"The Happening"

If it weren't for the howling wind outside on Saturday evening, you might well have heard our shouts of glee coming from a Powell Road farmhouse.
Two friends and I were watching "The Happening," the M. Night Shyamalan movie that was filmed, in part, literally just down the street from their home in the summer of 2007.
"That's the back of our property!" cried Susan.
"I have that exact same map book!" I yelled, startling the Corgi who had been snoozing on my belly. I made the host stop the DVD, and I jumped up from the sofa and pointed to exactly where I live. There were the words "West Marlborough" on the map, right there on the screen!
It was so much fun to recognize the Unionville countryside, which of course looked beautiful, even though the wind blowing through the trees and tall grass was meant to be ominous. Susan pointed out the road that was built just for the movie, so that folks fleeing the mysterious neurotoxin could arrive from four directions at "the triangle" formed by Powell and Scott Roads. (In real life the road ends abruptly on the top of a hill, just as it leaves camera range.) We see several corpses sprawled on what is clearly Scott Road.

 

Apparently working on location in Unionville didn't suit the actors, though. In the "Making of" feature, they were complaining about having to run through fields day after day and fending off large grasshoppers.