M. Night: I know you think you’re a good actor and everything, Paul, but if you don’t stutter and stammer the way I want you to stutter and stammer, I’m going to throw you in the fucking pool and let Bryce Dallas Howard get at you. Are we fucking clear?
M. Night Shyamalan’s latest opus, “The Happening,” hits theaters on Friday, and the early word ain’t good. Shyamalan’s work started to head south after “Signs,” but some critics have deemed this his worst yet, no small claim for the man who brought us “Lady in the Water.”
“Happening” stars Mark Wahlberg as a biology teacher who must lead a group of survivors through some kind of “happening,” in which everyone starts acting strange and killing themselves.
As with most any Shyamalan flick, the trailers and promotional material have shrouded the plot of the movie in mystery.
If you don’t want to know why everybody’s killing themselves in the latest M. Night film, quit reading this. If you do want to know or just don’t care, please read this spoiler for a hearty Friday chuckle:
In “The Happening,” people are starting to harm and kill themselves because all the trees have evolved to emit a neurotoxin that causes a person to lose control of their body and punch their own ticket. You see, mother nature is angry with humanity, so it’s decided to kill it. It’s like Hitchcock’s “The Birds,” but with ficas as the villains.
Keep messing with mother earth, and she’ll mess back, M. Night warns in this film, which was originally called “The Green Effect.”
As insanely original (insane being the key word) as Shyamalan’s premise is, “The Happening” owes a lot to many other films. His pic falls into a narrow little genre that really got going in the ’70s: eco-horror —
a type of scary movie in which nature gets tired of taking humanity’s shit and decides to seek revenge.
To celebrate Shyamalan’s continuous descent down the rabbit hole of his own warped mind, here are 5 other noble, bad-funny, environmentally conscious horror movies:
1. “Orca: The Killer Whale” (1977)
Just two years after Spielberg wowed movie audiences with “Jaws,” there was this, a hilarious tale of revenge with a killer whale as the wronged. A flipped “Moby Dick” for the creature feature era.
Oscar-winner Richard Harris plays Captain Nolan, a seaman sans scruples who decides to capture a killer whale to pay the mortgage on his ship. But he haplessly kills a mother whale and her offspring in the process. This spurs the grieving, spiteful daddy Orca to stalk the sailor.
Environmental lesson to be learned: If you’re going to kill a killer whale, make sure you kill the rest of the family. Or they’ll stalk and kill you.
2. “Long Weekend” (1979)
This delightfully campy Australian horror flick pits a silly, selfish couple against the beasts of the Outback.
A camping husband and wife offend nature after they litter, fire their gun without purpose and kill a kangaroo. Attacks from snakes, possums, whales, spiders, bats and one terrifying eagle ensue.
Environmental lesson to be learned: Don’t litter or an eagle will attack you.
3. “Deep Blue Sea” (1999)
A group of scientists in an offshore submarine facility discover the cure for Alzheimer’s disease: big fat shark brains. The team genetically engineers sharks to have extra gray matter so that more of the supposed Alzheimer’s cure can be extracted. But the sharks’ brains get too big. They become too intelligent. And they decide to overtake the humans. As a result, Sam L. Jackson gets chomped in half, and LL Cool J finds the best way to fend off the supersmart devils: hitting them with a big frying pan.
Environmental lesson to be learned: Don’t tamper with shark brains in the name of an Alzheimer’s-free world.
4. Frogs (1972)
“Today the pond! Tomorrow the world!” boomed the original tagline of this fine piece of cinema.
Oscar-winner Ray Milland plays a nature-hating millionaire who owns his own swampy island. But his continuous pollution of the ecosystem has made its other inhabitants angry. Soon the pond life, led by a supernaturally intelligent cadre of killer frogs, starts picking off the humans one by one. Best scene: A lady is murdered … by a turtle.
Environmental lesson to be learned: If you pollute, amphibians will explode into a murderous rage.
5. Night of the Lepus (1972)
When a rancher finds his land overrun by rabbits, he enlists the help of a buddy at the local university for a solution. A university zoologist tries to disrupt the rabbit reproduction by injecting the rabbits with mutant blood and hormones. But one of the lab rabbits escapes, mates with the general population and creates a race of giant, mutant, carnivorous bunnies. The bunnies ravage through the countryside, killing horses, cows and men until the National Guard intervenes.
Cutest villains in the history of the movies.
Environmental lesson to be learned: Don’t, um, inject rabbits with mutant blood.
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