The Happening
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The Happening is a film by director M. Night Shyamalan, released June 2008, about an epidemic of suicides.
[edit] Plot
The movie centers around Philadelphia high-school biology teacher Elliot Moore, whose favorite pedagogical technique is to encourage his students to explain a phenomenon by attributing it to "mysterious natural processes". Moore and his family flee for their lives after mass suicides start plaguing the Northeast. The movie explains these mysterious suicides as being driven by the "spontaneous evolution" of a "toxin" in plants. Moore gets his poignant on-screen moment of dismissing those so-called scientists' ability to explain anything, since it is all just a theory: "Science will come up with a reason to put in the books but in the end it's just a theory. We fail to acknowledge forces at work beyond our understanding." Luckily, everything comes out all right in the end, because "events like this can just end suddenly". The finale is a monologue about the limits of rational thought delivered by a supposed scientist.
[edit] Reactions, praise, criticism etc.
It was thrust into the forefront of the culture wars after its release, when some reviewers commented on what they perceived as anti-science and intelligent design themes [1] Pro-ID forces have also crowed about it as proof that "Darwinists" are losing the culture war on multiple fronts.[2]
In an interview about the film's release, Shyamalan harped on how he was motivated by Albert Einstein's supposed religious conversion fueled by the unknowable universe.[3]
The film has also been criticized for sexist themes, intentional or not, as women are depicted as being primarily baby factories who need to learn their place.[1]
Plus, the movie is fucking terrible.[4]