Hilarious "The Happening" Rewrite

Cracked.com just posted a really accurate but somewhat condensed script for "The Happening". The full article is here.

FADE IN:

EXT. NEW YORK CITY - PARK
People walk around in the PARK while two unimportant characters have INANE DIALOGUE.

BORING CHARACTER 1
That was weird. Suddenly all of the people in this park stopped dead in their tracks and started acting like brainless robots.
BORING CHARACTER 2
Large groups of people behaving as though they have no personality whatsoever? That can only mean ...

BORING CHARACTER 1
Oh shit, we're in an M. Night Shyamalan movie!

They both KILL THEMSELVES.

EVERYONE ELSE
An M. Night Shyamalan movie! Our careers will be ruined!

EVERYONE ELSE kills themselves as well.

INT. PHILADELPHIA - CLASSROOM
MARK WAHLBERG teaches SCIENCE to a classroom full of middle school students. It's exactly as believable as it sounds.

STUDENT
Hey Mr. Wahlberg, how come bees have been dying off in record numbers lately?
MARK WAHLBERG
Well, you see, it's an act of nature that nobody will ever understand. Those crazy scienticians will come up with something just to put it in a book, but ultimately they're just chumps.
STUDENT
What? Who wrote this script, Kirk Cameron?

MARK'S friend, JOHN LEQUIZAMO, enters the classroom.

JOHN LEQUIZAMO
Hey, there's a suicide epidemic in New York. People think terrorists are releasing some toxin in the air that's causing people to kill themselves.
MARK WAHLBERG
Awesome, disasters in movies tend to serve little purpose other than to unite families with problems. Perhaps this can fix my rocky marriage.
JOHN LEQUIZAMO
This is serious. This toxin doesn't just make you stop breathing or anything, it makes you go far, far out of your way to kill yourself in the goriest, most dramatic way possible.
To illustrate this, JOHN and MARK watch a high-resolution video on top of a color printout of a hand holding an iPhone, which depicts a guy getting lions to rip his arms off at the zoo.
MARK WAHLBERG
Holy shit, did I really just watch a guy perform Jax's fatality on himself? Are we in Toxic Avenger 5 or something?
JOHN LEQUIZAMO
We need to get out of the city. Go home and get your increasingly distant wife and meet me at the train station. We need to get on a train, because if there's one place we know terrorists won't attack, it's a vehicle carrying hundreds of people.

MARK goes home to find his wife ZOOEY DESCHANEL.

MARK WAHLBERG
(yawning)
Hey honey, let's go to the train station to awkwardly progress the story forward without any character motivation. Or whatever. Is it lunchtime yet?
ZOOEY DESCHANEL
Alright, but only if I can pretend I have depth by illuminating a completely superfluous side story about a guy I met at work.

They meet JOHN LEQUIZAMO and travel by train out of the CITY.

JOHN LEQUIZAMO
I can't get my wife on the phone. I need you to take care of my daughter while I go look for her.
ZOOEY DESCHANEL
No problem, I'd love to help.
JOHN LEQUIZAMO
I wasn't talking to you, you cum-guzzling cunt.
ZOOEY DESCHANEL
My apologies. I'll just politely ignore your rudeness and take care of your daughter anyway.
MARK WAHLBERG
And I'll go ahead and not even defend my wife like the whiny little bitch I am.
JOHN LEQUIZAMO
It's a good thing you guys are such likable protagonists instead of, for example, completely uninteresting assholes that audiences would hate watching for two hours.
MARK WAHLBERG
Good luck finding your wife. Make sure to drive everywhere with the windows down since we know that this is an airborne toxin.

He DOES, then listens to MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE and CUTS HIMSELF.

MARK, ZOOEY and JOHN'S DAUGHTER take refuge in an abandoned house for a minute, then for some reason decide to go back outside where the DEADLY TOXINS are.

ZOOEY DESCHANEL
Look, I need to come clean with you. I ... I had dessert with some guy I met at work.
MARK WAHLBERG
Oh my God! Is 'dessert' some kind of euphemism for letting him take a shit in your mouth after he fucks you or something?!
ZOOEY DESCHANEL
Er, no. We had cheesecake.
MARK WAHLBERG
Oh. Well I'm going to go ahead and act like it was the other thing!

MARK and ZOOEY sleepwalk their way through some more scenes as the plot progresses itself forward without their involvement.

ZOOEY DESCHANEL
You know, for a movie called 'The Happening,' there is surprisingly little actually going on.
MARK WAHLBERG
No shit. Alright, Shyamalan. Where does this painfully boring roller coaster take us next?
M NIGHT SHYAMALAN
Let's see here. The next thing that happened in "War of the Worlds" was Tom Cruise finding that crazy hermit guy. I guess we should do that for a few minutes, since I'm such a fucking hack.

MARK, ZOOEY and JOHN'S DAUGHTER try to outrun the air and eventually make it to a boarded-up HOUSE with a CRAZY HERMIT and stay with her for a bit.

CRAZY OLD BAT
Woohoo, tiger stream junket floating can purse lily munch! Turd fighter glass breaking eardrum turnip, John!
MARK WAHLBERG
I wonder what totally unexpected twist will happen as a result of your wackiness!

NOTHING happens, and eventually the CRAZY OLD BAT dies.

MARK WAHLBERG
Oh. I guess her only role was to illustrate that the deadly toxin is, in fact, deadly. Go close the doors and windows, Zooey.
ZOOEY DESCHANEL
(quizzically)
Why?

MARK WAHLBERG
Why? Did you seriously just ask me that? Are you watching a different movie or something? Listen up ...
(pause)
The fucking air. It fucking kills you. It's fucking deadly. Don't fucking breathe it. Was this script written by a fucking monkey?

Suddenly, THE HAPPENING stops HAPPENING, largely because the audience members left to go get a REFUND.

An EXPERT comes on TELEVISION to explain the movie for the benefit of any RETARDED PEOPLE in the AUDIENCE.

TV EXPERT
You see, it seems that plants became tired of the way we treat our environment, so they started releasing a deadly toxin.
TV ANCHORMAN
Why didn't they just stop producing oxygen?
TV EXPERT
Well where's the unwatchable pile of garbage of a film in that?
MARK WAHLBERG
I don't get it. We found out it was plants like an hour ago. Aren't M. Night Shyamalan movies supposed to have some crazy surprise at the end?

M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN
Surprise, I managed to make a movie worse than "Lady in the Water"!
END

The Happening Review

The three main actors, realising all too late what they got themselves into.

Sometimes, a films title can be used as a kind of reference to the quality of the product. It usually gives some kind of sense to what the film is about etc, or is a clever reference to something that happens throughout the film. Sometimes outright bad names can make for good films, case in point Superbad and the upcomming Pineapple Express. Ridiculous names for sure, but in bringing down your perceived standards of what the film will be like they often have cause to surprise you in a positive way. Not so with 'The Happening', which M. Night Shyamalan wrote, directed and produced.

Lets go back a little ways into the history of Shyamalan. His first major success, The Sixth Sense, was a pretty good film provided you didn't have the plot spoiled for you. It was a haunting thriller type story with lots of suspence and a nice twist at the end. Furthermore, Shyamalan's later films were also fairly good - Unbreakable, Signs and The Village. Lady in the Water is the only one I haven't seen, but if its anything like The Happening as other reviews have suggested, I will be staying well clear of watching it. Something, somewhere went horribly wrong with Shyamalan. I'm guessing it was a mixture of things. He ran out of creative juice perhaps. Perhaps with the success he has achieved so far, he is blind to anything poor or bad he is creating. I remember reading an interview with the man on how the film Lady in the Water bombed, and what he planned to do in the future. He promised a return to his true-to-form original, successful ideas. His next project would once again ring true just like his first successes. Oh boy, things sure didn't pan out as he planned.

Anyway on with the actual review. The basic surmise is as follows: Elliot, played by Mark Wahlberg, is a school teacher somewhere on the Eastern Coast of the United States. He is currently involved with Alma, played by Zooey Deschanel of 'Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy' fame. His best friend is a stereotypical New York type character, Julian, played by John Leguizamo, who for some reason has an anger problem whenever Alma is around. The hook of the film starts out with people randomly killing themselves for some reason. After this we move onto news reports of an apparent terroist attack on the East Coast, which causes everyone into a frenzy and they evacuate the cities onto trains.

Shyamalan has used ghosts, aliens, superhero type characters and evil humans in the past to drive his films, but his choice in The Happening is quite laughable. Apparently, it is the plants that are causing people to kill themselves somehow. The moments of suspence are shown by rustling trees and grass, and Oh My God We're going to die! moments. According to the news report, the plants are releasing a toxin because they are under threat by humankind. This toxin changes the brain chemistry to stop the protective instincts of humans. Somehow, this makes humans find means to kill themselves. The whole premise is insanely ridiculous. While such a toxin could take away protective insticts, possibly causing some accidental deaths, its not going to make people find ways to kill themselves. That interferes with free will and logical sense.

Furthermore, both the acting and dialogue in this film is just goddamn awful. I don't think its the actual actorss faults for acting so badly, but rather the direction and the horrible script they had to work from. I'll provide some examples of the dialogue: Alma: [watching news report about the toxin] It makes you kill yourself. Just when you thought there couldn't be any more evil that can be invented. Another goody by Alma: We're so much the same, Jess. I don't like to show my emotions either. Elliot: If we're going to die, I want you to know something. I was in the pharmacy a while ago. There was a really good-looking pharmacist behind the counter. Really good-looking. I went up and asked her where the cough syrup was. I didn't even have a cough, and I almost bought it. I'm talking about a completely superfluous bottle of cough syrup, which costs like six bucks. The last quote comes in rebuttal of their relationships apparent crisis, because Alma had dessert with someone she worked with. You can kind of see from the stupid dialogue just how badly the movie played out. Most parts seemed too stupid to be believable, with a common doubt held in the mind as to whether it was supposed to be funny or not.

One of the only redeeming features of the film was when they stumbled across a house in the middle of nowhere, inhabited by a crazy old lady who was very paranoid about sharing her house, afraid that Elliot and Alma were plotting to kill her and steal all her things. She even goes as far as putting a fake doll of herself in her bed and waiting for Elliot to inspect it when hes trying to find her. Insane, but funny.

I don't know if I have encountered a film quite as completely bad as The Happening. From the actings to the dialogue to the overall plot, no other film matches quite the way this one does. I hope this puts the final nails in Shymalan's coffin, because although I once had faith in the man, this faith has been completely and utterly taken from me. Its almost bad enough to make for a funny viewing, but the implied seriousness of the film really detracts from the final product. Usually, a film will either be funny because it is funny, or funny because it isn't meant to be funny in the slightest. With The Happening we are kind of stuck in the middle, halfway between seriousness and comedy, a kind of no mans land. Being this way, it makes the film less enjoyable as you are never really sure if Shyamalan is trying to crack a few jokes or if he's being completely serious with comedic overtones.

I know for certain that this film is going to bomb, and know this with gratitude. Having seen it on opening night, witnessing how the theatre didn't fill up, and listening to the overwhelming majority of negative comments affirms the fact this film with not do well financially. Nor should it. So hear this, by word of mouth, a word of wisdom, not to ever put yourself through the hell of watching this horrible movie. Let us never speak of its name again...

The Happening

Please, for the love of god, don't go see this movie. Enough said. More to come later.

Japan - The Rest

The rest of the days spent in Japan included visits to Hiroshima and Miyajima. Once again taking the Shinkansen south we first went to Hiroshima, which is renowned almost worldwide because of the Atomic Bomb dropped there during the second world war. I really didn't know what to expect by going there, but images of a post-apocalyptic city flashed across my mind. I didn't know how much damage still existed in the city at all. Turns out there are no remainders or leftovers from the blast, because the Atomic Bomb basically levelled almost an entire city causing the Japanese to have to start from scratch in rebuilding. The only artifact that remains in the City Hall, which is fenced off and held up by a steel frame.

Its kind of an odd thing to stand in front of such a building, especially when all the surrounding landscape is so nice. It stands right in front of a river, and there are trees and flowers growing all around. We made a visit to the Hiroshima musuem as well which is there to educate everybody on the devastion atomic warfare can cause.

Next on the agenda was taking a ferry across the bay to the tropical island of Miyajima. The ferry ride only took about 15 minutes so its not exactly far away, but Miyajima seemed a world away from Hiroshima. Miyajima is considered a national park, so most of the island is natural forests with fairly large mountains making up the rest. There were a lot of tame wild deer once again who wander around the town, looking for snacks from tourists. There were also an amazing amount of tourist gift stores, with basically entire streets devoted to such. After a bit of a trek around the beach and up along the trails, we checked into a Ryokan which is a traditional Japanese building offering dinner, a bed and breakfast in the morning. The building is laid out all traditionally, with the silk screen doors and bamboo mats. Even the beds are the roll out bamboo matresses. For dinner you are supplied with all the traditional robes, and it is quite the experience to get dressed up and served a very fancy traditional Japanese dinner.

The dinner was good, but took a little to get used to, even for one that enjoys most Japanese food. There were portions of all kinds of raw fish, as well as different slightly pickled shellfish. Also served were giant oysters, sea bass and hot sake to go along. There were many courses in the meal and it was very well presented. The people running the Ryokan were very nice as well, and it was an elderly woman that served us most of the dinner and sat to talk for quite awhile, which was a very personal touch. I'd recommend staying at a Ryokan for anyone travelling to Japan, its well worth it.

The rest of the time on Miyajima was spent exploring, as well as climbing up the towering mountain which took quite some time. There were supposed to be wild monkeys up there as well, but the sign said on both days that they had gone back to the forest to eat. Maybe its just as well, because the warning signs showed some interesting pictures of monkeys stealing things and attacking people. Okay, maybe not attacking people but that doesn't rule out the possibility of it happening.

After a couple of days on Miyajima we slowly made it back to Kyoto to spend another night, before heading to the floating airport for me to head back to Canada. It sure was an action packed trip, and it left me quite exhausted once I finally arrived back. Japan turned out to be totally different from what I was expecting, in a good way, and was well worth the experience. It was such a nice place I'd even consider living there, but of course without knowing the language things could get a little worn thin after awhile. Japan certainly seems to know what its doing with managing such a large population, and it was nice to see what level of precision everything runs to over there. It makes most the western world look sloppy and lazy in comparision. So ends my series on the trip to Japan!