'The Happening' opening review.

The Happening opening begins with the rolling skies. These skies at the start are of a reasonably normal colour, however as it progresses the clouds gradually turn to be a more gloomy daunting colour. This reflects the type of mood the director wants the audience to have. It gives a sense of mystery, and the fact it is the sky turning implies that it is something uncontrollable too. This makes the audience feel helpless. Also a lot of non diegetic sound is used in the opening sequence. It starts of with harmonious strings, and ends up being deep and chilling. This again tied in with the whether changing gives a sense of panic, or maybe the sense of, excuse the pun, something happening. 

(The Happening introduction {initial clouds})

After this there is a scene in times square, New York. The location suggests safety, there is nothing around that is a threat, no non diegetic sounds are added and the audience is left feeling safe at this time. However very quickly things change, camera shots become more rapid, leaving the audience confused again, non diegetic sounds kick in, tense sounds used by the director. This will leave the audience feeling helpless again. More so this time as they were in the comfort of an everyday surrounding, a place that safety would have been perceived, however this would have left them with the feeling of a lack of safety, like nowhere that they go will be safe. After that it goes to a close up of a woman killing herself. This is shocking for the audience to see, and the reaction of the lady killing herself is equally as shocking. The director uses a close up so that the audience are able to view all of the emotion, or in this case lack of emotion shown by the character. The audience will also experience all of the gore of the suicide, making them feel uncomfortable, and as if something out of there hands is going on. The diegetic sounds of the trees links in with the clouds shown in the previous sequence. These two things are key to how the audience understands the film later on. A bit of foreshadowing by the director perhaps. Also the fact that it is two women sat on the bench a the main characters is typical of the thriller genre, as it makes you think of a damsel in distress.

The next shot is at a building site. The audience by now is totally aware that not everything is okay, so they are not as naive as they were to begin with and suspect trouble. And true to form, trouble occurs. Again the scene is set to be reasonably safe, I mean as safe as a building site can be, there is some jovial banter flying round from members of the workforce however true to happening style, someone dies. And another, and another, and many, many more. The way they die though is the concerning part. The deaths are fantastically shot using the golden mean, as shown adjacently;

The happening contains many typicalities of a conventional thriller. It has the constant suspense involved, the overly dramatic non diegetic sounds to stress that it is tense, they damsel in distress in the opening scene and glaringly obvious foreshadowing (only when re watched). I wasn't 'The Happening''s biggest fan, however it does show very clearly some key themes in the thriller genre.