Another disappointment from M, despite some disturbing violence and chilly moments.
1 Comment
06/13/08
The Happening (2008)
18
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:169
Fresh:31
Rotten:138
Average Rating:4.1/10
Consensus: The Happening begins with promise, but unfortunately descends into an incoherent and unconvincing trifle.
Runtime: 1 hr 31 mins
Genre: Action/Adventure
US Box Office: $64,384,941
Synopsis: M. Night Shyamalan directs this thriller about a science teacher (Mark Wahlberg) who tries to escape with his wife and friend's daughter after an apocalyptic event. THE HAPPENING costars Zooey... [More]
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo, Betty Buckley
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Reviews for The Happening
1 - 20 (sorted by rotten rating; Australian critics are listed first)
Top CriticWhile hardly his worst work, this film is so far off his high water mark that it begs the question of whether M. Night Shyamalan will ever truly return.
06/13/08
Top CriticThere are some creepy moments but overall The Happening is a bit of a non-event.
06/20/08
Top CriticExcluding moments of chilling effectiveness, this could fairly be called his worst film. Even his saving grace of keen directorial acumen visibly loses cohesion on screen.
06/12/08
Top CriticThe movie is a bummer, from beginning to end.
06/13/08
Top CriticMaybe Shyamalan has been plugged into those other worlds for too long. Judging from what is on offer here, he needs to become more acquainted with the emotional language of this one.
06/13/08
Top CriticSadly for Mr. Shyamalan, the ideas that have been coming to him since his brilliant first hit The Sixth Sense are progressively worthy of less merit and more deserving of ridicule.
06/10/08
Top CriticA tantalising, sometimes frustrating parable about the menaces that human beings might face from unexpected quarters.
06/13/08
Top CriticIt's hard to believe that at one time Shyamalan was being touted as the next Steven Spielberg by Newsweek magazine, but if things keep going the way they are now, Uwe Boll might end up being a better comparison. And boy is that depressing.
06/20/08
Shyamalan's still trying to take the story seriously—this is, horror of horrors, a message film—but his atypically unmeasured direction is all shock and no awe.
06/12/08
If this was the movie to rescue the reputation of self-styled genius Shyamalan after the disaster of Lady in the Water, then it's back to the old drawing board.
06/13/08
a cold pastiche, neither bloody enough to attract the crowd that hankers for that sort of thing, nor smart enough to attract the crowd that hankers for that
06/12/08
Wahlberg turns in one of his worst performances ever, but then he's saddled with preposterous scenes (like one where he tries to placate a ficus) and such lame lines as "Could this really be happening?" Funny, I was wondering the same thing myself.
06/13/08
[N]owhere near the level of The Sixth Sense, and not quite as good as the subsequent Unbreakable, Signs, and The Village, but at least it suggests that the awfulness of Lady in the Water may have been an aberration.
06/20/08
The Happening is an awful letdown, yet it leaves you with something new, as a gently waving tree -- that classical image of pastoral tranquillity -- mutates into a harbinger of doom.
06/23/08
Top CriticA better title for M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening would be Nonsense. It’s like an amusement park ride that has no reason for being -- and no meaning -- besides visceral excitation. Only difference is that The Happening isn’t fun.
06/18/08
It's clear that a once creative director is now running out of fumes, trying extremely hard to find something that hasn't been done before. The result is laughable.
06/14/08
If God made the aliens go away in Signs, can true love hold back the toxic winds? More to the point, can anyone find out without laughing?
06/13/08
one of the worst attempts at end-of-the-world ominousness since the Robot Holocaust battled the Ninja Apocalypse
06/12/08
Instead of shocks, we get moments of tension, suspense and violence between stretches of running scared. Nothing wrong with that, except that the stretches are awfully long in places. And in the end, it all comes to not much.
06/12/08
Latest News for The Happening
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July 06, 2008:
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June 16, 2008:
WNYC RADIO: A numbing polemical morality tale in dreary doomsday thriller clothing, this dull downer for all its mass panic attack high alert mode, may be more effective in unintentionally boring people to death. 
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