Analysis of The Happening

‘The Happening’ is a film which was produced in 2008. It was released as a psychological thriller – there are many different aspects of the film which we see in the first five minutes that we can analyse to define which genre the film belongs and which conventions are used effectively in the film.

In the opening scene, we can see it is a typical day. When viewing the mise-en-scene, there is nothing out of the ordinary whatsoever. There is a public path and a green area with children playing and many people walking. It is a summer’s day with the sun out and a slight breeze (however we only take this into account after watching the scene several times). In a typical thriller film everything is opposite to this, they are usually set in the night time with very few characters around, however this is only the opening of the film so we do not really consider this.

Similarly, in the building site, it is a summer’s day with a slight breeze. There are several men working there who suffer the same fate. In these two different settings, despite the atmosphere being the same there is a contrast in characters. In the park, there are mostly women and children, whereas in the building site there are many more men – as they all suffer the same demise it becomes apparent to the viewer that everyone is in trouble, irrespective of age, gender or anything else. The convention of people dying is certainly intercontextual with the thriller genre, but not too often is there mass death in the very early stages of the film. This shows that although using any conventions well in this film, they are also used very uniquely to make the film different to other similar films.

Both digetic and non-digetic sounds are used in the opening to the film, and both are used to very good effect. The digetic sounds used are mainly the characters speaking to one another, as well as the natural sounds recorded such as dogs barking, and most importantly, the sound of people screaming and dying.

The only noticeable non-digetic sound used is during the introduction of the film – this is the eerie music added at the start to the images of moving clouds. This gives us a sense that wind is being portrayed as dangerous and we realise that it will play a big part in how the story is told.

In the very early scene in the film, including two women reading books. When the virus takes over one of the women, she takes a sharp weapon from her hair and stabs herself in the neck with it – the sharp object shows a direct link with many thriller films, all of which usually include death, and sometimes with a sharp weapon, this means that it is intercontextual with other thriller films, as it meets one of the most typical conventions in the genre.

The other signifier that it may be a thriller is some of the camera work that the directors use to good effect. There is everything from extreme-long-shots to extreme-close-ups used, to show the setting, or extreme detail respectively. The emotions shown in the movie are that of worry and fright, these are typical signifiers in films that something bad is happening, which is usually the sort of thing that takes place in a thriller. The same goes for the setting, especially when backed up by eerie non-digetic sounds.