10 Terrible Movies That Wasted A Truly Brilliant Concept
2. The Happening
The Concept: People start killing themselves the world over - for no discernible reason. The Happening follows Elliot (Mark Wahlberg) and his family as they try and outrun this unusual, foreboding phenomenon.
Imagine knowing, at any second, that your body could decide to pick up that pen lying on the desk and ram it through your neck - it's a chilling thought, and a disturbingly simple setup for a horror movie.
Why The Movie Failed: Unfortunately, The Happening is anything but simple.
It took a solid idea and turned it into an annoyingly blunt message about the environment, and the dangers of abusing the world around us.
And this takes centre stage, rather than the gruesome kills and horror, which - because of the fact that this is what the trailers centred around - was the reason we all bought tickets. Shyamalan tried to preach when he should have tried to scare.
In fact, a lot of the death scenes take place offscreen (at one point, several people are being gunned down, but only the shots are heard), or are only implied. But Mark Wahlberg talking to a plant? Shyamalan spends a good chunk of time on that monstrosity!
The acting is terrible across the board (this is the movie that birthed memes like 'giant confused Mark Wahlberg face'), many characters behave stupidly, and the sort-of twist ending feels painfully tacked on, like Shyamalan wanted to give audiences one last kick and all he could think of was 'the evil plants are back!'
Why not just stick with the idea of unavoidable suicide and craft a tight thriller? Why the environmental message and unfocused script? Shyamalan's famous ego squandered a potential goldmine.