The Happening

Quite fun. How much you’ll enjoy it will depend on when you give up hope of a chilling thriller to make do with a parody of catastrophe movies. I did it during the first ten minutes and I could watch the rest with a smile on my face. I don’t think there’s any other way to be satisfied, because Shyalaman simply could not mean this seriously. Or maybe he did at first, but when he realised that Wahlberg and Deschanel weren’t the right casting choices, he decided to use them differently and turn the thriller he had planned into the utmost B-movie. What takes the film down very deep are the dialogues and the way the actors utter them, otherwise it would’ve been alright, there’s even some atmosphere here and there. I really want to believe in what I’ve just written, but unfortunately, I’m not that sure. If Happening is so bad unintentionally, we are witnessing an enormous failure by a director. There’s one exchange by the end that gives me some hope that my theory is true. In the scene when Elliot is telling about the time he went to buy cough syrup. Alma: “Are you joking?” (Elliot nods in agreement). Alma: “Thanks.” (07/05/2008)

The only question I have in connection with this film relates to the budget. I’d even suspect Shyamalan of preferring to embezzle a little something into his own pocket as if he suspected that his latest venture (as is slowly becoming his habit) wouldn't even make money. But now more seriously: I was not at all disappointed because this is exactly the kind of intimate thriller I was expecting. Shyamalan plunges ordinary characters into a marginal situation that cannot be properly rationally explained, leaving them groping not only over the question of mysterious deaths but also over their own relationships. These relationships are stressed in the extreme, even if some of the dialogue suffers from "romantic B-movie" syndrome. It's not about bogeymen, it's about questions we need to start asking. PS: At times, Shyamalan and his cinematographer Fujimoto did such great work that I thought about how good it would be if he had made Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. (07/21/2008)

Just no. This movie has Shyamalan’s typical signature in creating suspense (a spooky house with a spooky landlady), which tempts me to give it three stars, but unfortunately everything essential is amiss. The love motif doesn’t work, the relationship between the main characters is incomprehensible and there is no trace of interesting dialogue or a final point. The Happening is a bland, sometimes exciting and sometimes naïve farce, cooked in water salted with James Newton Howard’s music from Signs. (06/09/2008)

Except for Marky Mark’s somewhat odd performance and my expectation of a more powerful moral than just that people are mostly a bunch of scumbags who deserve to die (btw our Slovak brothers' title ‘Event’, is a catchier than the Czech ‘It Happened’) I quite liked it. The opening scenes, especially the one with the flying workers, are flawless and people behave wonderfully freakishly. Zooey Deschanel was fantastic as was John Leguisam's mathematician. Shy the director still knows how to make a movie. He can create the right atmosphere and so on, but Shy the screenwriter should take a break for a while. Wait for better ideas and prepare a big comeback. Too bad he didn't have a jab at Potter. (09/03/2008)

We will get a point, the story moves forward along a path lined with tension and the actors guide us through this depressing world with such ease that the hour and a half flies by almost on its own. So why am I staring at ultra-low ratings and comments that constantly repeat borrowed complaints from reviews about the lack of a point and the presence of boredom? Happening is already the third film in a row by Shyamalan that the public expects to combine The Sixth Sense and Signs and be a similarly nerve-wracking affair like the two mentioned. And as a result of these expectations, a harsh impact comes. I understand this mistake with The Village, which I still consider one of the best films of my life, but with the excellent Lady in the Water, I understand it less, but if someone can't learn even on their third try, so be it. Perhaps it would be good to go to the cinema without prejudices and false expectations, and to reconcile with the unpredictable Indian Master will be on the agenda again. (06/23/2008)