7. Plant Talk - The Happening
I won't try and defend
The Happening as anything but a generally poor and misjudged thriller that M. Night Shyamalan later tried to pass off as "the greatest B-movie ever made" (like he did that on
purpose), but there is a single moment in the writer/director's otherwise humourless flick about plants vs. humans where even he seems to realise what an insane movie he's set out to makeL The one where Mark Wahlberg, playing a school teacher here, starts talking to a plant like it's a dog, pleading with it not to kill him ("I just wanna talk in a very positive manner..."). Suddenly he realises that, oops, he's actually talking to a
plastic plant, and feels appropriately idiotic. It doesn't make the movie great, nor does it excuse the ultimately hokey concept that Shyamalan clings to here, but it's a flash of unexpected hilarity so ridiculous that you believe for just a second (and it
is just a second) that the director set out to make that B-movie after all.