M. Night Shyamalan 2008 Horror movie a must-see comedy for Halloween

What happens when a horror movie isn't scary? More often than not, it's a straight-up comedy, even if it wasn't intended as such. If there's a film out there classified as a horror that fits this exact description, it's M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening.

Before The Happening was released, Shyamalan's career started to tailspin. While he hadn't achieved the same critical acclaim as when he made The Sixth Sense, his name still had respectability. His previous film, Lady in the Water, was the first of his to be near-unanimously panned.

But hey, even the best directors have their duds, so at the time, his fans believed it was a flash in the pan. However, once The Happening was released, it was clear that Lady in the Water was not an accident. Shyamalan was losing his touch, leading to this movie being commonly known as one of the most hilarious movies ever made by accident.

However, the comedy itself goes far beyond the fact that it's not scary. In fact, anyone who watches it not knowing the context may watch and think, Wait, this is supposed to be scary?

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. The irony of what's about to come next is that The Happening genuinely has an intriguing premise: Many people are killing themselves out of nowhere, no one really understands why, and it's causing a mass panic. But then the rest of the movie happens (no pun intended).

Without going into spoilers, various problems with The Happening help its entertainment value as a comedy—bad acting, awkward dialogue, nonsensical plots, unnecessary close-up shots, a stupid twist, and an anticlimactic climax—but at the forefront is its terrible casting—most notable is Mark Wahlberg as a science teacher?!

Wahlberg made a name for himself in Hollywood as a hybrid tough guy. He has proven that he doesn't necessarily play the same character in every movie he's in, as he can play the antagonist just like he can play a real jerk with a heart of gold, but that is his bread and butter.

In The Happening, he strays as far away from that as possible, playing a neurotic, inquisitive, softspoken science nerd, and his performance works about as well as Michael Jordan's baseball career.

Besides Shyamalan clearly not knowing how teachers do their jobs, is Wahlberg making a pass at his own student in front of the class? (Sidenote: check out the extra's face on Mark's left at the 1:12 mark after this particular infamous line read) One can only wonder why Wahlberg publically disowned this movie after it came out.

Sharing the screen with Wahlberg is Zooey Deschanel, a good actor, much like her male co-star, who is also badly miscast in this role. At the same time, no one can really blame her for how she delivers these painfully cringy lines of dialogue.

Good for them for trying to do something out of their comfort zone because sometimes that works out for actors, which in turn opens the door for more acting opportunities. However, their performances symbolize why this was considered one of the worst films of 2008. Luckily, it didn't kill their careers.

But why this movie's humor works so well is because of the straight-up bizarre choices Shyamalan made. If the above clips didn't prove that, just imagine how things went down between him and crew when they were filming the movie.

"We're going to go for comedy with this scene."

"Okay, well, since we've been going for scary, a joke could deescalate the tension. What's the joke?"

"We're going to have a guy rant about hot dogs."

"In a movie about people killing themselves every which way, we're going to have a scene where some random schmuck talks about hot dogs?"

"Yes."

"M.... is everything okay?"

"For this scene, we're going to try to emphasize how frightening the threat is."

"That's good now that they have a better idea of what they're dealing with. So what is it?"

"Since they think the toxin is airborne, we're going to emphasize how threatening the wind is, which means they'll have to outrun it."

"To avoid the threat, they actually think it's a good plan to outrun wind?"

"Yes."

"Okay, that's not how wind... M., are you with us?"

"Alright, now for this scene, we're going to have the characters desperately try to prove that they're normal so that a stranger will let them into his house."

"How's that?"

"We're going to have Mark spontaneously start singing."

"To prove to a social hermit that they're normal during a possible epidemic, our main character is going to break into song?"

"Yes."

"No seriously, M., are you on something?"

These are just a few examples of why this movie is watched as a comedy. What makes it sad is that Shyamalan's horror directing at times isn't always bad in this movie, but the overwhelmingly bad elements overshadow the rare good aspects.

If it hadn't been for pretty much everything else that works against it, The Happening could have passed off exactly how it was intended. There's a case to be made that, with the right people, there was an excellent film on their hands.

How this movie could have worked

Again, The Happening had an interesting concept. People spontaneously killing themselves in droves without an explanation breeds a lot of mystery. In fact, the science class posted above may have tried to present itself as a valid thesis statement for the rest of the movie.

As Jake says, some acts of nature can't be explained by science; the only thing that explains them is theories that can't be fully proven. That's fair, and unfortunately, where this movie goes wrong since they decide to go in the opposite direction of that statement.

The Happening's biggest sin is the Shyamalan-patented twist, which is thrown out around the end of the first act for some reason. The worst part is how unbelievably stupid the twist is. They then try to use the twist to make the culprit all the more intimidating, but it doesn't work because said culprit can't really be presented as scary, which makes it funny.

To make matters worse, when the film's climax occurs, it's not really clear that it happened or why it happened like that because the twist is not all that captivating.

Shyamalan's forte is executing twists that the audience didn't see coming, and he could have used his reputation to make The Happening better. Why not make the twist that nobody knows what happened since the audience expected otherwise? Why not have the main conflict center around the paranoia and pandemonium being fueled by the fear of the unknown?

Wouldn't that have been a pretty good commentary on how prone people are to overreaction from an unexplained act of nature? The twist could have been that this was all psychosomatic to show that people can let their emotions override logic when they think a disaster is on the horizon.

Because they decided to explain what was happening, The Happening has become a hilarious watch for anyone who's looking for good comedy around Halloween, and Hulu has it available to stream.

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