoping to see kill themselves in some freakishly horrible, disgusting, disfiguring manner get to live. This is the movie’s single greatest sin.

Then the movie cuts to three months later, and the three of them are living in Philadelphia which looks like NOTHING HAS FUCKING HAPPENED. The kid goes to school, people are walking around, and it looks like not enough people died to even make a sizable dent in the population! Zooey is of course pregnant, and I couldn’t possibly give a fuck that their personal lives are better now.

On the TV, a science guy confirms all of plant guy’s theories. As to why it started now, he says it was an act of nature and we’ll never understand it. Thank you M. Night for the obvious payoff to that obvious foreshadowing in the science class at the beginning. The scientists in the movie are still skeptical though, and won’t believe it until it happens somewhere else. Which leads us to…

Cue the evil wind blowing into Paris, France. Say au revoir, froggies, time to beat yourselves to death with copies of Sartre and loaves of crusty bread…