Bucket Movies Presents: The Happening
May 31st 2009 23:35
Ah M. Night Shyamalan, you've done it again!
Well look who it is Bucket Heads – it’s Mr. M. Night Shyamalan. What a HUGE surprise it is to see him here on this website! In case you haven’t realized now yes I am acting sarcastic… duh! If you’ve been following this website you’d know that this is Shyamalan’s THIRD movie that has been reviewed here. That takes a lot of effort to be here for a third time… unless you’re name is Uwe Boll then it just comes naturally.
Alright I know what you’re thinking “You like to pick on Shyamalan don’t you?” Well not really because this website is dedicated to movies that are known to be crap - and more specifically any movie that I find to be crap. I can’t help it if Shyamalan has made crap movie after crap movie. I actually used to like the movies this guy used to make. The Sixth Sense was well done and I enjoyed Unbreakable. Signs was kinda eh but it was doable… and that’s when Shyamalan started to tumble.
I did Lady in the Water – and that was really bad. I did The Village – and that was probably worse. I thought it couldn’t get anymore worse until I watched The Happening. Not only did Shyamalan write up a bad script, he appropriately found bad actors to go with it. It seems like he is finally learning how not to bury the careers of good actors in his movies and is now starting just bury the careers of actors who have no chance.
And who says you can’t teach a dog new tricks?
After his singing career spiraled into nothingness, Marky Mark now teaches music at his local school. Good on you Marky!
It’s a lovely day in Central Park and everyone is having a gay ol’ time – gay as in happy. Remember a time when the word “gay” didn’t have any homosexual connections to it? Ah the 1900’s were so innocent. Two chicks are reading books when they hear a scream. One of them notices people clawing at themselves from a distance and sees blood. By distance I mean like miles away. She has been eating her carrots just like Mr. Smith did in Shoot ‘Em Up. Everyone suddenly stops walking and are frozen in their spots. Even her friend has stopped moving and begins to act weird. She removes the long pin in her bun and stabs herself in the neck with it, with amazingly no effort at all.
Three blocks away there’s a bunch of guys at a construction building having a merrily gay ol’ time with one another. Again, I mean this in the non-homosexual way and I’m pretty sure you wanna picture this scene without the homo-implications as well. (Note: Homosexuals please don’t be offended I don’t have a problem with you at all. Rock on!). So something falls from the roof and it was one of their friends. They’re all upset, until another one of their friends falls off the roof as well and kills himself too. Then someone else does… and another… and another! I guess you could say it’s raining men huh? Huh? Ok… I’ll just move on.
In a high school there’s a science teacher called Elliot talking to his students about the sudden disappearance of bees. None of his students really gives a shit and neither do I. He asks students for their reasons and he shoots down every single one of their answers. Elliot starts picking on one of his good looking students who in return tells him that “it’s an act of nature no one will ever know about” – and that’s a pretty good answer coming out of a jock. Oh by the way take note: Shyamalan’s already spoiled the movie for everyone. Elliot tells him not to worry because he is going to be pretty forever, which he shouldn’t really be saying to a student of his especially with all the pedophilia going around these days. The Vice Principle comes to get Elliot, who notices all the teachers have been removed from the classes.
The Principle tells all the teachers there was a terrorist attack on Central Park. He runs through some symptoms: the first is confused speech, the second is physical disorientation and the last one is… fatal! Yeah he couldn’t have just said “Then you die” no he has to make it sound more dramatic than that. Elliot’s teacher friend Julian is talking to his panicking mother on the phone as the school gets closed down – like a school after finding out a student has swine flu! Guess I shouldn’t joke about that since my sister’s school got closed down… but who am I kidding? Elliot is talking to his wife Alma on the phone about evacuating the city.
The citizens of New York City are under attack by the powerful, ruthless and unforgiven terrorists known as... plants!
Elliot and Julian talk about Alma and it seems the two are having troubles. Julian hates Alma and says to Elliot she said to him he didn’t want to marry Elliot. Wow… I don’t know who the dick is: Alma for being a deceptive bitch or Julian being a dick of a friend and not telling Elliot. Alma gets a call for Joey and she doesn’t want to answer it, telling us that she is a dirty whore. Elliot comes home and she says they’re evacuating NYC. Someone on the news is crapping on about what the virus has been doing and it’s making people kill themselves. Alma gets another call from Joey and she hangs up on him.
Elliot meets up with his friend Julian at the train station who has his daughter Jess with him. On the news people are talking about it being a natural thing now. Julian says his wife is across talk so she’s going to get the next train. Alma arrives and Julian starts getting pissed off at her for no reason at all. Jesus the city is going through a terrorist attack and he is going to be a dick to her still? Alma thinks Elliot told Julian about their problems so she decides to sit in another cart. Elliot’s pissed off at Julian for opening his mouth – I agree that guy is a major cock block even if Alma is Elliot’s wife. I think we know who is going to be sleeping on the couch tonight!
Train takes off and heads to Philadelphia, but in Philadelphia the winds blow through the trees. Oh no… that’s not good. Everyone stops walking around, and a cop shoots himself in the head. Some guy gets out of his car, picks up the gun, walks a little and pops a cap in his head. Some woman comes up to the gun, picks it up, walks a little, then stops to buy some ice cream. Sorry, I mean she shoots herself in the head too. The train keeps going while the dirty cheating whore Alma is on the phone with Joey. Everyone on the train discovers that Philadelphia was attacked as well. Julian’s wife tells him that she is going to New Jersey.
Elliot goes to Alma and she says Boston got hit as well. Elliot acts like a clueless moron since he doesn’t know what’s going on as the train slows down and stops at a small town. Elliot joins a bunch of train drivers and they’re outside Pennsylvania. They say they’ve lost contact with everyone and they don’t know what’s going on. Jess is scared and Elliot joins them the group. They go to a crowded diner and Julian leaves his daughter with Elliot. He tries to cheer her up with a mood ring saying when it turns yellow it means she is going to laugh. He stares at her – in a non-pedo way – and then she cracks up laughing. A random woman in the bar shows everyone a video of someone inside a lion cage. He holds his arms out to them, and they rip them off like eating chicken off a bone. It looks so bad you gotta see this for yourself. It’s like those bad zombie movies where a zombie grabs a handful of skin and just peels it off like PlayDoh.
Today isn't a good idea to have a picnic in the park, Marky Mark. See that, I be freestylin' son!
On the news the government says it isn’t a terrorist attack and that the entire east coat of America is getting attacked. It went from large cities and now is spreading to small towns. The power goes out and everyone starts freaking out. Everyone starts getting in their cars and pisses off away from the place. Elliot begs someone to stop and take them but they drive off on them. Hell yeah that’s what I would do! Every man for himself! Someone stops and offers them a lift to their place and he looks like a hippy. Elliot calls Julian over, but Julian says he found someone going to where his wife is. He gives Jess to Elliot to look after but not to Alma, because he hates her still.
Elliot arrives at the hippy’s greenhouse. Hippy Man says they are going to pack hot dogs for the trip and is really excited about hot dog… a little too excited about them. Hippy Man says he knows what is causing the attack, and says it’s the plants releasing chemicals that react to human stimulus.
And there you have it people – in typical Shyamalan he just ruined the movie for everyone. I actually think this is a record it’s like about a quarter into the movie and he already spoiled it. So what now? Do you just turn it off and let it go? No you keep watching to see where this is going to go hoping something interesting is going to happen – like one of Shyamalan’s “awesome twists” that’s going to blow away everyone’s mind. Let’s continue.
Julian arrives in Princeton and they find everyone hanging from nooses on trees – kinda like Christmas tree decorations. A woman’s panicking in the car so Julian gives her a math riddle to solve to calm her down. They close all the windows and stuff so nothing gets in but there’s a hole in the roof and Julian starts acting weird. The car stops, then speeds up and slams into a tree. Julian sits down in the middle of the road, picks up a piece of glass and starts slashing away at his wrists. Good, now he can stop being a dick to poor Alma, poor dirty whore Alma.
Elliot’s in the car with the hippies, Alma and Jess when they see a bunch of dead people on the road. An army vehicle comes out and some private comes out saying the attacks are spreading. More cars are coming and they stop them from going into the danger zones. Elliot sees Alma missed a call from Joey. Elliot starts to think that Hippy Man is right about the plants. Hippy Man tells Elliot someone is talking to someone from Princeton. A woman is on the phone with her daughter who… wait for it, kills herself!
Run you three! Quickly before the wind catches up with you and tells the evil plants where you are!
Elliot’s sitting down and Jess walks up to him. She whispers something to him. She cries and she hugs him. Alma checks up on Jess and she is asleep. Hippy Man is eating hot dogs so he basically doesn’t give a shit anymore. He tells Alma that plants can talk to one another and help each other to defend themselves. Oh Jesus Christ could Shyamalan keeps ruining this movie anymore? The private is talking to Elliot about how it’s spreading from big towns to smaller communities. They decide to go to some unknown town and everyone walks on foot in two groups to lower the risks of getting attacked. Elliot can’t believe it and acts like a huge pussy.
Alma confesses to Elliot about who Joey is – and it turns out Alma had hardcore, dirty, no-holds-barred… dinner with Joey. Yeah that’s right, she didn’t cheat on Elliot she just had dinner with him, oh and dessert too but it was like a normal dessert not “dessert” if you know what I mean. The wind starts blowing and the group in front of them stops walking. The private starts doing the scene from “Full Metal Jacket” right before Private Pile blows himself away. Oh by the way if you haven’t seen Full Metal Jacket yet you should probably ignore that. Good movie though, really good f***ing movie.
So the private shoots himself in the head and Elliot’s small group hears it. They start hearing everyone killing themselves so they all start panicking and freaking out. Their group starts freaking out making Elliot act like a… you guessed it, pussy. Elliot begins a rant about something which leads to him figuring out the larger the group, the more likely the attack. His group breaks up into small groups as the deadly wind chases them! Yes I’d never thought I’d see the day people are running away from the big, bad wind. The wind stops so now Elliot, Alma and Jess are stuck with a black kid called Jared and a plump kid called Josh.
Elliot finds a truck and gets out a map. He turns the radio on and hears about how the attacks could be a result of the nuclear reactions being in the north east. The group goes into a house looking for food. Elliot finds sees a plant and start talking to it like an idiot, then realizes it’s a plastic plant. They find out that everything in the house is fake and it’s just a display home. Elliot talks to Josh about talks about something in Australia appearing they came out of nowhere after millions of years. Josh thinks it’s stupid. They see more people appear so they start running away from them. Elliot stops to see a guy starts up a big lawnmower so he can lie in front of it and die. This movie just keeps on getting more stupid by the minute.
The two kids are talking to Elliot about Alma and talk to him about relationships. Elliot gets pissed off. Alma finds a random radio out in the middle of nowhere – literally in the middle of nowhere. Alma says Jess needs a rest and some food. As they’re walking Elliot tells Alma that he saw a hot waitress at the chemist and he ordered cough syrup from her, even though he didn’t have a cough. He says he was just joking about it and Alma is happy. Wait, it’s ok for her to go out for dinner with this Joey guy but it’s not ok for Elliot to buy cough syrup? What a hypocritical bitch! The bitch even had dessert with the guy! DESSERT!!!
You know I heard using human fertilizer was good for the garden. It's meant to really bring out the green in your grass.
Elliot goes to a house to see who is home and Jess is on a swing. Someone is moving around inside so Elliot proves to them they are normal by singing to them. Yeah I’m hoping Elliot dies too at this point. That fails to get him inside so he starts crying and begging the person to let them in. Jared and Josh start getting aggressive at the guy, so he pulls out a shotgun and blows them both away. No seriously he pokes a gun out of the boards and BOOM, HEADSHOT!!! That begs the question: why would you have open spaces in your boards if the idea of boarding up your house it to keep the toxins from coming in?
Elliot, Alma and Jess run away run away while all of America is shitting itself. The group finds another house and he finds an old woman called Mrs. Jones sitting on a chair. She’s an old bitch who hates Elliot but invites them in for dinner. During dinner she tells them that the house had a tunnel that was used by slaves back in the day to escape from the south. Mrs. Jones then asks who is more honry out of the two (I’m serious) and Elliot says he is. They laugh, then Mrs. Jones slams poor Jess’ hand as she reaches for a cookie. What a f***ing bitch. She gives her one when she is ready then Elliot tells her what’s been happening. Mrs. Jones doesn’t give a shit, gets pissed off at all of them and then allows them to spend the night there. She really needs some f***ing help.
Elliot and Alma talk about stuff and Mrs. Jones thinks they’re going to kill her or steal stuff. Yup, the bitch needs some help. Elliot gets up in the morning and walks around. He can’t find Alma or Jess anywhere. He goes to Mrs. Jones’ room and finds a wooden doll on the bed. Mrs. Jones come in and goes apeshit at Elliot thinking he has come to kill her and steal her things. Elliot acts like a pussy as usual so Mrs. Jones heads outside. Elliot watches on as she starts acting crazy in the garden. The wind is blowing so Elliot shuts all the doors. He hears something banging on the walls then Mrs. Jones slams her head through the window. He walks around to all the windows doing this until she dies. I guess she isn’t going to get that help she needed after all. Poor Mrs. Jones.
Elliot locks himself in the kitchen and hears someone laughing. He finds the tunnel that leads into the slave hiding house. Elliot calls out to Alma through the tunnel and tells her to get in the shack with Jess. They steal themselves in the rooms. The two start talking about a bunch of boring crap – like when they first meet one another and stuff. They start crying about how they want to be with one another again if they’re going to die. Elliot finally decides not to be a pussy anymore and steps outside. The wind is still blowing but they all go out. Elliot and Alma hold hands… and nothing happens. They both go to the tunnel and sit down.
I know they only have minutes to live but... does Elliot really need to feel up the daughter of his dead best friend? I mean he has a perfectly fine looking wife...
Three months later everything is back to normal. No I didn’t miss anything - everything just some how magically went back to normal. Maybe they’ll explain it on the news? Nope, because no one knows what the f*** happened. Alma packs up Jess’ things for school and Elliot walks her to the bus. On the news they’re talking about how it only happened in the north east of America and nowhere else in the world. A crazy doctor thinks it was a warning from Mother Nature. Alma takes a pregnancy test and she’s pregnant! She goes outside to see Elliot and she’s happy, and he’s happy too! Everyone’s happy… but the people in France as the wind blows through a French park and everyone stops walking…
Final Thoughts.
What the hell was Shyamalan thinking when he decided to spoil the movie about a quarter of the way into it? I mean seriously hasn’t he figured out that by basically giving away what happens right off the bat that people are going to completely lose interest unless there’s a huge twist or something at the end? Oh by the way the movie didn’t have one so what the hell was the point of it?
Let’s break it down a little bit more ok? We have Elliot meet some random guy who says he thinks that the plants are the reason behind the toxic attacks on the cities. He says that it’s a defense thing they do to protect themselves. What happened? It turns out that it was the damn plants to begin with. Way to kill the suspense of the whole thing. Actually now that I think about it he may have done everyone a favour by loosing interest in the movie early on so they wouldn’t have to put up with the rest of it later on. Could you imagine how pissed off people would have been if in the end they revealed it was the plants? What a pay off that was.
It was completely stupid of Shyamalan to basically explain what the hell was going on right off the bat. The best example of a failed movie of his that did this was Lady in the Water. If you haven’t read the review on this website you should to get a better understanding of it, but basically as soon as the movie begins they explain EVERYTHING that is going to happen – and it happens exactly as it does. It’s pathetic and just dragged out to the end and didn’t do anything. The same happened here, only nothing was ever explained.
You can go back to the start of this movie when Elliot is talking to his students. One of them says sometimes random acts of nature happen that have no explanation. That’s Shyamalan’s way of slapping everyone in the slap right before they even know what’s going on. That’s basically the only way the “scientists” in the movie explained the events that happened – t’was just a random thing. Oh you have to love how everything just suddenly returns back to normal like nothing ever happened. Hell the streets and stuff are still heavily populated despite thousands of people killing themselves.
Let’s stop to take a look at how people were killing themselves ok? This toxin was meant to make people completely stupid and unintelligent. If that’s the case, how the hell were people managing to scale the side of buildings and leap off them? You can’t be that stupid to jump in a cage of lions and allow yourself to be eaten, or switch on a lawnmower and lay down in front of it. What the hell kind of defense toxin is that anyway? All the scenes where people were killing themselves looked so crap and unbelievable that I couldn’t believe Shyamalan would add something that dumb. Then again, he made this movie full stop so I guess I shouldn’t complain.
You know what makes this even worse? You can actually see why the plants were attacking everyone and you can actually explain why they were doing this. What makes it so bad is that the reasoning behind the attacks is completely pathetic. From all the information you receive throughout this movie, it can be concluded that the plants are attacking humans pissed off at them for ruining their planet. That’s right – the plants are pissed off we’re destroying the environment so they’re punishing us.
But that’s not all. It seems like the plants in the world can judge humanity and are only killing off the people who are angry. Elliot and Alma are saved from the toxins because they never once threaten anyone at all. They were too busy bitching and crying about how much they want to love one another as much as they used to. When people started showing signs of angry the plants killed them off. It’s like they were trying to purge all of the assholes in the world and just give us a bunch of tree-hugging hippies. What a load of crap that is. Why are directors these days making movies about the destruction of the environment? The second humans was put on this planet all they did was destroy the environment. Its part of life – get over it.
Is it just me or does Marky Mark's face never change in any scene that he is in?
Let’s not allow the bad script and storyline to overshadow the bad characters in the movie – practically Julian. Julian is a complete asshole! He hates Alma so much he doesn’t even want her touching his daughter. I guess his vengeful spirit is going to haunt her for adopting his daughter Jess in the end anyway. Seriously in a time of crisis I’d worry more about my daughter’s safety over a personal grudge against my best friend’s wife. The reasoning behind it was dumb. She had semi-cold feet on her wedding day it’s normal I’m sure everyone gets it right before the big moment.
Julian’s assholeness still couldn’t overshadow the pussy that was Elliot. Holy shit, I’ve never seen someone act like a completely scared moron in my life. Elliot just constantly babbled on about everything and whenever someone was in danger, he’d start babbling on even more. He never was pissed off or angry or happy or anything – just scared and confused. He never shouted at all because he was too busy f***ing crying. I don’t know what the hell people see in Mark Wahlberg. Sure he is an ok actor but holy shit, did he SUCK in this movie. The guy couldn’t have tried harder to make himself look anymore scared! All of his scenes look forced and really unnaturally, and made me hate the character of Elliot even more.
I’ve said this once and I’ll say it again, I still can’t believe M. Night Shyamalan made The Sixth Sense. The movie was great and then he gives us something like this? The movie was completely stupid and lead to absolutely nothing. Shyamalan sets up everything and explains everything right off the bat and it leads to a big pile of nothing. It really frustrated me sitting through that movie and not receiving a big pay off, unless you count Elliot knocking up Alma a big payoff. Plants that are attacking the aggressive people in the world? Give me a break. I would have been happier accepting the cause was an act of God or something.
If you want to watch this movie because you’re into seeing stupid deaths go ahead and see this – there are plenty. If you’re one of those fools who thinks everything movie after The Sixth Sense that M. Night Shyamalan has made should be in everyone’s Top 10 movies, then please watch this and then tell me this is a great movie. I’m going to rejoice when the second coming of Shyamalan happens should he make an awesome movie again. Until then I’ll probably be reviewing a lot more of his movies over the next few years. Until my next review and my next snipet Bucket Heads, take care of yourself and have a safe weekend. And remember to be nice when you’re in the park, you might make a plant sad.
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Comment by Damo
However in choice between something with lots of cool killings and this I'd go for the cool any day.
As for the tree, I think Shayman was following the whole neo pagan line that Gia (mother earth) is angry at being treated badly and wants to send us a message: Don't mess with Gia.
Comment by Wayne F
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