The Happening

I'm probably tuned to a different wavelength than most users, but I quite liked The Happening. It doesn't have the feel of The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable or Signs, but it's still a film with a good atmosphere and an appealing "We pissed off nature - now it’s going to get even with us" idea. By the way, the film reminded me in many moments of King's book “Cell" (admit it, Shyamalan, you read it in one sitting too), in which something similar actually happens. Pros for The Happening: Scenes like the workers falling, the suicide shooters, "sleepovers" in the old woman's house, the ending. The actors aren't bad (except for a whole hour and a half of weirdly freaked out Zooey Deschanel), and Newton Howard's music is as good as ever. Cons: In terms of suspense, Shyamalan remains behind his previous films (the wind rustling in the treetops is no match for the cornfields), there is little that is scary, nerve-rattling or unexpected in The Happening... And there is also no particularly shocking point. It gets three stars. (07/20/2010)

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)

An ordinary, straightforward, and boring film. And if it wasn’t for the big creaking house with a strange landlady, I wouldn't have even known that it was made by a master of tension and brilliant twists, and the fact that Shyamalan isn't afraid to show the "action" directly this time and doesn't shy away from the camera doesn't suggest this either. So, we have several truly interesting and bloody accidents that are striking and real enough to captivate (construction site, car, combine harvester), but the atmosphere is nonexistent. There are a lot of unnecessary peripheral that make it impossible for the plot to thicken and work on the tension. And the final twist isn’t surprising, either, it was expected considering the name of the director. (10/08/2008)

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)

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)