The Happening

The Happening

Dan: It's happening right here.

Sidey: It is all happening, Dan, you're right. Riggs, you mentioned, I think, probably when we were talking about Old. Yeah. That we had never done an M. Night Shyamalan movie.

Dan: That's right. Yeah,

Reegs: and we were inundated.

It was not just Jeff Kitchen, there was Julian and Sandra and Barbara and Debbie and

Dan: all the kitchens. Ian.

Reegs: Ian.

Sidey: Yep.

Reegs: They were all asking us to review.

Sidey: One of his... Picks are happening and I've never heard of it before.

I'm not a huge M. Night Shyamalan.

Dan: this is the guy who did the sixth Sense. Yeah. And unbreakable.

Sidey: hmm. And

Dan: Signs.

Sidey: Well, okay, do you want to know what the tag, the tagline for this film was?

Dan: yeah, go on.

Sidey: We've sensed it, we've seen the signs, now it's happening, which implies that somehow, apart from that just being terrible, those three films are then connected, wouldn't that imply?

Reegs: in a shared Shyamalan universe,

maybe.

Dan: Wow,

okay.

Sidey: okay. So the opening shot is quite a lot of clouds.

Dan: Yeah.

Reegs: Some clouds and they sort of, the score sort of swells and they menacingly turn a bit dark. Menacing clouds. Had you seriously not heard of this

Sidey: movie? No, man.

Reegs: no. Because this is quite infamous, I guess, as a, like, universally declared a complete piece of shit.

I mean, it's worth getting that out of the way,

Sidey: Right up

front,

Reegs: Universally declared by a lot

Sidey: of people. No, I hadn't heard anything about it, and when people started to appear in it, I was like, oh, right. Mark Wahlberg's in this, and then, oh, Zoe Deschanel's in this as well, and...

Dan: this as well. I was like that, yeah. Mark

Wahlberg's.

Sidey: heard of this? Well, I thought later on, but I guess it starts off with a couple of ladies sitting on a bench then, after our intro to The Clouds.

Reegs: That's right.

Sidey: That's right. There's a couple of ladies on a bench, and one of them hears some screaming off in the distance, and she says to her friend, did you hear that?

She said no. And then everyone just kind of freezes on the spot.

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: Or starts behaving really oddly, like walking backwards. And, and

Sidey: her friend, I think she was knitting.

Dan: And she had a, she had a hairpin. and

Sidey: Oh, that's right. It was a hairpin. and just stabs herself in the neck. Yeah.

Dan: Like, pushes it through calmly. Yeah. Just solidly, without any emotion or pain, it seems.

She just kind of did it. And people then, all around, are starting to kill themselves.

Reegs: next there are we're on a building site.

And there's some construction workers, and they're all sort of chatting, and then suddenly there's a horrible accident, a body comes tumbling

Dan: down. It's Dave. Dave's... Dave's gone and they, they kind of go

Sidey: leg is all mangled, and his, all his bones are broken, and the guy raiders didn't say, We've got a, you know, a massive accident, an incident we need to blah, blah, blah.

Reegs: There's no real attempt to, like, do

Sidey: Well you don't in those that you would have to wait for, you can't move someone in that.

Dan: it's bones that have broken out and they can even really call it in, they hear another thud behind them.

Sidey: And another, and another.

Dan: And it's like that lemmings, they're just coming off the,

Sidey: He looks up doesn't he, and he just sees them all throwing themselves off the top of this building site, and

Dan: like, planks of wood hanging over the building, like diving boards and people are just walking off them over the, the top and it's, yeah, they're, they're killing themselves. And this is happening. All over this sort of localized area.

It's

Sidey: It's around a park,

Dan: yeah. Yeah. There's and we're we in, is it Philadelphia? We're in here,

maybe

Reegs: Born and

Sidey: Yeah, I think so. And then it goes to Mark Warburg. He's a professor or just a teacher.

Reegs: He's the dodgiest science teacher you've

Sidey: But he's wearing a sweater vest. It makes him more believable.

Reegs: believable. But what makes him less believable is when he talks about scientific theory as just being theory and also when he wears a mood ring

Sidey: a mood ring later.

Reegs: yeah, and his acting, right, just from the get go is bizarre. He's doing this story about disappearing bees. Yeah, no bodies left without a trace and he's just trying to ask the the class what do they think and he asks

Sidey: they're not very engaged are they because he has to single people out and say, you know, come on, give me some answers and or some theories and maybe pollution or climate change.

And then The next guy he just fucking insults him and says well you might be good looking now But you're gonna be fucking ugly and have a big nose and blah blah blah and they all laugh and then that prompts the guy To answer like what kind of teaching

Reegs: says, you with the perfect face, but you don't

Sidey: Hey there you with the sad face.

Dan: up to my place.

Sidey: I wish they'd done that in the

Dan: Yeah, but they didn't. What they did do was he gave an answer that said not all things

Reegs: can be explained.

An act of nature will fully, will never fully understand. And as a science teacher, he's like, yeah, that's exactly the right answer. Which I love. And,

it's great because Wahlberg just looks perpetually confused during

Sidey: he probably was. I probably look the same. Yeah.

Reegs: And anyway in comes the principal to wait, he turns off the lights and says something like, here comes the dark Lord of the devil or something and like scampers behind the desk.

Really weird. And anyway, class is kind of dismissed because when he goes, he's taken out to where the other teachers are gathered with one of two succession cameos in this Alan Ruck tells them that. This terrorist event has has occurred in New York, and,

Dan: that's how it's being labelled at the moment.

There's a terrorist,

Reegs: do we get one of those, like, the movie is peppered with, like, news articles and

things showing you gory things. I don't know if we get one at this point where

Dan: This is just in, this is just in the hall, isn't it? No,

Sidey: it's, the next one is on the bus

Reegs: well, we'll get

Sidey: which is fucking incredible, but this one You

Reegs: the bit where we get it laid out, don't we? You go confused, you get confused speech, and disorientation, and then after that you commit suicide. So, this is the nerve toxin gas that's been released. That's what they're working on, the theory.

Dan: Yeah. And this is, there's, there's a pattern as you explained there, how they kind of go through these confused stages before committing suicide in all kinds of bizarre ways.

Sidey: The principal tells them to go home basically. The school is going to be shut and they'll have to, I don't know because this is pre COVID so there wasn't like all that to fall back on.

Go home, take your planners with you because we don't know when we'll, you know, we'll have to be ready to go as soon as this sort of blows over. And they're sent home and all the kids, everyone's in a little bit of panic but not, it's not full on.

Reegs: Yeah.

well

Dan: far enough away at this stage, but then you

Reegs: then we get another park though, don't we there's

a traffic jam, isn't there and Traffic cop. They're just having a it's again outside a park in Philadelphia and

Dan: You get the rustle of the wind, and a...

Sidey: Yeah.

Dan: And yeah, this

Reegs: He's behind you the cop it's a tree Yeah anyway, and the cop, yeah, so he suddenly shoots himself, I think, and then the guy gets out of his car in the traffic jam, picks up the gun, walks down the road, shoots himself, the woman picks up the gun. It's like, quite disturbing, actually, some of this,

Sidey: Those bits were actually, I thought, pretty good.

Walburg goes home to see Zooey Deschanel, who are in one of the least believable relationships of all time. And something's happened in the past that...

movie...

I think there's been a row about something. I couldn't figure out what they'd been rowing about. Maybe it was told, but I missed it. And so...

She says that we've been told to evacuate the city, so they're going to have to hightail it. They go to the station, and we're introduced to John Leguizamo, who I was fucking delighted to see.

He's got a child and a partner?

Reegs: The partner is supposed to be meeting them.

Sidey: But she's

Reegs: she, she's waylaid. So they're gonna go on a train, out of Because they've shown on a graphic, on a map, that it's local This incident is localized to a particular region in the northwest of the state.

And so everybody's trying to get on trains to move east, and it's a kind of slow, it's actually a fairly believable type of sort of slow hysteria going on as people migrate slowly over these trains to get away. So yeah, they're gonna get away. John Leguizamo's wife is gonna meet them later. He's gonna fuck off with the kid and Zooey Deschanel and Mark

Dan: they're going down to his mother's place I think aren't they a family We're far enough away from all this that they'll be safe while it all kind of disappears.

Reegs: but halfway they get there on the train, Dan halfway, they just

Sidey: No, no, we can't skip over the diner, the, the zoo scene.

Have That's on, that's on the train because... There's loads of people, obviously as there will be, texting and phone calls and blah, blah. And as word gets out that there's been another attack, and a lady has her phone, and she just showed She's like, I can't believe it, and it's a guy, I think it's

Dan: This is just after a confidence builder to the little girl, isn't it? Who's about two seats

Sidey: the little girl, isn't it?

Yeah, someone just walked into the lion enclosure, and he's just walked up and started, like, prodding lions, and then it kind of

Reegs: Well, he's like goading them with his arm and then

Sidey: And then you kind of see the line go for a minute and the camera, you know, cause it's being filmed on a, on a cell phone it can, it cuts back and it's so bad.

It's

so

Dan: when it rips off his arms

Sidey: got one arm off and then the other one, but it looks

Reegs: in the background a woman screaming, What kind of terrorists are these? Oh, very good. But yeah, and also, Oh no, that's a little bit later where she gives him the phone so she can listen to. So Mark Wahlberg can listen to her daughter dying. Is it

Sidey: No, this is when they get to, is it Filbert Street? Or something like that? Yeah, yeah.

Reegs: so the train stops in the middle of nowhere, and when they get off, Wahlberg confronts them, Why'd you stop the train?

And he's like, We lost contact. Who with?

Dan: Yeah.

Reegs: So, yeah, civilization has collapsed.

And

with the train stopped, they are indeed at Filbert Street in the middle of nowhere. So they need to start making their way. Is this when they meet the hot dog guy?

Dan: It's, it's yes, because they all go to a diner, and from that one guy starts off that.

We're all gonna die here and within about 30 seconds everybody's scarpered out and they found out if you're going west Then it's about a hundred kilometers west. It's not happening there. So everybody's like well, let's jump in there in the

Sidey: trying to find a ride and various people have jumped into wagons and they're ignoring them, but they find a guy just pulls up with his missus and says, yeah, you can, you can jump in with us.

Reegs: Frank Collison, this guy, he's been in absolutely everything,

Sidey: he's a bit of a weirdo, but first John Lucer gets written out of it because he's got wind that his misses is going to Princeton. And there's a, a car full that they've got room for him to go to Princeton. He's gonna meet her there. That's right. And reconvene. I dunno where they were going with this.

Really strange. And so he goes off there and they go back with a hot dog guy and he's a plant,

he's a

Reegs: plant. He's got a nursery.

Sidey: a bot nursery. And he tells himself, we're gonna just go back to ours, get some supplies and we'll be away. And when they get into his nursery, he explains that... There's a lot more

Dan: Isn't Mark Wahlberg already started to put together that it might be plants, or something, or it's after

Sidey: He explains that plants are intelligent and he speaks to his plants and, and, and we've all heard that before, about if you speak to plants they're more they respond to it and whatever. But it's extrapolated out to the nth degree here where... Plants react and they do this and they'll fight back and yada yada yada and he believes that the whole Thing is not terrorist invasion.

It's plants doing something evolving very quickly

Dan: they can communicate, they're evolving

Sidey: And then he says do you like hot dogs they're really great shape and they're convenient and you're like Who wrote this the

Reegs: Yeah

Sidey: is going on? Meanwhile, john leguizamo is cruising into princeton. Yeah, and

Dan: They go through a, like a skyline of, of bodies hanging from trees

Reegs: from the trees. And,

Dan: and,

Sidey: He looks up and realises that He

Reegs: They're in a soft spot. Also, you would

Dan: they're in a soft top with a rip

Reegs: way

Sidey: also, you would just suffocate.

One way or the other, if you've got no air supply, so anyway. They go in, the driver then just decides, because obviously they've been infected now, he drives the car into a lamppost. Yeah,

Reegs: he goes flying out the window.

He

Sidey: out, and John Oksama just sits down and gets a bit

Dan: And I wasn't sure whether he was, because he sits there for about five or six seconds and then he kind of looks over a bit of glass and then just starts picking at his wrists with it

Sidey: And that's the end of him and you're like, well...

Dan: the end of him.

Reegs: now, Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel, both of them who look like they're on Valium are now in charge of John Leguizamo's only...

Dan: Yeah.

Reegs: And they're going to meet up with my second succession cameo, Jeremy Strong, who plays the pirate. Did you see him? The pi the private.

He's strongly known for being a method actor, and I sure hope he was method acting

Sidey: acting in this. He's

Reegs: He's briefly in this for a scene where we realize just how... bad everything is getting all that they come to a crossroads a literal crossroads and every direction is bad news, so they have to walk across this is real terrifying stuff walking across a field

now

Dan: They're starting to piece together now through scientific reasoning that smaller groups might be better to go in.

Sidey: because someone, one of the groups gets, they just hear them all shooting each other from like, over a verge, don't they?

Reegs: Well this is where Wahlberg says, all right, be scientific douchebag. And it works out that

Sidey: douchebag.

That line

was improvised, by the way. Was it? Yeah. Alright. Yeah. And yes, he reasons that. When they're in a smaller group, the angry plants are less irritated by them, and so cut them some slack and don't spore them.

Dan: Yeah. Which but e even though that, it does seem to be based on the wind as, as well, maybe the wind's just pushing it around. We are not sure, but we do know that this group just over the hill, you hear all these bangs and everything and half of them are saying, go over and check it out. You go, you know, we can't just do nothing.

We can't be those people that do nothing is dead. Is it? But, as Wahlberg kind of reasons, they're, they're already gone, we need to, to get to somewhere else. And they end up stumbling on a...

Yeah, like, well, Kathy Bates. I mean, we've suddenly gone into misery, haven't we? So, it's, it's this woman who really has cut herself off from the world.

She's unaware of anything going on in the

Reegs: Oh, have we? We haven't skipped over the bit where he tries to, like reason with the plant yet, have we and then he realizes that it's plastic.

Sidey: Yeah, I'm not sure where

Reegs: in, mention

Dan: And then he realises

that it's plastic. I think, yeah, it's

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: I think, yeah, it's gospel at this point but they do meet this loner and she invites them in

and seems relatively normal.

Reegs: What about the lawnmower as well?

Sidey: Oh yeah, that was good actually, that was a good death. The guy lying on the floor and it just goes over him, yeah, that was good. But yeah, so let's get back to her because they go in and... She's, it takes like a, I don't know how long it was, but like immediately starts being a psycho.

Thinking that they're talking about her, they're conspiring to do something.

Reegs: Something about a lemon

Sidey: And,

oh, we have missed something. We've missed the house where the guy gets his head blown off. And, and the thing, the thing you think, who cares, it's fucking irrelevant.

Dan: There's loads going on in this

Sidey: so what, what does happen at her house? Cause shit, they.

She, she does something to them that fucking really freaked me out, as it, as if, as in, I would have got out of there, and they just go to sleep, they're just like, yeah, sounds, well we're still gonna stay here and have a kip, so they go to sleep, and then they find something in her bed, it's a doll.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, and she accuses her, him of stealing it, where really he was just coming to say,

Sidey: you're a lunatic.

I'm fucking out here.

Dan: Well, that, that's kind of what it comes to, because she, she starts attacking him, and they have an argument.

Reegs: her walking backwards in her

Dan: Well, really, he tries to, he tries to sort it out, but she, she goes outside to cool down, and then she starts behaving, you know, there's a bit of wind,

Sidey: wind blowing again and he closes all the windows and makes sure everything's shut.

And she slams, it's great this scene, she slams her head through the window and we see all, her face all with like shards of glass

Dan: then she takes it out and smashes her head through another window,

Sidey: So they, they've got all the...

Dan: does two or three, so the wind's getting in there then.

Sidey: so they basically resign to the fact that it, you know, if it's out there now...

She's been infected by it. They're in the same place. They must have it. So they're just like, well, we're

Reegs: in the same place, they must have it, so they're just like, well, we That's

Dan: they're in a barn which is connected...

Reegs: of this echoey tube that

is

that...

Dan: That's right, it's kind of this echoey tube that is about... I don't know... 300 meters away or something. And it they just Speak through it and it comes through clear doesn't it? So, they're having these Yeah, they're having these conversations where they're so close yet so far apart and the fact that you know walking across this This land might cost one of them Their lives.

But it all becomes too much, doesn't it? And he goes for it anyway. Just as they do. And they walk out.

Sidey: They just go out. Yeah. Well, that's it.

Reegs: Well, that, well, they would go to face their deaths, don't they? Yeah. Really. And they don't die. They, but they don't die. It just stops, I think because of love. Maybe

Sidey: Oh God, no. Is that

Reegs: possibly.

could've been

Sidey: And so it's taken 24 hours for this to start and end, is that right? And we're watching the news and it's ended but a guy on the news is

Reegs: Wait, it's three months later. One thing I noticed is it's three months later, and they are quite comfortable in their house, having houseplants.

Which I would be a bit funny about, because I'd be like, are you trying to kill me, buddy? But

Sidey: yeah. Yeah, but he's speaking reason with them. They, They've adopted the girl, haven't they? Yeah, yeah. And there's a pregnancy test on the sink. Yeah, yeah. So they're really fucked.

Reegs: Really going for it

Sidey: Yeah. Were we to imply that the original argument was about having kids? I don't know.

Dan: Potentially. We might.

Sidey: but

Reegs: no. Maybe, maybe they've gone for the brilliant thing of we'll save our relationship by having a

Sidey: works. There's a talking head on the news that's saying that maybe this was the

You know the opening gambit of an attack or

Reegs: the plants will be

Sidey: and it's gonna this is the precursor but the real thing is is coming. Yeah. And we cut to

Reegs: God it is 'cause it's coming in France.

Sidey: Yeah. And people just like the first scene in a park. People stop in their tracks and

it's

Dan: scream.

Sidey: it's now become a global event.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: Wow.

Dan: Wowie, Didn't have a sequel as I recall this one but what did you think then of this original?

Sidey: What was the one that Harry nominated?

Brighton Rock. But I enjoyed this a lot more because it was unintentionally funny. Yeah. It was awful, I mean, absolute fucking turkey, this.

Dan: I, I quite enjoyed it. It wasn't like I, no, I wouldn't call it a Turkey. I, it depends what you like, you know? I mean, these, these weird

Kind of movies where they're a little bit mysterious and and Mark, it was good cast.

You know, it was Mark Wahlberg. I was really pleased to, to see him in it. And

Sidey: he's been in some good things, he's been in some terrible things, Zoe Deschanel, honestly the most superfluous character of

Dan: yeah, she really, her

Sidey: no need for her to be in it.

Dan: Har really didn't seem to be in it, but she

Sidey: really enjoyed the production.

Virtually everyone else associate with it has disowned it, but she said it was it was a good set to be on. She like enjoyed it, everyone was nice to her, et cetera. So I have a problem generally with M Night Shalan. I think what he's good at is coming up with a concept or an idea of how to start a film and almost never lands it.

Like, at the start, if you just had all these people killing each other, you'd think, Wow, that's interesting. Like, where's he going to take this? Plants. What the

Reegs: to take us? France.

Sidey: fucking dog shit. It was absolute dog shit.

Dan: Yeah, no You're right in the in the sense it had more potential than it it delivered on but I did like the premise and maybe that's as you say the idea

Sidey: It's always produced, written, and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Maybe get some better help on the writing side and you could really make some fucking great movies.

Reegs: Yeah, this is

Dan: a strong tip for

Reegs: this is a strange one, isn't it? Because you've got these like really sincere, but odd performances from the actors and really strange writing. And it's sort of like people are trying to position it now, like a bit revisionist, Lee, is this like, Oh, fifties B

Sidey: That's what he tried to say before it

Reegs: I am not so sure

Sidey: think that's when you see the

Dan: it came out,

Reegs: Yeah, I mean it's

This is just a really bizarre thing where a guy got given a load of money and like spunked it in all the wrong places It's not even technically that great a movie There's a couple of scenes where the boom mic drops in it so much. I thought I thought it was gonna be on the cast list So yeah, I don't I don't know.

This is yeah, it was fun though Wasn't it

Sidey: Yeah, I did have a lot of fun with

Reegs: funny to watch

Sidey: I watched it, there was three of us and half an hour in, someone bailed out, and an hour in, someone else bailed out.

Dan: out, and I...

Sidey: That's only what it

Reegs: It's only about an hour and a

Sidey: That was the other thing that bothered me about it, was when I knew how long it was going into it. And when it was like a massive thing happening. Although it was, you

Dan: you knew this

Sidey: It was, it was localized to Northwest originally of America, but I thought we've only got 19 minutes to like bottom this all out.

Like that's

Reegs: yeah. Well it just stopped, so don't worry about it.

Sidey: Yeah. And then literally just like 24 hours in it just stops, you know? I'm unsatisfied.

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: No, I, I was enjoying it, I must say. I

Reegs: you might enjoy the environmental theme, Stan

Dan: Yeah, well, that, that's, that's kind of the, the argument they say, isn't it, that, you know, we've treated the planet so badly, this is just trying to survive and evolve to, to take, and they're finding, obviously, humans are the threat it's strange that, that kind of death, though, isn't it, you know, that they, they made some kind of argument for it, didn't they, they said it's some neurological, Oh, sorry, Pattern that switches off your self-defense button or your natural

Sidey: instinct to survive. Chrysanthemums, it is.

Dan: to survive.

Sidey: 53 minutes into the movie, Elliot talks about primordial

bacteria in Australia killing off fishermen.

Pyrethrians are a neurotoxin derived from the chrysanthemum plant, specifically those native to Australia. Commonly found in organic insecticides.

Dan: based on a true story, this then many ways. Not yeah, I would say check it out.

Me, I, you know, if you, it's an hour and a half long, it's not the best thing you will see, but it's quite an interesting film to see just because of the premise, just because it's something different. What did it do in the box office?

Sidey: You won't be able to guess. It cost 48 million. How do you reckon it did?

Dan: Oh, I reckon there's an appetite for

Sidey: million, just picture

Dan: I, I, I think there's an appetite for this thing. I think it's made its money back and more.

Reegs: 163

Sidey: 163 million, which fucking blew my mind that it

Dan: That's strong. That is strong.

Sidey: Sequel, they've got to make a sequel. So it was happening it?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, 163

Dan: Yeah, 163 million.

I've never even really heard of this film.

Reegs: This is not, yeah, it's not even really so bad it's good, but it is completely unique. And it was good fun to watch, I've got to say.

Sidey: I did enjoy it, and I did enjoy It's like lying

Reegs: in front of a lawnmower

Sidey: I did enjoy talking about it as well, but it's not a good film by any

Reegs: No, it's not. That's why it's

Dan: I wouldn't rush to watch it again anytime soon.

Sidey: No.