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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
M. Night Shyamalan offers up low-intensity thrills that fail to match the shivery shudders of his best work (THE SIXTH SENSE, SIGNS). His patented approach - mixing domestic drama with horror - plays out on a much larger canvas.
It is the first film of his career that feels incompetent and utterly gratuitous at times.
Shyamalan creates another urban myth with this slow burning thriller. But it never quite comes to life, due to stiff directing and acting
Usually Shyamalan can hide his limitations as a screenwriter behind his skill as a director. Here, that skill fails him as well, and the whole movie falls apart.
Un nuevo fiasco de M. Night Shyamalan, que sigue siendo un director con ideas interesantes (tanto argumentales como visuales) pero que necesita urgentemente la ayuda de un buen guionista.
Holy Mother of God...this is awful.
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.
Top CriticThis major studio release asks the question, how long can you survive on past glories? Shame on Shyamalan.
An atmospheric tale that rewards with genuine shocks instead of big bang explosions and a hamburger tie in.
[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.
Shyamalan's ideas might have more impact in a half-hour 'Twilight Zone' episode, where they would be shorn of some of the pretensions that seem to be mandatory in the feature-length work of a one-time Best Director Oscar nominee.
It'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.
Mark Wahlberg's sturdy performance saves The Happening from becoming a protracted Saturday Night Live spoof of M. Night Shyamalan movies.
I'm shaking my head now like a caring teacher grading a poor assignment written by a bright student.
Might be perceived by some as all peaches and cream for entertainment value even if everything else about it is not happening.
...some nice creepy moments -- but other moments, and more, of (presumably) unintended humor.
Other than its ripe possibility for mockery, I cannot think of anything that makes the film really worthwhile.
When a movie's best bit arrives during the closing credits, we're all in trouble.
Only half good cinema, seemingly the result of its maker's stunted belief/determination in both himself and his audience.
A 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.
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