The Happening

The Happening is an indefensible unintentional laugh-fest. I'm not a fan of M. Night Shyamalan. The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable are very good movies but after that his films are hugely flawed and contain only brief moments of effective suspense. Shyamalan really had a unique knack for directing fear in his actors at his most inspired moments, and in addition to that the writing of his first two films was also a plus. He was a very good filmmaker for a spell. The Happening is so much more tragic than some people have warned, but here at Amazon it seems I finally find myself agreeing with many other reviewers who I'd normally suggest are exaggerating. One says "so bad it's shocking" and another calls the film "the crappening". Both are spot on.

Elliot (Mark Wahlberg) is a high school science teacher whose marriage to his wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel) is seemingly in some jeopardy. His friend Julian (John Leguizamo) is aware that Alma may have been unfaithful. Along with Julian's daughter, this group searches for safety in a world that has just been hit by a massive suicide epidemic that is never convincingly explained and never turns out to be an engaging occurrence to begin with. I actually like all three actors in some roles but they are either left with so little direction that they don't know what to do or how to react to Shyamalan's apocalypse, or they are smiling behind thin performances because they realize they are in a bombastic failure of a film. I lean toward the latter because by the film's conclusion Deschanel and Wahlberg really seem like they are in a comedy.

The Happening is bad because it wants to be taken so seriously. It has moments that should be horrifying but instead elicited several moments of laughter from this viewer. For those who have seen the film I will just say that the scene that really sticks out for me involves a suicide at the zoo. There are also moments of incredibly unlikely behavior; to the point where I slapped my own forehead. I mean come on, if a lady is talking to her daughter who is vulnerable to this unknown suicide causing agent, I hardly think she would put the girl on speaker so a dozen other people can hear her die. It's a shame because The Happening should've been good. On the surface it is a decent story with a good cast. Not to mention all of the pieces theoretically enhance Shyamalan's talents. I was hoping this would take films like Lady in the Water and The Village and promptly decrease their significance in the mainstream eye, but instead The Happening only serves to support Shyamalan's very obvious decline.

I'm no M. Night Hater.

In fact, I love his earlier movies. There was a time when I believed he was the next Hitchcock or Rod Serling. The man knows how to make suspenseful movies with well-drawn characters. But something... er, "Happened" along the way.

What I like about his better movies is the way he reduces a genre to its basic elements. Ghost story, comic book hero story, alien invasion: they are all told through the eyes of believable, everyday people. No splashy effects, just tight, deliberate story-telling. And who could ask for a better composer than James Newton Howard?

But while I love some of Night's movies very much, I've found myself dissatisfied with his later attempts. I disliked the ending of "The Village," and I was underwhelmed by the overall banality of "Lady In the Water," but neither of those movies compare to the professional suicide (pun intended) Shyamalan commits in "The Happening."

I think M. Night's intent can be best illustrated by a billboard that appears in the movie while the characters are wandering lost in the countryside (and the plot). It reads: "You DESERVE this!" Maybe it's just a coincidence, but I couldn't help but think M. Night was subjecting his audience to this campy, poorly written piece of B-movie garbage on purpose. It's not like it's the first time he has written with a grudge (see the character of the movie critic in "Lady In the Water," for example).

If you are expecting a movie up to the standards Shyamalan established with "The 6th Sense" or "Signs," you're in for a huge disappointment. If, however, you hate his movies and/or just want to howl with laughter at this unintentionally (or maybe intentionally) funny failure, "The Happening" could be your favorite movie of the year.

i was quite impressed w/ the sixth sense, tho i figured out the ending abt 45 minutes before it (the end) happened. it was still extremely well done. his later movies went downhill fast. i watched everything except the lady in the lake, which was too terrible to watch. i/d heard abt the script for this movie before it was made, and it was being pushed as his big comeback. well, to me, it was. the movie started out weird, and went with it. yes, there/s a sorta 50/s feel to the idea that the plants are after us. no special effects - works really well. remember hitchcock, people ? the silences are scarier than the screams ?

it isn/t quite a classic, but it is better than the jump on the director when he/s down crew give credit for.

What can I say that 180 other reviewers that gave this 1-star haven't already said, so I'm just going to say I'll never watch another M. Night Shyamalan movie again. The Sixth Sense was a masterpiece, but it's been all down hill from there.

The story, dialog and acting was just plain horrible. And what kind of ending was that????

Mr. Shyamalan, you OWE ME 90 MINUTES OF MY LIFE BACK!! You be ashamed of your self this this movie. You're done in Hollywood.

Unfortunately this movie is one more big disappointment from the guy that gave us the brilliant and unforgettable The Sixth Sense (Collector's Edition Series). He still seems capable of coming up with original and interesting ideas for a story (at least for the first 15 to 30 minutes of the film), but as they develop Mr. Shymalan now seems incapable of bringing them to the one-of-a-kind clever ending, as he did in The Sixth Sense, instead, he is getting worst: Mother Nature taking revenge against human kind for its evils against her?. Come on, this is not only a bad ending but also a cheap environmental message. The public does not deserve to endure until the end for such ridiculous explanation.

There are at least two literary pieces from the Nobel-laureate Portuguese novelist José Saramago that follow a similar storyline, "As Intermitências da Morte" (English:Death with Interruptions) and "Ensaio sobre a cegueira" (English:Blindness (Movie Tie-In)) and yes this is the one that gave inspiration for the script of the movie Blindness. In the former, suddenly nobody dies within the borders of a country, and in the latter, everybody begins to get blind without a logical explanation. Regardless of the Saramago's fantastic or supernatural explanation for such weird events, the real value of both stories resides in how the writer shows you the real nature of human beings, naked with all of our defects, fears and weaknesses. Just for that, both books are worth the reading. But in The Happening no such a message is present, so you endure for 90 minutes waiting for a clever explanation in vain. Add weak performances and excessively gross and shocking scenes, there nothing left.

It seems Mr. Shymalan is after all just one of those artists with only one extraordinary piece of work, and the more he keeps trying, the worst he performs. Do not waste your time and money buying this film.