DVD Review: The Happening

The Happening is a doomsday movie with an environmental twist. Normally doomsday movies have an enemy of aliens, nuclear holocaust, terrorists or some other disaster. This is an enemy of a different softs, one that noone would expect; plants!

At the beginning of the movie, Mark Wahlberg is a science teac her discussing the recent phenonom of bees missing. This foreshadows the movies plot. Plants in Northeast United States, Maine to Virginia start to release a neurotoxin that makes humans stop in their tracks and want to kill themselves! Some of these self mutilations are disturbing to say the least. Some of them I could have done without seeing (like the man laying down in front of a lawn mower). But the movie gets its point across; that we are all subject to nature and not everything in nature can be explained by science.

Mark Whalbergs character, his new wife and their friend's daughter try to get out of the 'infected' area throughout the movie. The infected area does not spread west of Ohio and seems to be contained. The plants eventually stop releasing the neurotoxin and life goes back to normal without the few million people that happened to kill themselves due to this outbreak. At the end of the movie the plants in France release the neurotoxin.

One of the odd things about the movie is people are trying to leave the affected area without any protection. At the start of the outbreak many people believe it is the cause of another terrorist attack. Soon some people start to figure it out that it is the plants and as the wind blows, the toxin spreads. But even if it were a terrorist attack, no one was wearing gas masks. No people were wearing even the cheapest home supply store particle mask. No one even had a bandana over their mouth. The only thing the actors did through the movie was to shut the windows. Also it was never said why the plants started to release the toxin. I guess we are just supposed to feel at the mercy to nature.