Phenomenon (film, 2008)

In the northeastern United States, people, for unknown reasons, begin to commit mass suicides . First, people become disoriented, then stop moving, and finally find the fastest and most nightmare way to kill themselves - a girl pierces her carotid artery with a long hairpin, builders jump from the woods, a man in the zoo feeds himself to lions, another man lays under a working mowing machine , etc. The epidemic begins in parks and spreads rapidly to nearby settlements. At first, people believe that this is a biological attack by terrorists, but then this theory seems less and less true, because events are beginning to take place in small towns.

Elliot Moore, a teacher at a high school in Philadelphia, is discussing with his students the sudden loss of bees in several states at once. When news of sudden mass suicides spread, school was canceled, and he decided to leave town with his wife Alma, a friend Julian and his eight-year-old daughter Jess. The train in which they rode stops in a small town in the state of Pennsylvania ; the driver says that they have lost contact and cannot go further. Julian learns that the “attacks” (terrorists, as everyone thinks) affected Princeton (New Jersey) , where his wife is. He leaves his daughter Jess with Elliot and Alma, and he goes to his wife in an infected city. Approaching the city, he sees in a green alley corpses of people hanging on trees. The girl, fellow traveler Juliana, is terrified in hysteria; Julian tries to distract and calm her, and suddenly notices a gap in the tarpaulin roof of the car through which infected air enters the cab. Breathing them, the driver sitting behind the wheel crashes the car on a tree, and Julian, without receiving fatal injuries, gets out of the car and cuts his veins with a piece of glass. What happened to his wife is unknown, but it can be assumed that she also died.

Meanwhile, Elliot, Alma and Jess get into the car to two gardeners. The man tells his theory that plants can attack other living organisms in order to protect themselves. He says that plants can also communicate with each other. By car, they reach the intersection of roads, it turns out that all the nearest cities were attacked. Many other cars arrive at the same intersection - everyone escapes from places affected by the suicide epidemic.

People decide to walk across the field to a small settlement, where there was supposedly no attack yet. They are divided into two groups. Elliot, Alma and Jess in the smaller group. The second group was several times larger and went behind the first. As they walked, Elliot hears shots from behind, one by one the people of the second group kill themselves with one pistol. Elliot thinks that in fact, these plants release poison that affects humans. The larger the group of people, the more likely it is that the plants will trigger a self-defense reaction. Elliot offers to split into three more groups, he stays with Alma, Jess and two teenagers - George and Jimmy.

Looking for food for Jess, the Elliot group came across a barricaded house with survivors inside who still believe that the terrorists are to blame. They do not want to open the doors, and when two teenagers begin to burst into the house, the survivors shoot firearms and kill George and Jimmy. The survivors Elliot, Alma and Jess have to escape.

They go to the house of a woman living in complete isolation, who is not aware of the general panic. She allows them to stay in her house, but treats the guests suspiciously and somewhat hostilely.

The next morning, Elliot wakes up and cannot find Alma and Jess. He inadvertently enters the room, which allowed the old women to spend the night, and she screams that he wanted to rob her.

In a rage, a woman leaves the house into the garden, where plants react to her, and she kills herself, breaking her head against the walls and windows of the house. Realizing that the defense mechanism has become even more sensitive, affecting even one person, Elliot closes in the house. He locks himself in a room where he can hear Alma and Jess, who went out into the garden early in the morning and wandered into the shed (there is a pipe through the ground from which this room can be talked into.) Elliot and Alma decide that if they die, they should be together at the last minute. They go out into the street, slowly walk towards each other, but nothing happens.

Three months later, Elliot and Alma began a new life with Jess, as with their adopted daughter. On television, the environmentalist warns that the general epidemic was only a warning, like the rash that precedes the infection, the TV presenter does not believe him and says that if this were so, then this would happen again in some other place. Elliot stands with Jess at the bus stop - she goes to school for the first time. At this time, Alma learns that she is pregnant. When Elliot returns, Alma greets him with a smile and says that he will soon become a father.

The film moves to Paris. Two young men enthusiastically talk to each other, but suddenly stop. With people passing by, the same thing happens. The wind sways the trees, and this indicates that there was a repeated release of the toxin into the air ...

• Zoe Deschanel - Alma Moore , Elliot's Wife
• Mark Wahlberg - Elliot Moore , Philadelphia High School Teacher, Married Alma
• John Leguizamo - Julian , a high school math teacher and friend of Elliot
• Ashlyn Sanchez - Jess , Julian's Daughter
• Spencer Breslin - Josh , a teenager who travels at the same time with his friend Jared, along with Elliot, Alma and Jess
• Betty Buckley - Mrs. Jones , an unsociable elderly woman living alone in a small cottage
• M. Knight Shyamalan - Joey , with whom Alma secretly talked on a cell phone during the film
• Frank Collison - The Owner of the Greenhouse, who knew the nature of the mysterious phenomenon
• Cyril Tyuvenen - friend of a French cyclist

In January 2007, Shyamalan proposed a script called The Green Effect to various studios, but no one was interested. The director rewrote the script for the 20th Century Fox company so that it could be compared with such films as Birds ( 1963 ) and The Invasion of Body Thieves ( 1956 ).

Later in March, Wahlberg negotiated with Shyamalan about participating in the film. 20th Century Fox gave $ 57 million for the film. The bulk of the film was shot in India by UTV. Filming began in August in Philadelphia. The film's release date was deliberately set for Friday June 13, 2008.

The music for the film was written by Oscar nominee James Newton Howard . The music was recorded in Hollywood at the Sony Scoring Stage Symphony Studio. With Maya Beizer Orchestra and Solo. The soundtrack for the film was released on June 3, 2008.

On the premiere day (Friday 13th), the movie Appearance raised $ 13 million. Until the end of the week, the general fees were $ 30,517,109 in 2,986 cinemas, the film was in third place at the box office after The Incredible Hulk and Kung Fu Panda . The foreign box office in the first weekend of the show was approximately $ 32.1 million. The total amount of money during the first weekend was $ 62.7 million. Total box office receipts on July 15, 2008 amounted to $ 185.9 million.

• According to the director, 85% of the film’s action takes place on the street.
• Filming lasted 44 days and started on August 6, 2007, exactly 9 years after the start of the production of the film The Sixth Sense and on the director’s birthday.
• This is the first Shyamalan film with an age rating of R, in which children under 17 are allowed into the cinema only accompanied by adults. All his previous paintings are rated PG-13.
• The movie scenes were shot in the exact chronological order in which they were located in the script.
• In the main role, the director initially saw only Mark Wahlberg.
• At the end of the film, Jess puts on a backpack with the inscription "Avatar" from the animated film "Avatar: The Last Airbender", which Shyamalan filmed after the movie "Apparition."
• The assumption that plants can communicate with each other and defend themselves against enemies together, which formed the basis of the plot of the film, has some basis. According to an article on the Elements of Science website:

... the plant, gnawed by herbivores, releases ethylene into the air, and for neighboring plants it serves as an alarm - they begin to intensively produce toxic substances to protect against eating

- http://elementy.ru/email/5021738

• Official site
• Phenomenon on the Internet Movie Database  
• Appearance on the Rotten Tomatoes website  
• The Phenomenon on the Metacritic Website  
• Phenomenon (English) on the site allmovie  
• "Phenomenon" on the site of the magazine "Poster"