Loland Kapuchinski: Devil's Advocate

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A Defense of The Happening

You are all pedantic movie-hating babies. Especially you. I think you are too chicken to suspend your disbelief and open your heart for this corny creepout. You may be looking to knock the king of corny creepouts down a peg or two, but you'll have to wait for it. Marvin Night Shyamalan delivers the goods intact yet again. The Happening is moody and moony, but maintains a level of spooked-out fun as the characters wade through the difficulties of an arcane toxic event. The two protagonists have the small problems in their relationship rendered humorously insignificant by what's happening around them, and love gives them the strength to persevere.

Mark Wahlberg is not Gary Oldman or even Gary Burghoff, but he can definitely add a creaky quiver to his voice. He delivers in the topical intro scene as the high school science teacher who gives a damn and tries to get the kids involved. (It's also good to see the attempt to drop a little science in an increasingly ignorant Hollywood.) Later, Wahlberg's crying is believable. He's Marky Mark and he's here to move you.

People have to die in horror films, otherwise they would stop being being cool and start being as gay as your old grandma. There are expendable characters and Hispanic-American working actor John Leguizamo chose to play one of those roles. What's wrong with that, you tinhorn high-horse cultural fascists? Minorities should appear in films set in the modern United States.

Zooey Deschanel's comely looks are mentioned frequently as high points of the film, but this is sexist objectification. No one seemed to notice she looked really tense throughout the movie. Good acting has limited noticeability.

It doesn't need to be spelled out in boldface.
People need exposition more and more, but that's what kills movies for me. The people who write these things aren't smart enough to hack out realistic-sounding science riffs. Shyamalan gives multiple theories from unreliable sources and never nails it down for us 100%. In the denouement some talking head on a diegetic tv news program exposits "We'll never fully understand it." That's fine with me because it is a movie.

How to watch a movie.
I'm never the one pushing up my glasses, sucking the spit from the sides of my mouth, and asking "Doesn't it seem unlikely those dragons can fly with such massive bodies and such small wings?" because I know that a dragon's bones are hollow like birds' and their muscle fibers are made out of tubes of gas, and they make use of a lot of convection currents and the dragon's stomach functions like a hot air balloon and they are also incredible jumpers, which adds to the flight. Look, I've got a box of no-prizes gathering dust in the back hallway testifying to a personal commitment to being entertained in spite of illogic. I'm not a slacker. I'm doing the work. I'm actively imagining a world in which it can all take place, not railing against how an imaginary world differs from my own.

I liked it.
Marky sings a selection from Doobie Brothers' "Black Water" to convince some shotgun-wielding goober he's not zombified. The little girl they are saving is as cute as three baby bunnies. Marky and Zooey love each other. Nerd as hero. Trees as enemies? Through the confusion, love conquers all... or does it?! Anyway, I liked it.

(It's not without its faults.)
Ferinstance: There is this scene where a lady gets a video zapped to her phone of lions ripping a zookeeper's arms off and it's a real cheapie piece of work. I think they decided not to de-res it -- to make it look like a shaky, blocky realistic cellphone video -- because it's an Iphone product placement. And the bloody neurotoxin victim waddling sleepily around the lion enclosure looks a lot like Chris Elliot doing his Marlon Brando 'banana dance' to 'Alley Cat.'

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