The Happening: The Abridged Script
By: Rod Hilton on Jun 28th, 2008 | Movie Rating: 
Wahlberg looks in terror as a very angry Funky Bunch approaches on the horizon.
This script was featured as a Cracked.com Guest Column. To read it there, follow this link..
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.
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, a 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, whose name is ZOOEY.
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 and travel by train out of the CITY.
JOHN LEQUIZAMO
I can’t get my wife on the phone. It’s probably because we have Sprint, but I want to make sure. 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, and doing so well help ensure the audience feels no sense of danger whatsoever.
He DOES, then listens to MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE and CUTS HIMSELF. MARK, ZOOEY, and JOHN’S DAUGHTER find themselves with a large crowd of random strangers.
MARK WAHLBERG
Alright everyone, it looks like this toxin is somehow targeting only large groups. Stay in small groups.
ZOOEY DESCHANEL
So if you’re by yourself, you’ll probably be alright?
MARK WAHLBERG
It looks that way. All across the country, crazy loner shut-ins are probably doing just fine.
ZOOEY DESCHANEL
Good news for Sony and Microsoft.
MARK, ZOOEY, and JOHN’S DAUGHER 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 happening.
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.
MARK WAHLBERG
Hey! Let us into your fortified home! I promise that the completely mysterious toxin that nobody understands won’t come in and kill you!
RANDOM STRANGER
Fuck off! Here in this house, we done got a strict policy of not allowing entry to cast members from that shitty ‘Planet of the Apes’ remake, ya hear?
MARK, ZOOEY, and JOHN’S DAUGHTER locate a different 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 inside and 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
HEY ROD there’s going to be an arrested development movie
http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1590059/story.jhtml
June 28th, 2008 at 9:30 amSo Shyamalan remade Day of the Triffids, only without the Triffids? Or is it a ripoff of Stephen King’s “Cell” without the smart social commentary and human deep-structure brain theory? Thanks for the heads-up, Rod, I’ll be giving this one a miss.
June 28th, 2008 at 9:54 amOn a related note, this isn’t the first time Shyamalan ripped off a previous work of decent sci-fi. The Village seemed really familiar to me until I remembered it was all in a book I read in fifth grade, Margaret Peterson Haddix’s “Running out of Time”. Hackery!
it’s also a ripoff of the andromeda strain because that virus makes some people kill themselves and also a ripoff of war of the worlds because well rod stated that already but it basically follows the storyline in that they’re refugees constantly running away and they see shit like MAN’S INHUMANITY TO MAN and hang out with psychos (except the psycho in this has no purpose except to die).
June 28th, 2008 at 10:38 amIt seems like the Cracked commentators aren’t up in arms against you for this script.. yet.
And I’m sorry for anyone who had to see this movie.
June 28th, 2008 at 11:50 amI loved the bit about Jax’s fatality and how nothing was ‘happening’. What purpose did Zooey and the little girl even have in the film but to just be more baggage on Mark? Did their marriage pick up or anything?
June 28th, 2008 at 11:58 amw00t rodriguez:
June 28th, 2008 at 1:21 pmThe Happening can’t be ripping off Andromeda Strain because Andromeda Strain came out so recently that The Happening would have already been in post-production by the time that Mr. Shyamalan or anyone else would have seen Andromeda, giving him no opportunity to insert Andromeda rip-offs into his film. Not that I’m upholding the integrity of this sub-par movie, but just FYI.
The Andromeda Strain was a book published, and originally adapted into a movie, in the 70s, with the same basic premise as the made for TV remake.
I still wouldn’t call it a ripoff, since most of the deaths in Andromeda Strain aren’t suicide, but directly virus related, the disease stays in a contained area, and the plot itself is vastly different. There as similar as Cloverfield and Godzilla.
June 28th, 2008 at 1:36 pmWow you’re sense Evan, THe Andromeda Strain was based on a book written By Michale Crichton in 1969
June 28th, 2008 at 1:38 pmI hate to make a request, but one movie that is so terrible, the script would write itself:
The Mist
This would make for a great one.
June 28th, 2008 at 3:12 pmI might watch it just for the suicides. Are those any good?
June 28th, 2008 at 5:18 pmExcellent script.
Shyamalan tries so hard to avoid cliches that he simply eliminates them instead of trying to think of alternatives. However, ripping off other books and films? Perfectly fine.
I hated Wahlberg’s stupid wide-eyed cunt of a wife so much.
June 28th, 2008 at 7:04 pmShouldn’t M. Night be laughed out of most studios after this latest disaster? I always thought there was some rule about making too many shitty flops in a row.
June 29th, 2008 at 12:36 amI HAVE AN UNEXPECTED TWIST ENDING FOR YOU…
Someone pulls the funding for his next piece of crap film BEFORE its made!
Didnt see that coming did ya?!?
June 29th, 2008 at 1:29 amI hate it when you do that. I like to read The Editing Room in bed with my Blackberry, but Cracked.com forces me into the most clueless and stinky mobile-ish site ever.
June 29th, 2008 at 7:36 amLmb: Just wait two days then. ;)
The script shows up here the following Monday.
June 29th, 2008 at 10:39 amlowercasep: The suicides are incredibly ridiculous and hilarious. But few and far between.
June 29th, 2008 at 11:59 am“I still wouldn’t call it a ripoff, since most of the deaths in Andromeda Strain aren’t suicide, but directly virus related, the disease stays in a contained area, and the plot itself is vastly different. There as similar as Cloverfield and Godzilla.”
the andromeda strain virus does kill people, but it also causes people to commit suicide in weird ways (just like the virus in the movie), and also the virus in the movie (until the very end) is contained in new england, and the andromeda strain is contained in an area too.
June 29th, 2008 at 12:11 pmSo just to get this straight - plants are fed up with mankind abusing the environment so release a deadly, suicide inducing toxin to get shot of us.
Because plants are sentient and can alter their bio-chemistry at will. Of course.
Then the first place to get hit is a MAJOR URBAN AREA.
Right. Nice one M.
Does M stand for McG??
June 29th, 2008 at 5:10 pm[/quote]the andromeda strain virus does kill people, but it also causes people to commit suicide in weird ways (just like the virus in the movie), and also the virus in the movie (until the very end) is contained in new england, and the andromeda strain is contained in an area too.[quote/]
I was going by the Abridged script, which didn’t mention the virus being contained, which it logically wouldn’t be, given the twist. Unless New England plants are just really fucking angry.
Still, unless Rod left out a massive subplot, Andromeda Strain’s main plot of the secret group of scientists working to find a cure, and the whole bit with the nuclear missile, are unrelated, so I still maintain that The Happening doesn’t qualify as a Andromeda Strain ripoff, like how any movie about people robbing casino wouldn’t instantly be a Oceans Eleven ripoff.
June 29th, 2008 at 5:49 pmHello, Rod,
I noticed this version of the Happening script is slightly different than the one on Cracked.com. Is there any particular reason for that? They are both extraordinarily funny, but I just noticed that there are differences between the two….
June 29th, 2008 at 9:33 pmAmy,
Yeah, they changed some stuff. This is what I sent them.
June 30th, 2008 at 6:34 am“M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN: Surprise, I managed to make a movie worse than ‘Lady in the Water’!”
Best closing line EVER. Kudos, Rod.
June 30th, 2008 at 7:35 amthat “funky bunch” caption is win
June 30th, 2008 at 12:02 pm“… whose name is Zooey.”
OLD SCHOOL REFERENCE. Hell yeah.
June 30th, 2008 at 4:13 pm“I was going by the Abridged script, which didn’t mention the virus being contained, which it logically wouldn’t be, given the twist. Unless New England plants are just really fucking angry.
Still, unless Rod left out a massive subplot, Andromeda Strain’s main plot of the secret group of scientists working to find a cure, and the whole bit with the nuclear missile, are unrelated, so I still maintain that The Happening doesn’t qualify as a Andromeda Strain ripoff, like how any movie about people robbing casino wouldn’t instantly be a Oceans Eleven ripoff.”
well, yeah, the toxin is actually confined to new england, which goes along with the twist as shitty as you’d think.
but i meant that the viruss in the movie seemed to be a ripoff of the andromeda strain virus… not really the happening itself being a ripoff of the andromeda strain.
June 30th, 2008 at 4:45 pmIf anybody knows, how the hell do you pronounce the wife’s name? Zoo-e?
June 30th, 2008 at 9:02 pmThis might be the most retarded attempt at a message since Happy Feet.
July 1st, 2008 at 2:25 am“i meant that the viruss in the movie seemed to be a ripoff of the andromeda strain virus… not really the happening itself being a ripoff of the andromeda strain.”
I guess the virus itself was “inspired” by Andromeda Strain virus.
Also, to lowercasep, according to imdb, the actress playing the wife’s name is pronounced ZOH-ee.
July 1st, 2008 at 2:13 pmFor the record, this crazy loner shut-in loves your scripts :-)
July 2nd, 2008 at 7:31 ami noticed when the page loaded, Rod, that you titled the movie ‘The Crappening’. But it was then covered up by the picture. Do you do this with all your movies?
July 3rd, 2008 at 12:21 pmSeems that way. Every picture should have an alternate text.
July 3rd, 2008 at 4:40 pmIndy has one, too. Good new feature.
July 3rd, 2008 at 5:38 pmXdude, Ryan, Matt:
Yeah I’m putting one on all the new scripts. I’m also very slowly going back and doing it for older stuff, the way I’m adding pictures to older stuff (usually only when it’s a related post linked from newer stuff).
I’d like to get a picture, caption, and mad-magazine style alt text on every script on the site at some point, but I’m not really in any hurry.
July 3rd, 2008 at 8:57 pmWhy don’t we call it Everybody HATES Raymond?
Well, we had to stay up all night, but it was worth it!
July 6th, 2008 at 4:21 pm[QUOTE]Why don’t we call it Everybody HATES Raymond?
Well, we had to stay up all night, but it was worth it![/QUOTE]
The funny thing is, MAD Magazine *did* have an “Everybody Loves Raymond” parody. It was called “Everybody Loathes Raymud”, not “Everybody Hates Raymond”. Just because William Gaines died doesn’t mean the MAD writers are THAT lazy as depicted on The Simpsons.
July 6th, 2008 at 6:00 pmwell i saw Indiana Groans 4, I think the next should be called Sex and the Shitty
July 8th, 2008 at 12:54 amThis isn’t Cloverfield.
July 11th, 2008 at 2:06 pm[QUOTE]This isn’t Cloverfield.[/QUOTE]
Ten bucks says that the 200th Abridged Script will be “Cloverfield”.
July 12th, 2008 at 3:48 pm#38: I reckon it’s Doomsday
July 14th, 2008 at 2:52 amif all plants were to suddenly stop producing oxygen, we would still have enough for about 10000 years.
My bio lecturer is about as qualified as mark wahlberg, though
July 26th, 2008 at 7:32 amA love letter to Rod Hilton (I’ll call you an asshole some other time to up my “dude” cred):
This is the first script I read by Rod, and I was hooked. And because I’ve gone through all the Archived scripts now, I’m going back through all the comments too. It’s nearly as much fun as the scripts.
So I have to weigh in and get this off my chest, because God, er, I mean Rod, has given us this forum. And it’s nice to blow off some steam after a week of working for The Man by writing a totally trivial comment about a totally worthless movie. But this is OUR hill…and these are OUR beans…so here goes:
This movie was the absolute worst movie I have ever seen. Bar none. BAR NONE! (calming down…) I loved the Sixth Sense; I liked Unbreakable well enough; and I was okay with The Village. I even went along for the ride with Signs and wasn’t too pissed off or anything.
But all along there was this sinking feeling of, oh shit, these movies are steadily getting worse. Almost as if by design. It’s like a band that’s struggling for years, gets their big break, and puts all their best shit they’ve been working on for years on the first CD, then the record company says, “Okay, so whattaya got for the next CD?”
And I figured it bottomed out with Lady in the Water. But no.
The thing is, Marky Mark can actually act better than this. Zooey can actually be likeable. I was looking around me at the movie theater, thinking, “Is anyone else in here appalled at this assault on our intelligence?”
For me, the last straw was the fucking Hot Dog Man. His solliloquy on hot dogs had me nearly hopping in my seat, looking around, like, really? Are you really doing this? I felt like I was getting a root canal and a colonoscopy at the same time. MY BRAIN TRIED TO CRAWL OUT OF MY SKULL AND ESCAPE. I should have left, but my wife likes Marky Mark and it was our date night, so…
Here’s the bottom line: M. Night thinks he’s smarter than the room, but he blew his creative load years ago. I will never spend another minute/dollar contributing to his financial well-being.
And when I read Rod’s script, I thought, “Holy shit! This guy totally gets what I hate about this movie! Yes! A published essay telling the world what I wanted to shout from the rooftops! There is JUSTICE!”
Don’t worry, Rod. I love you, but I’m not IN LOVE with you.
August 29th, 2008 at 3:33 pmIt’s John Leguizamo. G, not Q.
Sheesh.
September 28th, 2008 at 9:31 pmFunny ‘cuz that’s a good twist ending and also entirely true, sans jokey script context. This movie is somehow even fucking worse than goddamn “Lady in the Water” which was unbelievably bad at the time.
I like your version of Leguizamo treating Zooey badly. And the way you illustrate through the characters your maddened search for any remote sense of logic or decency. What the fucking fuck IS this shit, M. Night…
November 2nd, 2008 at 8:36 pm