This is not a spoiler, because it’s in any cursory description of the film, but The Happening involves plants and the wind that connects them and nature striking back at man for overstepping his bounds. There are a lot of scenes in The Happening of trees, grass, and bushes waving in the wind. Also, I’m obsessed with the movie Grizzly Man. Maybe it was the Man Vs Nature conflict of both movies, but watching The Happening, I couldn’t help but be reminded of this scene in Grizzly Man, where director Werner Herzog finds that images of waving plants “developed their own life, their own mysterious stardom” in doomed hero Timothy Treadwell’s b-roll footage.

I think one thing we can say about Timothy Treadwell is that of all people who ever lived, he probably did realize that seemingly empty moments have a strange secret beauty, but whatever Werner.