The Happening is Happening...

WARNING: May contain SPOILERS!
For environmentalists, environmental conservationists, The Happening is happening and it is a happening movie, I think lol. I watched The Happening in the evening.

The movie wasted no time in throwing us into the mystery. It started with people doing strange things in Central Park, New York; the school where the main character Elliot is teaching is cancelled due to apparent "terrorist attack"; construction workers jumping off building; people shooting themselves in the head,... Soon, you have Elliot, his wife, Alma, Elliot's teacher friend, Julian and his daughter, Jesse leaving on a train for safety. Things started going downhill when the train stopped in the middle of nowhere. News started coming in of similar strange occurrences in other states but contained to the northeast US. Julian entrusted his daughter, Jesse to the care of Elliot and Alma while he went to look for his wife. Elliot and company, and others left for the state line. People in the group started getting affected and killing themselves whenever a strange wind blew, rustling the trees, the bushes and the grass.... Elliot finally believed that the plants were killing people by releasing some kind of toxin and the toxin was triggered by the threat, ie. the big groups of people, the plants perceived. More things happened in between and people continued to die... Then, the mystery/ the crisis ended as suddenly as it appeared. Three months later, life was almost back to normal for Elliot, Alma and Jesse. A scientist on a talk show warned that the strange occurrence was a sign, like a red tide, that the planet is fighting back against Man who have been polluting the environment. The host said if what the scientist said was true, it should be happening in other places. Just then, we are shown France and it has started again.

My initial thought of the movie was I didn't like it because there is no twist. It is just a natural occurrence, a very simple event happening. I much preferred M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense which had drama, mystery, thriller, supernatural. The Happening is just very plain.

However, as I thought more about the movie, I realised that there was more to it. Although a plain movie, it has a powerful message for us, about us destroying our environment, our planet. If we don't change our ways now, maybe our planet might take matters into her own hands, like in the movie, and crush us like cockroaches. Who knows, our planet might already be fighting back. I think students might enjoy watching this movie as it would provoke them to think about environmental conservation. The Happening might engaged them more than the documentaries such as An Inconvenient Truth, and The 11th Hour, lol.

Verdict: I like The Happening for the thoughts it provoked.