If 'The Happening' Was 10X Shorter and 100X More Honest
On Saturdays, we ask our favorite sites on the web to fill in for us. Cracked readers get to learn about an awesome site, and we get to take sips of cool beverages and sigh loudly like they do in soft drink commercials. A few Saturdays ago we brought you an abridged version of the screenplay for Oscar winner Juno as provided by Rod Hilton, creator of The-Editing-Room.com. Today, Rod brings you a script for whatever the opposite of an Oscar winner is, M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening.
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
For more scripts that are funnier and less time consuming than watching a movie,
head to The-Editing-Room.com.
Oh, I bought the crap out of this movie.
ReplyNo one else likes it but I was trained in acting for film and liked it. Blau blau. point is, I liked it. I don't like the article but it is difficult for me to accurately judge when I already spend so much time defending the movie. Good effort? lol
This article was mildly funny. I am biased though, I really liked this movie.
ReplyI love this movie and MNS and enjoyed this article. You all take this stuff way too seriously in the comments.
ReplyZooey Deschanel was the thing that made this worth watching.
ReplyOk. I got half way through and was bored stiff.
ReplyFolks paid to watch the Happening?
Jesus. ¬ ¬
I thought the happening was pretty scary. Might have been my fear of heavy-handed environmentalist messages kicking in, though.
ReplyI, too, can be completely not funny or entertaining. I, too, have fingers, so I can beat the keys of a computer. Can I work for Cracked? Wait, I don't think these guys are getting paid. Go to it, homeless dude! Someone will try to read your not funny posts to a comedy site.
ReplyHAHA! That was great! You are clearly a humorous and intelligent person! I cannot believe that the Cracked editors are not groveling for your patronage!
Kaelbane is clearly M. Night Shyamalan.
The happening if it was shorter and more honest:
ReplyThe movie would actually immolate itself while saying "I'm shit". The end.
Who wrote this, Kirk Cameron? Best. Line. Ever. Thank you.
ReplyJesus Chris that was the most unfunny thing I've read in my life!
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesThat's the point.
It's a movie called "The Happening" and very little actually happened. See?
You'd only understand if you've seen that movie. Be thankful if you haven't.
Alright film,,MNS is not the best, but his films usually have a twist some where....I see dead people!!! Juggalo Love
ReplyThe plants/earth release a toxin that makes peoples kill themselves? That was the premise of one of the Sherri S Tepper books - except that people just died peacefully. Feh.
ReplyOr there's Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind in which the plants released a toxin that just straight killed people. And that story was more direct about it's "don't f**k up the environment, people" thesis.
Yeah, somehow Cracked and the snarked up hipsters that read it all seem to jump on the hater band wagon regarding MNS, but his movies are cool, interesting, different,,um...except for 'the Happening', not that great...
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesHipsters?!?! Mmk.
I know he is one BA preachy mother trucker, but I must say I completely enjoy M. Night Shamalamadingdong's movies. For real. I even liked The Happening. It was totally ridiculous, but I was entertained. However, this Rod guy is super funny. Can we not like the subject matter AS WELL AS the piece of work making fun of it? Well, I can and I do.
(:l)
Mad love for k8.
"but his movies are shitty, derivative and insulting"
...fixed.
it worries me how many people are defending this movie. . . I respect films like "The Room" and "Troll 2" more because those movies at least had casts and crews who worked hard even though they had no talent.... "The Happening" was written, directed and performed by capable people who didn't bother trying, just a lazy grasp for your cash.
ReplyI just finished watching a cartoon film about a group of aliens who fight off another group of aliens in order to protect nature. I starred the voice of Carrot Top in one of the lead roles. As horrible as it was, and I came close to ripping out my own eyeballs to watch my body rebel and beat me to death, it was better than the Happening.
Movies like "The Happening" are often overacted as a result of the slow pace and seemingly little going on. They used a normal type of acting to make it seem more normal. In a movie where the 'bad guy' is the plants... it's hard to know where to take that as an actor. I think they did very well with a thin script. Very little character comes across in the lines so they used voice, body language, and expressions to bring their characters out. I thought they did a good job. Just my professional opinion though.
I actually liked this movie. The main guy was an awful actor, but other than that I thought it was pretty good...
Reply Hide All See All 6 RepliesDid you just call Mark Wahlberg awful? Marky Mark of the Funky Bunch? The only man to come out of New Kids on the Block with a career? The only one to realize that bringing back New Kids on the Block was a career killer? (Not that anyone who returned had a career to start with.)
How dare you! You Zooey Deschanel lover you! (Although she is quite the quirky woman isn't she?)
Hey! Don't knock Ms. Deschanel! :) I lahv her quirkiness *-*
silenus, i thought it was older brother donnie wahlberg who was in NKOTB. ... show you how much i know, huh? ... as for zooey deschanel, i like her sister emily on bones ...
It was definitely Donnie Wahlberg that was in New Kids.
Interesting side-note, Donnie Wahlberg played the guy in The Sixth Sense that killed Bruce at the beginning of the movie.
Mark Wahlberg wasn't in the New Kids on the Block. That was his brother Donny Wahlberg. Marky Wahlberg was simply allowed to record a "hip hop" song because his brother was famous at the time.
I wouldn't blame Marky Mark for that one, when the writing is horrible and lacks a true plot line what do you expect?
Oh this movie wasn't nearly as bad as you make it. Not spectacular, not especially memorable, but watchable.
ReplyI agree
Watchable, sure - but not worth a single penny of your money.
i was hoping that one scene where the characters just give the f**k up and go outside and are facing one another would end with the little girl being snatched up by a velociraptor. that would be the end. just raptors.
ReplyHaha, this is how I will mentally cope with every bad movie I happen to watch from now on. Just raptors.
too long
ReplyHoly shit! Rod has targeted something that both deserves to get ripped into but hasnt had the shit mocked out of it already! Good job, now all you need to do is be at least marginally funny and you can replace Fatboy Roberts as Cracked's resident pretentious unfunny movie nerd douchebag
Replyid like to say that i dont hate m shamylan. but the happening was alright to me. funny in my perspective. i thought it was hilarious how those people started walking off the edges and smacking into the ground. maybe thats just me....
ReplyI hate suicide portrayed in any way, but this movie actually made me laugh out loud