Well, that happened, and maybe it’s still happening.
I watched this film because I really wanted to watch the Honest Trailer for it, and those things are never quite as funny if you haven’t seen the film. And this is a very poorly rated film indeed. It’s badly scripted, badly acted and the premise is, well, a little uncanny.
A wave of mass suicides are sweeping the North-Eastern USA. They’re being triggered by something, but it’s unknown if this is terrorists or what. They think it’s a chemical in the air. The mass suicides are quite unsettling and shown in a range of weird and wonderful ways. People stab themselves, shoot themselves, throw themselves off buildings or under mowers or hang themselves from trees. Most of this death feels confronting or jarring in some way.
Trying to survive this mess is a science teacher played by Mark Wahlberg, in one of his weirder performances, and his dead eyed wife played by Zooey Deschanel. They keep running further and further from population centres. They meet a hot-dog loving nursery-man who tells them the cause of the mayhem is plants releasing chemicals. And we find this out about halfway through and from then on all plants and gentle breezes are meant to be spooky.
Meant to be spooky. But they’re not. And there is one scene where Marky-Mark starts talking to a potted plant that is truly hilarious. It feels like a film that’s meant to be stupid but just doesn’t quite tip over into stupid-funny. It’s just a lot of breezes through grass and trees. A lot of Wahlberg pulling a shocked face and trying to science ideas. One of my favourite reviews of this described it as a film written and directed by aliens if they’d only spent a day observing humans.
It’s a bit like War of the Worlds but instead of alien attacks it was all trees and breezes.
J* gives it 2 stars.
But I really do think it’s worth an attempted watch… it is just so weird.
PS. Also enjoy this writers list of 46 things that happened in The Happening.
https://ludditerobot.com/other/commentary/the-happening/
Jstar Reviews 
So…maybe the plants from the Invasion of the Body Snatchers have mutated and they’ve already transformed dead-eye Deschanel? Honestly can’t remember if I’ve seen this. Shyamalan, so maybe? Because I think I’ve seen most of his movies. But…this movie just seems very strange in a bad way so maybe not.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ooh – I do like that idea – that the plants have already got to her. I thought I’d seen most Shylamans, but then realised I hadn’t.
LikeLike