585 out of 916 people found the following comment useful :- This is a joke, right?, 13 June 2008
Author:
AdnanZ from Canada
Allow me to provide some background information on my relationship with
the films of M. Night Shyamalan: I adored "The Sixth Sense" and still
think of it as one of the best films of 1999 and one of the best
supernatural thrillers in ages. "Unbreakable" was a fascinating take on
the superhero genre. I loved parts of "Signs" to bits and consider the
sequence in the basement towards the end of the film one of the finest
examples of suspenseful build-up in recent film history. I even liked
"The Village" and could easily dismiss "Lady in the Water" as a mere
misfire. I was greatly anticipating "The Happening", especially as it
seemed to be echoing one of my favorite guilty pleasures- the paranoid
70's sci-fi thriller.
Let's get one thing out of the way- "The Happening" is unbelievably,
impossibly, ridiculously, hilariously, inconceivably bad. Normally I
would refuse to rate any film that had any good scenes or that was
well-directed less than four out of ten, but "The Happening" has to
have one of the worst scripts among recent big-budget Hollywood films.
It's absolutely shocking how retarded the logic behind this is and how
poor so much of the dialogue is. This script began as "The Green
Effect", a tremendously poor (trust me, I read parts of it) script by
Shyamalan that was soundly rejected and eventually reworked into "The
Happening". Having seen the critical reaction to "The Happening" prior
to going into the film I found myself pleasantly surprised by basically
the first thirty, forty minutes of the film. It was nothing special but
it had something going for it, Shyamalan's direction was top-notch, and
Wahlberg was playing the sort of goofy science teacher I'd loved (and
loved to hate on occasion) in high school.
Then the descent began. The bulk of this film is some of the most
hilariously awful crap produced by a talented filmmaker since
Schaffner's "Sphinx". Shyamalan, who was using close-ups and steadicam
shots to frankly brilliant effect early on, begins to use the same
shots to comical effect. There is one painfully, painfully long
close-up of Mark Wahlberg pleading for time to think and then calling
for his group to 'keep ahead of the wind' that is up there with Nicolas
Cage in "The Wicker Man" in terms of hilariously awful acting. That
scene may very well be the turning point in the film, with Wahlberg's
acting becoming more ridiculous by the second, culminating in a
performance that essentially wipes from memory all his tremendous
recent achievements as an actor. I don't blame Wahlberg for this, I
blame Shyamalan. Wahlberg claims Shyamalan tried to force him into real
paranoia so his performance would work better. What happens here (no
pun intended) is that Wahlberg ends up looking amazingly uncomfortable
for the last hour of this thing and struggles to deliver any reasonable
line deliveries.
Okay, I do have to credit Zooey Deschanel for making this movie
watchable. Besides being amazingly, ridiculously gorgeous she is a fine
actress and creates a sympathetic character (and a fairly well-drawn
one at that- one of the few pros in Shyamalan's script). There's also
the score: oh my it's gorgeous. Seriously, ignore this film and just
buy the score CD by James Newton Howard- it's brilliant.
"The Happening" starts out well but ends up being an absolute
embarrassment. I was prepared for a mediocre offering- perhaps a
misguided effort such as "Lady in the Water". I was not expecting a
disaster on the level of "The Happening". Its last forty minutes and
especially its last ten minutes or so are among the worst I have seen
in a long time.
Have you ever wondered if it was possible for a film to go from
enjoyable to absolutely horrendous in the space of ten or fifteen
minutes? "The Happening" is proof that it can, pardon the (intentional)
pun, happen.
3/10
507 out of 863 people found the following comment useful :- Believe it..., 12 June 2008
Author:
heyuguys1988 from United States
I hate this. I want to tell you guys that this was Shyamalan's comeback
and that this film is just as terrifying as you've been promised. But,
I cannot.
The film starts off actually quite well. Minus some less than stellar
acting (in fact, its horrible) and some just as bad dialogue, I really
thought that maybe this film could pull it off. Disturbing death scenes
ensue.
Then, bring in Mark Wahlberg. What happened to this guy? Nominated for
an Oscar for his turn in The Departed, Wahlberg seems like a safe bet,
but in actuality, he's playing a role that just isn't made for him.
This role was made for someone nicer. Walhberg has been typecast time
and time again as the angry and bad-ass guy, and now I see why. He's
good at that and god awful at being nice.
No one else is particularly good either. Zoey Deschanel disappoints,
John Leguizamo (Everyone in this movie has a name that's difficult to
spell), and all of the extras are just as bad. There is not a single
moment of good acting in this movie.
And all of that is because of how rushed this film feels. This is one
of those movies that it seriously felt like the director was working on
a very limited budget and then took the first take for every actor,
none of them had a chance to get into their roles (or so I hope).
It's obvious who will get all of the blame for this (M. Night
Shyamalan) and it's really too bad. I can't say that the plot is
necessarily bad, it isn't, and with maybe one more draft the script
would've been good. The faults of this film all land on Night's
shoulders though. I hate to say it because I am very much not a hater
of his (I love The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs) but I'm forced
to say I hate this movie. Not so much for how bad it actually is (it's
very bad) but because I really had faith in the director. The trailers
almost felt promising and Shyamalan (am I even spelling this right?)
promised me that I'd walk out shaking. Instead, I was shaking my head
in disappointment.
One thing I'd like to add on though, I can tell that they were going
for a Hitchcock vibe and the best way I feel that I can describe this
is "a very bad version of The Birds." That is all.
318 out of 507 people found the following comment useful :- A terrible screenplay and poorly acted, 11 June 2008
Author:
Jean-François Adams from France
*** This comment may contain spoilers ***
"The Happening", which was released here in France today is a terrible
screenplay and poorly acted. The writer/director failed to make a
complete film, which employs any semblance of cinematic language.
Normally well-written, taut and engaging screenplays, like good editing
should be invisible. They should fit seamlessly into the film-making
process, but unfortunately for "The Happening", the writing,
construction of drama and dialogue are so bad that the awful screenplay
is apparent from the very first scene. The introduction of the main
conflict is visually well done, but the writers never bother to move
the story past its main conflict, thus making the film flat line
dramatically very early on. Essentially nothing ever happens except the
main characters totally unbelievable reactions to "The Happening" (i.e.
the main conflict).
We, the audience are not emotionally attached to the characters because
the screenplay gives us no reason to be. The film's sub-conflicts are
basically non-existent and the character conflicts (emotional
relationships) are contrived and hollow. The screenplay provides no
emotional outlet or connection at all. Simply said this is a screenplay
that should have been better vetted for emotional connection between
the audience and characters on screen. We don't care about what's
'Happening' because the people to whom it is 'Happening' mean nothing
to us. Someone should provide the screenwriter with a copy of
Aristotle's "Poetics".
The dialogue is over the top, simplistic, explicit and begs the
question - does anyone really talk like that? Line after line the
screenplay falls further and further apart. The characters tell us what
we can already see. Therefore the screenplay doesn't trust that the
cinematic language of images is doing its job. The beauty of cinema is
that with moving pictures we can say thousands upon thousands of words
with each frame and never actually employ dialogue. This screenplay
obviously does not respect that logic and in many ways flies right in
the face of it. The film would be a lot better if the characters just
simply reacted to the events unfolding around them.
The acting is unwatchable. No one in this film gives a good
performance. The acting, similar to the screenplay is devoid of
emotion. No one is reacting like a real person. Each character seems to
be emotionally empty. They don't seem nervous that millions of people
are dying, they're not hysterical (which doesn't not mean they should
yelling and screaming) or even realistic. They at no time in the film
seem desperate with the desire and hope to live. At times they try to
appear upset, but it is so shallow that the viewer is left flat. Each
actor delivers their lines without any regard or reaction to the actor
in front of them. It is so bad that it makes one wonder whether or not
the actors were actually on set together or just acting with stand-ins.
The sub-text of the film, which is meant to lead us to the theme
mankind is destroying the planet, is blatant and lacks finesse. Pretty
quickly into the first act we know that the plants are taking their
revenge (I wish I was making this up, but this really is the plot of
the film). The screenplay, dialogue and acting do nothing to merit the
ending in which a professor on television is yelling about 'how we
humanity are guilty for the recent horrors and need to pay better
attention to our physical environment.' The films is just waving its
fists and again telling us what to think rather than earning our trust.
It tells us what its about. Basically the film underestimates us every
step of the way.
The film never ventures into any kind of serious depth. It stays on the
most basic, one-dimensional level. Plants are killing us - run away.
Blame for this film's failures should be squarely laid upon the
director and producers. The director is guilty of writing and directing
a very bad and unbelievable film. The producers are responsible for
allowing the director to get away with this. Someone on the creative
team and/or on the production side should have sounded an alarm when
they read the screenplay. When the screenplay got into production one
of the producers should have watched the rushes and pulled the director
aside and said something.
"The Happening" is a failure on the most basic and important of
cinematic levels. It does nothing to win, earn and deserve the
audience's emotional and intellectual trust. It doesn't employ image as
its main storytelling tool. It just tries to be clever, but is actually
quite silly.
I for one don't care who the writer or director is, they must listen to
their production and creative team. Film-making is a collaborative
experience, but in the case of this film it is clear that no one
bothered to be honest with Mr. Shyamalan.
342 out of 590 people found the following comment useful :- It might be cliché, but it has to be said: The Happening is not happening., 12 June 2008
Author:
shariqq from United Arab Emirates
Shyamalan has proved to us earlier that he can be as good as the best
with masterpieces of cinema with The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable. Yet,
since then, he has declined steadily. Signs and Village were good
movies, but with Lady in the Water and now The Happening, he has
touched a level of incompetence that could never have been expected of
him.
The Happening is about a pandemic that is gripping north-eastern USA.
It starts with a stunning sequence of events that show people succumb
to an unspecified threat the brilliance of this opening repeated only
once more for a five-minute sequence towards the end of the movie.
Unfortunately, Shyamalan's writing is a big let-down for the rest. As
the focus moves from metropolitans to towns and from crowds to smaller
groups, the sense of fear is lost the biggest sin a horror movie can
commit. In the oft repeated criticism for its director, this movie
would have been best served as a half-hour episode of Twilight Zone to
make it really work.
And to add woe, the actors do not do much to better the experience
Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel are grossly miscast as the
protagonists. Any of his previous leading men (Bruce Willis, Mel
Gibson, Joaquin Phoenix and Paul Giamatti) can be imagined to have done
a better job for the Science teacher that Wahlberg plays. The camera
scrutinizes the performance to a degree that requires an actor with
strength in emotions Wahlberg instead brings a physical presence that
the role does not need. Zooey, on the other hand, struts around like in
a Disney movie, not for once threatened by the pandemonium.
This time, though Shyamalan humbles his vanity you don't see him on
screen. He now should swallow his pride and leave the writing to the
writers. Armed with a better script, we can still expect Shyamalan to
make his future movies worth waiting for. For now it is only the memory
of the opening sequence, which can be proclaimed as mind-numbing
greatness, which is really worth taking away from this movie.
292 out of 502 people found the following comment useful :- The End of an Era (but not a career), 15 June 2008
Author:
sro28-1 from United States
Let me preface these comments by saying that I am a major Night fan. I
look forward to news of his next project and love the stories of his
supposed total control over his movies and carte blanche from the
studios. If those stories are true, I have a feeling that era will be
ending for Night with the release of The Happening. I ignored all the
pre-release press I could before going to see this movie. I read none
of the reviews, but one word I did catch was "uninspired."
Unfortunately, that one word describes this movie perfectly. In the
first ten minutes of the movie, I thought it was due to the acting and
that maybe Mark Wahlberg was miscast. However, after another ten
minutes I realized it wasn't the actors; it was the extremely lame
script. Without giving away any details, this is a disaster film where
the disaster "happening" starts with the first scene of the movie.
Unfortunately, no suspense builds and there is absolutely sense of
dread or panic on screen and so none translates to the audience.
Surprising, since the 21st century has provided us with too many
occasions to study how we react in times of disaster, whether by nature
or terrorism. It's as if Night ignored all this when writing the story.
The characters sleepwalk through the scenes (and, no, it's not a
symptom of "the happening") with no believable sense of the horrible
events taking place. Granted, we don't need to see people running
around in circles screaming and crying, but people do not stand in
small groups after a disaster calmly taking turns talking one at a
time. Without sharing in any of the horror that the characters are
suppose to be experiencing, the film is a total bore for the audience
and the source of "the happening" is laughable when revealed. I found
myself repeatedly checking my watch, saying, "I can't believe how bad
this is" not something I'd expect to do in a Night movie. Looking
around the theater, I could tell others were sharing the same feelings.
Most were scrolling through emails or texting on their phones.
During the movie, since I wasn't paying much attention to the screen, I
started thinking that there might be a good reason why most filmmakers
do not have total control over their films. When they do, they can
reach a point that it seems Night may have reached, where they say,
"I'm going to make people scared when the wind blows" and actually
believe themselves. Maybe other producers or execs can step in at that
point and bring the filmmaker back to reality. I'm not giving up on
Night, but I'll feel better if his next film is not "Written, Produced
and Directed by M. Night Shyamalan."
474 out of 879 people found the following comment useful :- Why this film is important...and why people don't like it that way:, 13 June 2008
Author:
philmographer from United States
I was disappointed to see such harsh reviews from the critics when
there are clearly much sillier and stupid films out there. "Zohan" was
about 60% at rotten tomatoes, while "The Happening" was at 14%. The
disappointment didn't last long when I realized, given the information
above, if critics had liked this movie, that might have been a bad
thing. I focused my attention on interviews with Shyamalan himself
talking about the film instead of the pretentious critics who have
grown accustom to hating his movies. I decided to take HIS advice and
go into the theater looking for a "fun B movie".
You will find that, and so much more. This movie is not your average
thriller by any means. "The Happening" holds a solid "Twilight Zone"
feel without being cliché or overused. This might be why the average
masses didn't like it. We are used to being fed sequel after sequel
after remake after remake. Don't get me wrong, those are fun movies to
watch but the ART of film is being lost. The stereotypic perfect
leading man who is smooth, witty, handsome and quick thinking who
always saves the day will not be found in this film. Nor will the
overuse of incredible special effects, slashing and squirting blood and
gore, erotic sex scenes, fast paced chases, or crude language. Yes, the
content is uncomfortable and disturbing and times, but it has a point.
It's not goring for the sake of being goring and it's not uncontrolled
in it's violence.
This film is simple. It has flawed and awkward characters who don't
always say the smoothest thing. Everyone is imperfect and they don't
handle the situations in the best "hollywood" type manner. Shyamalan
did this on purpose. This movie is not paced for the "entertain me
entertain me entertain me entertain me" type audiences we have mostly
become. You are given the elements, but it's up to you to be able to
slow down and feel the emotions in order to appreciate the film. The
parable and meaning are so much deeper and innocent than what is
popularized in media today. It will challenge you. It will make you
think.
"The Happening" on the outside is a very fun and funny film. It is a
"B" movie on the surface because of it's amazing simplicity, but by the
end of the film you realize what it's actually all about. It's sad to
see that so many people have completely missed it.
Bottom line: If you liked his other films, you must see this one, it
falls into the ranks of everything made before Lady. If you didn't like
his other films, stick to boring remakes and sequels.
172 out of 279 people found the following comment useful :- "Awful" doesn't cover it., 14 June 2008
Author:
bytesmythe_42 from United States
*** This comment may contain spoilers ***
I haven't seen an M. Night Shyamalan movie since "Signs", although I've
heard each was worse than the previous ones. Strangely, this gave me
hope that "The Happening" would be a turning point for the director
that had won so much acclaim with "Sixth Sense".
Sadly, this isn't the case. "The Happening" is easily the worst movie I
have ever seen in a theater, and is a strong contender for the worst
I've seen altogether. I've never even written an IMDb review before,
but felt compelled to write one for this movie.
1) The acting is horrible. Sometimes you go to a movie and the cast has
one lousy actor in it. This was the opposite. The entire cast is
uniformly bad, with the possible exception of a construction worker in
the beginning watching his buddies plummet to their deaths. These
performances are a hallmark of poor direction. I know that Wahlberg,
Deschanel, and Leguizamo can actually turn in good work under the right
director.
2) Almost no one seems to react to what's going on around them in a
realistic way. Only one person (practically an extra) ever really
freaks out. Everyone else just kind of bumbles along until the wind
catches up to them.
3) The premise is ridiculous. Supposedly, the plants are tired of us
polluting the environment and mowing the grass, so they decide to start
releasing toxins that cause humans to go insane and kill themselves.
There are a few massive problems with this.
First, the movie presents evolution as something that occurs within the
lifetimes of organisms, when it actually takes many thousands of
generations. Trees haven't had any time at all to evolve that kind of
defense mechanism, and grass isn't particularly concerned about being
mowed. Otherwise, it would have evolved a toxin to kill off grazing
animals thousands of years ago.
Second, the movie makes it seem as if the plants can somehow
consciously communicate with each other. Although plants do indeed send
out chemical signals, these signals are not under any kind of conscious
control.
Third, the movie mixes up plant defenses with ecological phenomena such
as algae blooms. Algae blooms occur when a variety of factors all
converge to provide an ideal environment for overgrowth of algae. The
algae population cannot sustain such large levels and eventually the
excess dies off. Plant chemical defenses are not remotely similar. If a
species of plants evolves a defense mechanism, all future descendants
will have it, and it will continue working indefinitely. If such a
mechanism appeared in grass, it would eventually make its way across
the country. The effect wouldn't magically stop working just in time to
save the protagonists of the story.
Finally, it doesn't make much sense for a "toxin" to cause suicides.
That kind of behavioral alteration is usually seen in the reproductive
cycles of parasites that infect their hosts' nervous systems. Plant
defenses are either poisons (such as nicotine) or chemical signals that
attract predators to hunt the plant's attackers.
4) By the way, the "antagonists" are plants. Although this could have
been made to work somewhat like "Andromeda Strain", Shyamalan decided
to add a bunch of foreboding shots of plant-life. It isn't easy to make
trees and grass look evil, so wind kicked up each time people are about
to die. The toxin would accumulate more in still air, so you'd be
better off waiting for the wind to blow past you. Leave it to a science
teacher to miss this point and make sure everyone "stays ahead of the
wind".
5) The score is ham-fisted and overbearing.
6) So is the dialog.
7) There is no "twist". A random character we never care about reveals
the cause of the mass suicides sometime in the middle of the movie, and
he's exactly right. I was hoping the real cause would be the creepy
lady at the end who hates the outside world, but alas no; she becomes a
victim just like everyone else.
8) In a couple of scenes (at the very beginning and very end), we see
one person who is not apparently affected by the "toxin". We never find
out what happens to them, nor why they aren't affected. In reality,
there would certainly be more people not affected, and the people who
were would likely be affected in different ways. Psychoactive
substances never affect everyone the same way.
9) Just before the final scene, we see Wahlberg, et al. back home three
months after the attack. No one appears to have suffered any kind of
psychological trauma. The little girl, whose parents are both dead, is
going off to school, and somehow the Northeast is repopulated. I'd be
very curious to know what they did with all those dead bodies. More
likely, massive numbers of people who were not directly affected by the
plants would have committed suicide due to depression. No one in their
right minds would move back to the region, so the only living people in
that part of the country would be clean up crews wearing Hazmat suits.
10) In the very beginning scene, the one person not affected by the
toxin begins describing what she sees, but the camera never shows us.
"Are those people clawing at themselves?" Where?! Sorry, you'll never
see it. It's like watching a Bob Newhart phone conversation. In spite
of the character's comment, you never see any of the victims clawing at
themselves. Everyone who falls prey to the plant toxin freezes, then
quietly (and expediently) commits suicide. It's a continuity error that
occurs two minutes into the movie.
There are so many more things wrong with this film I don't think it's
possible to list them all. The shortest list of the movie's flaws is,
sadly, the movie itself. Hopefully this review will prevent you from
seeing it, or at least prepare you for the inevitable disappointment.
319 out of 579 people found the following comment useful :- The Not Much Happening, 14 June 2008
Author:
simonjauk from Hong Kong
What can I say. This movie sucked. Not even Mark Wahlberg, whom I rate
as a great actor, could save this turkey.
I don't intend to include any spoilers, unless you include the fact
that nothing of any note goes on in this picture. Equally the script
seems to be written from the perspective of a naive 10 year old for a
U-rated audience. The details concerning the relationship friction
between the central characters seem so childlike as to be pointless.
Zooey Deschanel, who I enjoyed in Failure to Launch, seems completely
miscast or just terrible. Her principle role seems to be to appear as a
giant doe-eyed girl stumbling from scene to scene as though awakening
from a drug-induced coma.
Shyamalan made a great first movie and I also enjoyed Unbreakable.
Other than that he's been sliding into an abyss of drivel and somebody
needs to stop funding his crap so I can stop kidding myself into
sitting through it with the idea that surely this time it'll be worth
it.
132 out of 235 people found the following comment useful :- Probably the most thoughtful film I've seen in quite a while, 21 June 2008
Author:
Chasndari03 from United States
*** This comment may contain spoilers ***
In a nutshell: Mark Wahlberg, his wife, and the daughter of a coworker
are literally running against the wind to try to save themselves from a
strange and horrible phenomena that has taken over people's minds and
forcing them to kill themselves.
I know this film has been getting more than its share of bad reviews,
but you may want to first consider the source before giving any
credibility to such reviews. In no way am I putting others down that
did not enjoy this movie. I'm simply saying that there are some
audiences who require an "in your face" type of direction within a
movie, and that could have been what they expected out of this one. I
admit I did too. Judging from the previews, I was sure there was going
to be the obligatory final act of total mayhem where the camera
frantically follows the mass hysteria of the characters, accompanied by
some dramatic booming sound effects and a pulsating musical score.
....However this was not to be. Shyamalan keeps the tone of the film
very subtle and understated. There were no over the top mass car
collisions or train derailments or explosions. And I for one can
appreciate this. Even though it could easily have lent itself to this
style of direction given the plot, the actual focus of the film would
have been compromised. It would have led us in the direction of the
more typical natural disaster movies that we've all grown so accustomed
to. (..Think Deep Impact or War of the Worlds or whatnot).
The climax of the movie is ironically anticlimactic because the cause
of this strange phenomena was already presented to us on a platter at
various points in the film for those of us paying attention. There was
no "Aha!" moment at the end, and I can understand that some people may
have a problem with not getting that big payoff at the finale.
Another reason I feel that some critics have given this a bad rating is
because it's such an unconventional battle. The protagonist vs. the
antagonist in this film is a bit hard for us to wrap our minds around,
because the villain is not the typical bad guy. In fact, who the
antagonist actually is in this movie could be debated. Our
preconceptions of what a movie like this should be have a lot of us
feeling uncomfortable and unsure with this film. And that can sometimes
translate to a rejection of things that we can't reconcile.
But if you can appreciate the journey just as much as the destination,
then I think you will ultimately enjoy this film. There were some very
stylish and visually frightening moments in this film where I almost
had to close my eyes because I knew what was coming next. Shyamalan is
a master at giving the audience this exact feeling and he proves it
again here.
A thought-provoking film that will satisfy you if you go into it with
an open mind. 7/10
160 out of 293 people found the following comment useful :- Not brilliant but it is worth a look, 13 June 2008
Author:
Mel J from Dundee, Scotland
When I first saw the trailer for 'The Happening', I was quite excited
at the prospect of another film by M. Night Shyamalan. After all, I
enjoyed all his previous films, save 'Lady in the Lake', and was sure
he would deliver another breath-taking blockbuster. Sadly, I was wrong
and while the film was not a turkey, it was not of the excellence I had
expected.
The film sees some sort of mysterious ecological event leading to
people committing mass suicide, the phenomenon spreading first from
large cities then to smaller towns until it is clear a huge chunk of
the East Coast is affected. At first, it is assumed to be a terrorist
attack but, as more and more people are spontaneously kill themselves,
it is clear the cause may be something else entirely...
One of the problems with the film was the quality of the acting and the
characters themselves. Mark Wahlberg stars as Elliot, the science
teacher who is our main protagonist, and he does flounder in many
scenes as if he forgets he's playing an intelligent but ordinary
everyday guy, not a gung-ho military hero who is cool in all
situations. He could have injected more emotion into his performance.
Zooey Deschanel plays Elliot's girlfriend Alma and she too fails to
make the audience care for her with the way she depicts the character
to be some sort of an escapee from a teeny-booper romance flick. To be
fair, it is not entirely Deschanel's fault as Alma is a weak,
self-centred character with the emotional capacity of a young
adolescent (for example, she puts Elliot and a child at risk a couple
of times with her stupid decisions and, at the start, when it's clear
people are dying, she is in a huff because Elliot and his friend 'hurt'
her feelings).
When it comes to the actual storyline, the plot does start off
intriguingly and there are many chilling moments when we see people are
coolly committing suicide like mindless zombies. However, the finale
doesn't deliver what the build-up promised. There are no real
explanations or solid end result. In many ways, this film is similar to
Shyamalan's previous project 'Signs' both in terms of a mass disaster
and no real end resolution to the events but 'Signs' worked better
because the characters were more effectively portrayed and their
personal storyline was enough of a finale to compensate. This is not
the case in 'The Happening' where the storyline fizzles out.
Overall, this is by no means a terrible film. It is enjoyable and fits
nicely into the apocalyptic genre but 'Signs' has done this sort of
idea before and did it better. That said, there was not only moments
that had me on the edge of my seat but also lines which were quite
humorous. And certainly, it does make one think about the state of the
planet in regards to whether humanity does have it coming to them and
how we would cope in such an event. It is worth a look, especially in a
week when the other premiere is 'The Hulk, a film aimed at keeping
twelve-year-olds' entertained.
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The Happening (2008) More at IMDb Pro »
585 out of 916 people found the following comment useful :-

This is a joke, right?, 13 June 2008
Author: AdnanZ from Canada
Allow me to provide some background information on my relationship with the films of M. Night Shyamalan: I adored "The Sixth Sense" and still think of it as one of the best films of 1999 and one of the best supernatural thrillers in ages. "Unbreakable" was a fascinating take on the superhero genre. I loved parts of "Signs" to bits and consider the sequence in the basement towards the end of the film one of the finest examples of suspenseful build-up in recent film history. I even liked "The Village" and could easily dismiss "Lady in the Water" as a mere misfire. I was greatly anticipating "The Happening", especially as it seemed to be echoing one of my favorite guilty pleasures- the paranoid 70's sci-fi thriller.
Let's get one thing out of the way- "The Happening" is unbelievably, impossibly, ridiculously, hilariously, inconceivably bad. Normally I would refuse to rate any film that had any good scenes or that was well-directed less than four out of ten, but "The Happening" has to have one of the worst scripts among recent big-budget Hollywood films. It's absolutely shocking how retarded the logic behind this is and how poor so much of the dialogue is. This script began as "The Green Effect", a tremendously poor (trust me, I read parts of it) script by Shyamalan that was soundly rejected and eventually reworked into "The Happening". Having seen the critical reaction to "The Happening" prior to going into the film I found myself pleasantly surprised by basically the first thirty, forty minutes of the film. It was nothing special but it had something going for it, Shyamalan's direction was top-notch, and Wahlberg was playing the sort of goofy science teacher I'd loved (and loved to hate on occasion) in high school.
Then the descent began. The bulk of this film is some of the most hilariously awful crap produced by a talented filmmaker since Schaffner's "Sphinx". Shyamalan, who was using close-ups and steadicam shots to frankly brilliant effect early on, begins to use the same shots to comical effect. There is one painfully, painfully long close-up of Mark Wahlberg pleading for time to think and then calling for his group to 'keep ahead of the wind' that is up there with Nicolas Cage in "The Wicker Man" in terms of hilariously awful acting. That scene may very well be the turning point in the film, with Wahlberg's acting becoming more ridiculous by the second, culminating in a performance that essentially wipes from memory all his tremendous recent achievements as an actor. I don't blame Wahlberg for this, I blame Shyamalan. Wahlberg claims Shyamalan tried to force him into real paranoia so his performance would work better. What happens here (no pun intended) is that Wahlberg ends up looking amazingly uncomfortable for the last hour of this thing and struggles to deliver any reasonable line deliveries.
Okay, I do have to credit Zooey Deschanel for making this movie watchable. Besides being amazingly, ridiculously gorgeous she is a fine actress and creates a sympathetic character (and a fairly well-drawn one at that- one of the few pros in Shyamalan's script). There's also the score: oh my it's gorgeous. Seriously, ignore this film and just buy the score CD by James Newton Howard- it's brilliant.
"The Happening" starts out well but ends up being an absolute embarrassment. I was prepared for a mediocre offering- perhaps a misguided effort such as "Lady in the Water". I was not expecting a disaster on the level of "The Happening". Its last forty minutes and especially its last ten minutes or so are among the worst I have seen in a long time.
Have you ever wondered if it was possible for a film to go from enjoyable to absolutely horrendous in the space of ten or fifteen minutes? "The Happening" is proof that it can, pardon the (intentional) pun, happen.
3/10
507 out of 863 people found the following comment useful :-

Believe it..., 12 June 2008
Author: heyuguys1988 from United States
I hate this. I want to tell you guys that this was Shyamalan's comeback and that this film is just as terrifying as you've been promised. But, I cannot.
The film starts off actually quite well. Minus some less than stellar acting (in fact, its horrible) and some just as bad dialogue, I really thought that maybe this film could pull it off. Disturbing death scenes ensue.
Then, bring in Mark Wahlberg. What happened to this guy? Nominated for an Oscar for his turn in The Departed, Wahlberg seems like a safe bet, but in actuality, he's playing a role that just isn't made for him. This role was made for someone nicer. Walhberg has been typecast time and time again as the angry and bad-ass guy, and now I see why. He's good at that and god awful at being nice.
No one else is particularly good either. Zoey Deschanel disappoints, John Leguizamo (Everyone in this movie has a name that's difficult to spell), and all of the extras are just as bad. There is not a single moment of good acting in this movie.
And all of that is because of how rushed this film feels. This is one of those movies that it seriously felt like the director was working on a very limited budget and then took the first take for every actor, none of them had a chance to get into their roles (or so I hope).
It's obvious who will get all of the blame for this (M. Night Shyamalan) and it's really too bad. I can't say that the plot is necessarily bad, it isn't, and with maybe one more draft the script would've been good. The faults of this film all land on Night's shoulders though. I hate to say it because I am very much not a hater of his (I love The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs) but I'm forced to say I hate this movie. Not so much for how bad it actually is (it's very bad) but because I really had faith in the director. The trailers almost felt promising and Shyamalan (am I even spelling this right?) promised me that I'd walk out shaking. Instead, I was shaking my head in disappointment.
One thing I'd like to add on though, I can tell that they were going for a Hitchcock vibe and the best way I feel that I can describe this is "a very bad version of The Birds." That is all.
318 out of 507 people found the following comment useful :-

A terrible screenplay and poorly acted, 11 June 2008
Author: Jean-François Adams from France
*** This comment may contain spoilers ***
"The Happening", which was released here in France today is a terrible screenplay and poorly acted. The writer/director failed to make a complete film, which employs any semblance of cinematic language.
Normally well-written, taut and engaging screenplays, like good editing should be invisible. They should fit seamlessly into the film-making process, but unfortunately for "The Happening", the writing, construction of drama and dialogue are so bad that the awful screenplay is apparent from the very first scene. The introduction of the main conflict is visually well done, but the writers never bother to move the story past its main conflict, thus making the film flat line dramatically very early on. Essentially nothing ever happens except the main characters totally unbelievable reactions to "The Happening" (i.e. the main conflict).
We, the audience are not emotionally attached to the characters because the screenplay gives us no reason to be. The film's sub-conflicts are basically non-existent and the character conflicts (emotional relationships) are contrived and hollow. The screenplay provides no emotional outlet or connection at all. Simply said this is a screenplay that should have been better vetted for emotional connection between the audience and characters on screen. We don't care about what's 'Happening' because the people to whom it is 'Happening' mean nothing to us. Someone should provide the screenwriter with a copy of Aristotle's "Poetics".
The dialogue is over the top, simplistic, explicit and begs the question - does anyone really talk like that? Line after line the screenplay falls further and further apart. The characters tell us what we can already see. Therefore the screenplay doesn't trust that the cinematic language of images is doing its job. The beauty of cinema is that with moving pictures we can say thousands upon thousands of words with each frame and never actually employ dialogue. This screenplay obviously does not respect that logic and in many ways flies right in the face of it. The film would be a lot better if the characters just simply reacted to the events unfolding around them.
The acting is unwatchable. No one in this film gives a good performance. The acting, similar to the screenplay is devoid of emotion. No one is reacting like a real person. Each character seems to be emotionally empty. They don't seem nervous that millions of people are dying, they're not hysterical (which doesn't not mean they should yelling and screaming) or even realistic. They at no time in the film seem desperate with the desire and hope to live. At times they try to appear upset, but it is so shallow that the viewer is left flat. Each actor delivers their lines without any regard or reaction to the actor in front of them. It is so bad that it makes one wonder whether or not the actors were actually on set together or just acting with stand-ins.
The sub-text of the film, which is meant to lead us to the theme mankind is destroying the planet, is blatant and lacks finesse. Pretty quickly into the first act we know that the plants are taking their revenge (I wish I was making this up, but this really is the plot of the film). The screenplay, dialogue and acting do nothing to merit the ending in which a professor on television is yelling about 'how we humanity are guilty for the recent horrors and need to pay better attention to our physical environment.' The films is just waving its fists and again telling us what to think rather than earning our trust. It tells us what its about. Basically the film underestimates us every step of the way.
The film never ventures into any kind of serious depth. It stays on the most basic, one-dimensional level. Plants are killing us - run away.
Blame for this film's failures should be squarely laid upon the director and producers. The director is guilty of writing and directing a very bad and unbelievable film. The producers are responsible for allowing the director to get away with this. Someone on the creative team and/or on the production side should have sounded an alarm when they read the screenplay. When the screenplay got into production one of the producers should have watched the rushes and pulled the director aside and said something.
"The Happening" is a failure on the most basic and important of cinematic levels. It does nothing to win, earn and deserve the audience's emotional and intellectual trust. It doesn't employ image as its main storytelling tool. It just tries to be clever, but is actually quite silly.
I for one don't care who the writer or director is, they must listen to their production and creative team. Film-making is a collaborative experience, but in the case of this film it is clear that no one bothered to be honest with Mr. Shyamalan.
342 out of 590 people found the following comment useful :-

It might be cliché, but it has to be said: The Happening is not happening., 12 June 2008
Author: shariqq from United Arab Emirates
Shyamalan has proved to us earlier that he can be as good as the best with masterpieces of cinema with The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable. Yet, since then, he has declined steadily. Signs and Village were good movies, but with Lady in the Water and now The Happening, he has touched a level of incompetence that could never have been expected of him.
The Happening is about a pandemic that is gripping north-eastern USA. It starts with a stunning sequence of events that show people succumb to an unspecified threat the brilliance of this opening repeated only once more for a five-minute sequence towards the end of the movie. Unfortunately, Shyamalan's writing is a big let-down for the rest. As the focus moves from metropolitans to towns and from crowds to smaller groups, the sense of fear is lost the biggest sin a horror movie can commit. In the oft repeated criticism for its director, this movie would have been best served as a half-hour episode of Twilight Zone to make it really work.
And to add woe, the actors do not do much to better the experience Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel are grossly miscast as the protagonists. Any of his previous leading men (Bruce Willis, Mel Gibson, Joaquin Phoenix and Paul Giamatti) can be imagined to have done a better job for the Science teacher that Wahlberg plays. The camera scrutinizes the performance to a degree that requires an actor with strength in emotions Wahlberg instead brings a physical presence that the role does not need. Zooey, on the other hand, struts around like in a Disney movie, not for once threatened by the pandemonium.
This time, though Shyamalan humbles his vanity you don't see him on screen. He now should swallow his pride and leave the writing to the writers. Armed with a better script, we can still expect Shyamalan to make his future movies worth waiting for. For now it is only the memory of the opening sequence, which can be proclaimed as mind-numbing greatness, which is really worth taking away from this movie.
292 out of 502 people found the following comment useful :-

The End of an Era (but not a career), 15 June 2008
Author: sro28-1 from United States
Let me preface these comments by saying that I am a major Night fan. I look forward to news of his next project and love the stories of his supposed total control over his movies and carte blanche from the studios. If those stories are true, I have a feeling that era will be ending for Night with the release of The Happening. I ignored all the pre-release press I could before going to see this movie. I read none of the reviews, but one word I did catch was "uninspired." Unfortunately, that one word describes this movie perfectly. In the first ten minutes of the movie, I thought it was due to the acting and that maybe Mark Wahlberg was miscast. However, after another ten minutes I realized it wasn't the actors; it was the extremely lame script. Without giving away any details, this is a disaster film where the disaster "happening" starts with the first scene of the movie. Unfortunately, no suspense builds and there is absolutely sense of dread or panic on screen and so none translates to the audience. Surprising, since the 21st century has provided us with too many occasions to study how we react in times of disaster, whether by nature or terrorism. It's as if Night ignored all this when writing the story. The characters sleepwalk through the scenes (and, no, it's not a symptom of "the happening") with no believable sense of the horrible events taking place. Granted, we don't need to see people running around in circles screaming and crying, but people do not stand in small groups after a disaster calmly taking turns talking one at a time. Without sharing in any of the horror that the characters are suppose to be experiencing, the film is a total bore for the audience and the source of "the happening" is laughable when revealed. I found myself repeatedly checking my watch, saying, "I can't believe how bad this is" not something I'd expect to do in a Night movie. Looking around the theater, I could tell others were sharing the same feelings. Most were scrolling through emails or texting on their phones.
During the movie, since I wasn't paying much attention to the screen, I started thinking that there might be a good reason why most filmmakers do not have total control over their films. When they do, they can reach a point that it seems Night may have reached, where they say, "I'm going to make people scared when the wind blows" and actually believe themselves. Maybe other producers or execs can step in at that point and bring the filmmaker back to reality. I'm not giving up on Night, but I'll feel better if his next film is not "Written, Produced and Directed by M. Night Shyamalan."
474 out of 879 people found the following comment useful :-

Why this film is important...and why people don't like it that way:, 13 June 2008
Author: philmographer from United States
I was disappointed to see such harsh reviews from the critics when there are clearly much sillier and stupid films out there. "Zohan" was about 60% at rotten tomatoes, while "The Happening" was at 14%. The disappointment didn't last long when I realized, given the information above, if critics had liked this movie, that might have been a bad thing. I focused my attention on interviews with Shyamalan himself talking about the film instead of the pretentious critics who have grown accustom to hating his movies. I decided to take HIS advice and go into the theater looking for a "fun B movie".
You will find that, and so much more. This movie is not your average thriller by any means. "The Happening" holds a solid "Twilight Zone" feel without being cliché or overused. This might be why the average masses didn't like it. We are used to being fed sequel after sequel after remake after remake. Don't get me wrong, those are fun movies to watch but the ART of film is being lost. The stereotypic perfect leading man who is smooth, witty, handsome and quick thinking who always saves the day will not be found in this film. Nor will the overuse of incredible special effects, slashing and squirting blood and gore, erotic sex scenes, fast paced chases, or crude language. Yes, the content is uncomfortable and disturbing and times, but it has a point. It's not goring for the sake of being goring and it's not uncontrolled in it's violence.
This film is simple. It has flawed and awkward characters who don't always say the smoothest thing. Everyone is imperfect and they don't handle the situations in the best "hollywood" type manner. Shyamalan did this on purpose. This movie is not paced for the "entertain me entertain me entertain me entertain me" type audiences we have mostly become. You are given the elements, but it's up to you to be able to slow down and feel the emotions in order to appreciate the film. The parable and meaning are so much deeper and innocent than what is popularized in media today. It will challenge you. It will make you think.
"The Happening" on the outside is a very fun and funny film. It is a "B" movie on the surface because of it's amazing simplicity, but by the end of the film you realize what it's actually all about. It's sad to see that so many people have completely missed it.
Bottom line: If you liked his other films, you must see this one, it falls into the ranks of everything made before Lady. If you didn't like his other films, stick to boring remakes and sequels.
172 out of 279 people found the following comment useful :-

"Awful" doesn't cover it., 14 June 2008
Author: bytesmythe_42 from United States
*** This comment may contain spoilers ***
I haven't seen an M. Night Shyamalan movie since "Signs", although I've heard each was worse than the previous ones. Strangely, this gave me hope that "The Happening" would be a turning point for the director that had won so much acclaim with "Sixth Sense".
Sadly, this isn't the case. "The Happening" is easily the worst movie I have ever seen in a theater, and is a strong contender for the worst I've seen altogether. I've never even written an IMDb review before, but felt compelled to write one for this movie.
1) The acting is horrible. Sometimes you go to a movie and the cast has one lousy actor in it. This was the opposite. The entire cast is uniformly bad, with the possible exception of a construction worker in the beginning watching his buddies plummet to their deaths. These performances are a hallmark of poor direction. I know that Wahlberg, Deschanel, and Leguizamo can actually turn in good work under the right director.
2) Almost no one seems to react to what's going on around them in a realistic way. Only one person (practically an extra) ever really freaks out. Everyone else just kind of bumbles along until the wind catches up to them.
3) The premise is ridiculous. Supposedly, the plants are tired of us polluting the environment and mowing the grass, so they decide to start releasing toxins that cause humans to go insane and kill themselves. There are a few massive problems with this.
First, the movie presents evolution as something that occurs within the lifetimes of organisms, when it actually takes many thousands of generations. Trees haven't had any time at all to evolve that kind of defense mechanism, and grass isn't particularly concerned about being mowed. Otherwise, it would have evolved a toxin to kill off grazing animals thousands of years ago.
Second, the movie makes it seem as if the plants can somehow consciously communicate with each other. Although plants do indeed send out chemical signals, these signals are not under any kind of conscious control.
Third, the movie mixes up plant defenses with ecological phenomena such as algae blooms. Algae blooms occur when a variety of factors all converge to provide an ideal environment for overgrowth of algae. The algae population cannot sustain such large levels and eventually the excess dies off. Plant chemical defenses are not remotely similar. If a species of plants evolves a defense mechanism, all future descendants will have it, and it will continue working indefinitely. If such a mechanism appeared in grass, it would eventually make its way across the country. The effect wouldn't magically stop working just in time to save the protagonists of the story.
Finally, it doesn't make much sense for a "toxin" to cause suicides. That kind of behavioral alteration is usually seen in the reproductive cycles of parasites that infect their hosts' nervous systems. Plant defenses are either poisons (such as nicotine) or chemical signals that attract predators to hunt the plant's attackers.
4) By the way, the "antagonists" are plants. Although this could have been made to work somewhat like "Andromeda Strain", Shyamalan decided to add a bunch of foreboding shots of plant-life. It isn't easy to make trees and grass look evil, so wind kicked up each time people are about to die. The toxin would accumulate more in still air, so you'd be better off waiting for the wind to blow past you. Leave it to a science teacher to miss this point and make sure everyone "stays ahead of the wind".
5) The score is ham-fisted and overbearing.
6) So is the dialog.
7) There is no "twist". A random character we never care about reveals the cause of the mass suicides sometime in the middle of the movie, and he's exactly right. I was hoping the real cause would be the creepy lady at the end who hates the outside world, but alas no; she becomes a victim just like everyone else.
8) In a couple of scenes (at the very beginning and very end), we see one person who is not apparently affected by the "toxin". We never find out what happens to them, nor why they aren't affected. In reality, there would certainly be more people not affected, and the people who were would likely be affected in different ways. Psychoactive substances never affect everyone the same way.
9) Just before the final scene, we see Wahlberg, et al. back home three months after the attack. No one appears to have suffered any kind of psychological trauma. The little girl, whose parents are both dead, is going off to school, and somehow the Northeast is repopulated. I'd be very curious to know what they did with all those dead bodies. More likely, massive numbers of people who were not directly affected by the plants would have committed suicide due to depression. No one in their right minds would move back to the region, so the only living people in that part of the country would be clean up crews wearing Hazmat suits.
10) In the very beginning scene, the one person not affected by the toxin begins describing what she sees, but the camera never shows us. "Are those people clawing at themselves?" Where?! Sorry, you'll never see it. It's like watching a Bob Newhart phone conversation. In spite of the character's comment, you never see any of the victims clawing at themselves. Everyone who falls prey to the plant toxin freezes, then quietly (and expediently) commits suicide. It's a continuity error that occurs two minutes into the movie.
There are so many more things wrong with this film I don't think it's possible to list them all. The shortest list of the movie's flaws is, sadly, the movie itself. Hopefully this review will prevent you from seeing it, or at least prepare you for the inevitable disappointment.
319 out of 579 people found the following comment useful :-

The Not Much Happening, 14 June 2008
Author: simonjauk from Hong Kong
What can I say. This movie sucked. Not even Mark Wahlberg, whom I rate as a great actor, could save this turkey.
I don't intend to include any spoilers, unless you include the fact that nothing of any note goes on in this picture. Equally the script seems to be written from the perspective of a naive 10 year old for a U-rated audience. The details concerning the relationship friction between the central characters seem so childlike as to be pointless.
Zooey Deschanel, who I enjoyed in Failure to Launch, seems completely miscast or just terrible. Her principle role seems to be to appear as a giant doe-eyed girl stumbling from scene to scene as though awakening from a drug-induced coma.
Shyamalan made a great first movie and I also enjoyed Unbreakable. Other than that he's been sliding into an abyss of drivel and somebody needs to stop funding his crap so I can stop kidding myself into sitting through it with the idea that surely this time it'll be worth it.
132 out of 235 people found the following comment useful :-

Probably the most thoughtful film I've seen in quite a while, 21 June 2008
Author: Chasndari03 from United States
*** This comment may contain spoilers ***
In a nutshell: Mark Wahlberg, his wife, and the daughter of a coworker are literally running against the wind to try to save themselves from a strange and horrible phenomena that has taken over people's minds and forcing them to kill themselves.
I know this film has been getting more than its share of bad reviews, but you may want to first consider the source before giving any credibility to such reviews. In no way am I putting others down that did not enjoy this movie. I'm simply saying that there are some audiences who require an "in your face" type of direction within a movie, and that could have been what they expected out of this one. I admit I did too. Judging from the previews, I was sure there was going to be the obligatory final act of total mayhem where the camera frantically follows the mass hysteria of the characters, accompanied by some dramatic booming sound effects and a pulsating musical score. ....However this was not to be. Shyamalan keeps the tone of the film very subtle and understated. There were no over the top mass car collisions or train derailments or explosions. And I for one can appreciate this. Even though it could easily have lent itself to this style of direction given the plot, the actual focus of the film would have been compromised. It would have led us in the direction of the more typical natural disaster movies that we've all grown so accustomed to. (..Think Deep Impact or War of the Worlds or whatnot).
The climax of the movie is ironically anticlimactic because the cause of this strange phenomena was already presented to us on a platter at various points in the film for those of us paying attention. There was no "Aha!" moment at the end, and I can understand that some people may have a problem with not getting that big payoff at the finale.
Another reason I feel that some critics have given this a bad rating is because it's such an unconventional battle. The protagonist vs. the antagonist in this film is a bit hard for us to wrap our minds around, because the villain is not the typical bad guy. In fact, who the antagonist actually is in this movie could be debated. Our preconceptions of what a movie like this should be have a lot of us feeling uncomfortable and unsure with this film. And that can sometimes translate to a rejection of things that we can't reconcile.
But if you can appreciate the journey just as much as the destination, then I think you will ultimately enjoy this film. There were some very stylish and visually frightening moments in this film where I almost had to close my eyes because I knew what was coming next. Shyamalan is a master at giving the audience this exact feeling and he proves it again here.
A thought-provoking film that will satisfy you if you go into it with an open mind. 7/10
160 out of 293 people found the following comment useful :-

Not brilliant but it is worth a look, 13 June 2008
Author: Mel J from Dundee, Scotland
When I first saw the trailer for 'The Happening', I was quite excited at the prospect of another film by M. Night Shyamalan. After all, I enjoyed all his previous films, save 'Lady in the Lake', and was sure he would deliver another breath-taking blockbuster. Sadly, I was wrong and while the film was not a turkey, it was not of the excellence I had expected.
The film sees some sort of mysterious ecological event leading to people committing mass suicide, the phenomenon spreading first from large cities then to smaller towns until it is clear a huge chunk of the East Coast is affected. At first, it is assumed to be a terrorist attack but, as more and more people are spontaneously kill themselves, it is clear the cause may be something else entirely...
One of the problems with the film was the quality of the acting and the characters themselves. Mark Wahlberg stars as Elliot, the science teacher who is our main protagonist, and he does flounder in many scenes as if he forgets he's playing an intelligent but ordinary everyday guy, not a gung-ho military hero who is cool in all situations. He could have injected more emotion into his performance. Zooey Deschanel plays Elliot's girlfriend Alma and she too fails to make the audience care for her with the way she depicts the character to be some sort of an escapee from a teeny-booper romance flick. To be fair, it is not entirely Deschanel's fault as Alma is a weak, self-centred character with the emotional capacity of a young adolescent (for example, she puts Elliot and a child at risk a couple of times with her stupid decisions and, at the start, when it's clear people are dying, she is in a huff because Elliot and his friend 'hurt' her feelings).
When it comes to the actual storyline, the plot does start off intriguingly and there are many chilling moments when we see people are coolly committing suicide like mindless zombies. However, the finale doesn't deliver what the build-up promised. There are no real explanations or solid end result. In many ways, this film is similar to Shyamalan's previous project 'Signs' both in terms of a mass disaster and no real end resolution to the events but 'Signs' worked better because the characters were more effectively portrayed and their personal storyline was enough of a finale to compensate. This is not the case in 'The Happening' where the storyline fizzles out.
Overall, this is by no means a terrible film. It is enjoyable and fits nicely into the apocalyptic genre but 'Signs' has done this sort of idea before and did it better. That said, there was not only moments that had me on the edge of my seat but also lines which were quite humorous. And certainly, it does make one think about the state of the planet in regards to whether humanity does have it coming to them and how we would cope in such an event. It is worth a look, especially in a week when the other premiere is 'The Hulk, a film aimed at keeping twelve-year-olds' entertained.
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