Happening, The (DVD)

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I couldn´t help but grit my teeth and bear it as I watched the ninety minutes of "The Happening." It was a huge disappointment from early on when the pretty blonde rammed a crocheting needle into her jugular vein with pinpoint accuracy and no blood splatter. That happened in the first few minutes. From there "The Happening" became an exercise in futility as the main characters were followed from one flora-populated field to another as the film provided a few more fresh corpses to die in creative ways. If the death scenes weren´t so entertaining I would have probably been bored to tears. But even R-rated gore and demise is not enough to float a picture, especially one from a former A-List director who is on the fast track to Boll-dom. This picture was boring, uninspired and couldn´t even see the bar set by Shyamalan in his first three box office successes.

Where M. Night Shyamalan goes from here I do not know. In all honesty, I really do not care. I know he is to direct a live action version of "Avatar: The Last Airbender." That does not excite me. I´d rather see Tim Burton bring about a darker version of "The Care Bears." I loved Shyamalan´s earlier films because he brought my ancestral city of Philadelphia pride and he created very entertaining films. I looked forward to each new picture from the Indian-born director, but after the disappointment of his last two films I am far too shaken in my faith of his talent to have any desire to pay $10.00 for a ticket to one of his pictures. He would need Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson and a sequel to "Unbreakable" for me to care and that supposedly will never happen and neither will me once again viewing him as one of the very best young directors.

Video:

"The Happening" looks quite good on DVD and while I don´t recommend watching the film itself, it does not disappoint in the visuals department. The film is framed in anamorphic 1.85:1 widescreen video and is both detailed and colorful. I had pointed out in my Blu-ray review that you could see the individual blades of grass and this holds mostly true for the standard definition release, although the level of detail has noticeably dropped. The style of the film provides desaturated colors and overblown lighting that result in very white skies at times and while colors are natural looking, they do not look overly digitized to pop out of the frame. M. Night was influenced a great deal by the look of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and it shows. A thin sheen of film grain provides a very film-like appearance and advocates of grain should be pleased, while others will hardly notice. Black levels are good, but not as strong as in the Blu-ray release. The DVD release was culled from a good source print and results in a solid looking DVD title.

Audio:

Wind is a primary character in "The Happening" and the DVD comes equipped with a strong sounding English 5.1 Dolby Surround mix. Spanish and French Dolby Digital 2.0 surround mixes are included as well as subtitles in English and Spanish. The DVD sounds quite good and helps the viewer recognize the pivotal role that wind plays in the film with an enveloping mix that has the wind swirl from speaker to speaker. Sound is nicely positioned in each of the five main speakers and pans gently and cleanly between each sound channel. When the wind needs a little help to stress the importance of drama, the .1 LFE channel pushes out strong bass. While the film is not a high end action film, it contains a good degree of ambient sounds in addition to the sound of wind. The haunting musical score by James Newton Howard sounds very good and bleeds into the rear channels nicely. Dialogue is very clear and the film is just a little more engaging because of the very strong soundtrack.

Extras:

The DVD version of "The Happening" contains most of the bonus materials from the Blu-ray disc aside from the Digital Copy of the film. Two short vignettes titled "Train Shooting" and "Forces Unseen" are absent from the smaller confines of the DVD platter, but the remaining elements are all included. Neither of the two missing supplements amounted to much, so in all honesty, you are not missing much. The disc begins with four Deleted Scenes (11:47) and they are provided with optional introductions by Shyamalan (3:49). Three are extended versions of existing scenes and one is a new "Music Recital" death sequence. The extended lion scene was fun. The last two were quite skippable. The Hard Cut (9:02) is a longer featurette and has M. Night talk more about his influences and the editing of the film. While he has shaken my belief in his filmmaking, but I still enjoy listening to him talk about the making of the film.

"I Hear You Whispering" (4:18) looks at the films last act and Mrs. Jones (Betty Buckley) and its rare a supplemental item focuses entirely on a supporting character. The oddly titled The Happening – Visions of the Happening: A Making Of (11:54) is your basic EPK styled making of featurette. It isn´t terribly long and doesn´t contain much substance, but if you somehow enjoyed the film it might be worth watching. A Day For Night (6:46) is a feature centered around M. Night and follows him from tying his boot through the filming of a series of scenes in one shooting day. This was a very nice making-of-featurette and the highlight of the disc. Elements of a Scene (10:03) looks at the "car ramming into a tree" death scene and what went into creating the scene. The Gag Reel (2:39) contains a few humorous moments and mistakes from the filming of "The Happening" and the disc ends with Trailers for the films "Street Kings" and "Mirrors."

Closing:

This was the second time I sat down to watch "The Happening" and I have to admit that I could only pay half attention to the film while reviewing the DVD release. The film just does not improve with a second viewing and I cannot imagine ever watching it again. M. Night Shyamalan has successfully broken my faith in his abilities as a filmmaker. After capturing my faithfulness with three great early films, he has been on a downward spiral. DVD Town reader Christian Horn was kind enough to mention that a sequel to "Unbreakable" might happen after he read some news out on the Internet and perhaps that could restore a little faith if done properly. Otherwise, I´ll continue my guilty pleasure of enjoying Uwe Boll pictures. The DVD release of this film isn´t as technically spectacular as the Blu-ray release and a few features are missing, but it is still a good release of a bad film.

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