Spoiler Alert: “The Happening” You have been Warned!
“What if nature one day turned on us?” That was M. Night Shyamalan’s thesis for his new film “The Happening.” The movie revolves around science teacher Elliot Moore, played by Mark Wahlberg, who tries to escape a series of unexplained events that seem to be some sort of terrorist attack. Only later do the hapless characters realize the “terrorists” might be seemingly harmless plants who are releasing neurotoxins to defend themselves against us. In the movie these neurotoxins cause people to commit suicide in desperate and grisly ways. Though the movie has received some lack-luster reviews the eco-message is intriguing. How long can we attack nature before it attacks us? M. Night was recently interviewed on NPR and revealed his “movies are always about something I’m worried about.” Pondering the question of an angry planet, he went to his researchers and asked them if there was any evidence that events similar to his idea had ever occurred in nature. What he received in response were stacks of research pointing to an answer of yes. I did some snooping of my own and discovered a number of interesting articles including a paper by Michelle Marko at Colorado State University. She claims that plants do produce compounds such as neurotoxins and store them, but if they released these chemicals they would be in danger of poisoning themselves due to the biological similarity between the plants and the organisms they attempt to repel. Apparently, the plants in M. Night’s movie are desperately suicidal or have found a work-around. It’s evident that if we hurt the Earth we are in effect hurting ourselves due to our dependence on her good graces. M. Night proposes that nature might eventually launch a blitzkrieg on humans and points to evidence such as the real phenomenon of disappearing bees. The argument of whether we destroy the earth or the earth destroys us is null and void; in either case we won’t survive. Perhaps the scariest part of Shyamalan’s new feature isn’t the movie itself but the question it raises: Is it already Happening?
