What's 'Happening' in M. Night Shyamalan's new movie?

ByABC News
June 17, 2008, 5:50 AM

— -- Now in theaters, The Happening joins that rarest of film genres movies with a biology teacher hero. Better-looking than most biology teachers, Elliot Moore (played by Mark Wahlberg) flees a mysterious plague of vertigo and suicides striking the northeastern states with his family and friends.

(SPOILER ALERT!)

Escaping the chaos, Moore determines that neurological toxins released to the air by trees defending themselves from mankind are behind the plague.

Never wanting to shrink from a look at science on the silver screen, I interviewed writer/director M. Night Shyamalan about the science behind The Happening and whether scientists get a fair shake from Hollywood:

Q: How do you come by your interest in science? Science isn't a hot topic with most film directors, is it?

A:I think it is a forgotten passion of mine, just daydreaming about some of the wonderful things we've learned from science. My family was in the medical field when I was younger, so science was always a particular (laughs) option out there for me and I saw it as interesting even after life took me to art school and then film school.

Q: So, how was it reopening that interest for this movie?

A:Well, we spent last year talking to scientists and developing ideas for The Happening and it has been fun. The way it really worked is that the story is science-based. I had the idea for the movie and then I asked a research assistant to check into it. "Go tell me if I just made up that part of a consciousness, a rabid ability to defend itself in the environment?" I asked her. And she came back with this stack of research papers. Often a story is loosely based on something you heard somewhere in a conversation and then you have see if it will work.

Obviously, we were heavily influenced by the scientist James Lovelock in looking at the evidence.

Note: Scientist James Lovelock first published the outlines of the "Gaia" hypothesis, which suggests that Earth's flora and fauna are interlocked to systematically moderate conditions in Earth's atmosphere to make the planet more hospitable, a controversial idea best known from his 1979 book, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth.