The Happening part 2; M Night Shymalan is scared of nature.

Post by Joe

If you think I spent enough time and energy trashing The Happening in my last post on the subject, well, then, YOU havn’t seen the movie yet.

Once again, this post contains SPOILERS of sorts.  So don’t read it if you still think you might be able to enjoy this movie on anything but an ironic level.

So a quick recap; the plot of The Happening is as follows (buckel your seatbelt): Fed up with mankinds wonton disregard for the environment, the trees get to talking, and apparently devise a plan.  The plan?  To evolve the ability to release a chemical which takes away the self-preservation instinct of anyone exposed to it.  This, of course, causes them to immediatly kill themselves in the most entertaining (read: bloody) way possible.  

Fuck You, Humanity!

 Mark Wahlberg, Zoey Deschanel, John Leguizamo and a handfull of throw away characters decide the best way to get away from the trees is to get out of the major city they live in (Philly) and head to the FUCKING WILDERNESS!  (To be fair, when they first leave the city, they don’t know its the trees.  But once they figure it out, they continue heading into the woods.) 

Anyway, more and more people drop off until its just Mark, Zoey, and some kid.  The situation is getting worse, and they decide they don’t want to live like this, so the just give up.  But guess what?  The trees stopped doing it about half an hour prior to that.  Why?  Who knows.  In the most anti-climactic ending since The Birds, (actually, its the same ending as The Birds but, you know, really shitty) everything just stops.

The film then spends about 15 minutes on two other “endings” just incase the first didn’t leave you pissed off enough.  While the final ending is the general horror movie foder of its ”its all happening again,” (Side note: If there was to be a sequal, Happening Again is the most likely title.  Also of note: A sequal to The Happening would be definative proof that the universe is in fact random horror, devoid of a just and loving God.) the second to last ending takes place three months in the future, and features a news broadcast discussing the event.  A sciencey looking gentelman is explaining to the show’s host and audience what “we now know” about what happened. 

Fuck You, Audience!

 Scientists have, he explains, found traces of this mystery neurotoxin in several common plant species.  Why is it only showing up now?  Well, the plants had to evolve a defense, silly.  A defense against us and our pollutin’ ways.

Lets step back for a moment.  According to M Night Shymalan’s last few films, the following is true of our natural world:  Water melts aliens (Signs), there are wolves made out of grass (Lady in the Water), and trees poison you because they feel like it (The Happening).  I think it’s safe to assume M Night Shymalan’s next film will be about how the air is out to get us.  This is because M. Night Shymalan thinks that natures is fucking scary shit. 

Above: Scary shit

Here is the problem (A problem) Nothing can CHOSE to evolve.  Regardless of how self aware they are.  Evolution happens as a result of random defects which prove useful, and thus propogate through successive generations.  Frogs didn’t evolve webbed feet because they seemed useful.  They evolved them because some ancient frog was born with extra skin between their toes, and it helped them swim/survives/reproduce.  See, not only do animals have no control over these changes (which happen over several generations, btw) but they have to have some kind of compairitve advantage to others members of the species.  It has to help them survive to reproduce.  Thats called Natural Selection.  Darwin came up with that 200 years ago.   So even if this chemical did develope over generations, the fact that they NEVER ONCE used it means that it couldn’t have given them a compairative advantage.

Fuck You, Darwin!

Secondly, and this is what really gets me, IF a tree knew it had to kill people for some reason, and IF it had the ability it essentially will itself super powers, then why the needlessly complicated “neurotoxin that removes humans instinct for self preservation so that they committ suicied” method.  Wanna know what some plants already have that also kills people?  POISON.  Yeah, poison. 

So even if the trees could choose to evolve and kill people, why not just simple poison?  Why some far fetched neurotoxin that makes people commit bloody suicide?  Why did the trees have to be dicks about it?  Seriously?

Fuck You Sideways, Humanity!

But overall, the real reason I hate this movie has nothing to do with the terrible plot, half-assed directing, or outright contempt for the laws of nature.  Its the ham fisted approach to environmentalism.  Like Leo DiCaprio’s overzelous 11th Hour, or Sheryl Crows recomendation to limit toilet paper use, they take an otherwise worthy cause and dump a big bucket of hypocritical crazy all over it.  The trees are going to take up arms against us?  Seriously?  THATS your argument against bad environmental policy?  Not famine, drought, disease?  Not mass extinction, flooding*, or extreme weather?  Not cancer?  Not birth defects?  Of the dozens of legitimate reasons, large and small, to protect the earth, you come up with trees that have superpowers? 

You might as well have dropped your pants, bent over in front of Rush Limbaugh, and offered him an oxycontin if he could make his dick come out your throat.  This is exactly the kind of over-reaching, alarmist propaganda that anti-environmentalists love.  Namely, the kind they can refute.  All they have to do is convince the public that trees wont develope X-men-like abilities as a result of polution (shouldn’t be TOO hard), and then its a simple connect-the-dots before they get to ‘global warming isn’t real’ country.

 

Look, M, I appreciate what your trying to do.  I really do.  The American public has grown appathetic, and it takes a lot to get their attention.  So I understand why you feel the need to exagerate about these issues.  But you really don’t have to, they are troubling enough.  In the end, your only hurting the cause.  If you, and the rest of Hollywood, would just stop producing so much foder for the global warming deniers, they would be left with little to argue against.  If you want to make a difference, then lead by example.  Recycle.  Drive a fuel efficent vehicle (limos don’t count).  Skip the private plane.  Buy organic, buy local.  Sell the mansion, and buy a normal house.  Do some research and use some common sense (if you’ve ever bought eco-friendly bottled water, your an idiot.) And shut up about it.  Actions speak much louder than words.  And if thats too much to ask, then I have one thing to say:

Fuck You, Hollywood!

Check it to wreck it.