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The Happening [Theatrical Release] | ![The Happening [Theatrical Release]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41g9W3ZUMyL._SL160_.jpg)
 enlarge | Manufacturer: Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation
Category: Theatrical Release
This item is no longer available
Rating:  67 reviews
Language: English (Unknown)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Number Of Discs: 1
ASIN: B0015HS5WM
Theatrical Release Date: June 13, 2008
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
You'd expect the end of the world to be no day in the park, but in M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening, a day in the park is where the end begins. One otherwise peaceful summer morning, New Yorkers strolling in Central Park come to a halt in unison, then begin killing themselves by any means at hand. At a high-rise construction site a few blocks over, it's raining bodies as workers step off girders into space. And all the while, the city is so quiet you can hear the gentle breeze in the trees. That breeze carries a neurotoxin, and what or who put it there (terrorists?) is a question raised periodically as the film unfolds. But the question that really matters is how and whether anybody in the Middle Atlantic states is going to stay alive. The Happening is Shyamalan's best film since The Sixth Sense, partly because he avoids the kind of egregious misjudgment that derailed The Village and Lady in the Water, but mostly because the whole thing has been structured and imagined to keep faith with the point of view of regular, unheroic folks confronted with a mammoth crisis. Focal characters are a Philadelphia high-school science teacher (Mark Wahlberg, excellent), his wife (Zooey Deschanel) and math-teacher colleague (John Leguizamo), and the latter's little girl (Ashlyn Sanchez). Instinct says get out of the cities and move west; most of the film takes place in the delicately picturesque Pennsylvania countryside, with menace hovering somewhere in the haze. There are no special effects (apart from a wind machine and some breakaway glass), but the movie manages to be deeply unsettling in the matter-of-factness of its storytelling. Especially effective is its feel for what we might call the surrealism of banality. One warning sign that someone has been infected by the neurotoxin is irrational or erratic speech and behavior, yet Shyamalan has a genius for dialogue that sounds normal and everyday as it's spoken, yet flies apart grenade-like a second later as its logic (or illogic) sinks in. Then there's Deschanel's eye-rolling dodginess about the messages some guy has been leaving on her cellphone. Or the fellow (Frank Collis) who addresses his greenhouse plants as though they were his children--has a stray toxic zephyr wafted his way, or is this just his idea of normal? --Richard T. Jameson
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| Customer Reviews: Read 62 more reviews...
 Starts Promisingly, Then Becomes Awfully Incoherent July 28, 2008
Tsuyoshi
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
You know M. Night Shyamalan and his films. I think someone has already summarized the career of this once brilliant director so far, so I only add that he made great films like "The Sixth Sense" and I still love them. Will he ever going to "come back" and make a great film again? His latest film strongly suggests that this is not happening.
"The Happening" is a supernatural thriller that opens in Central Park, New York City. People suddenly start to act strangely and they eventually die in a bizarre way. I don't reveal here how it happens in this R-rated film, but I can say what you will see in the construction site scene is bizarre and eerie, something that reminds us of the director's earlier films. "The Happening" certainly starts promisingly.
But about 30 or 40 minutes in, it stalls. The story centers on a Philadelphia science teacher played by Mark Wahlberg and his wife Zooey Deschanel. They try to escape to the countryside using a train with his best friend and math teacher played by John Leguizamo and his daughter, but things would not go as planned, as we expected, and they are stranded in a small town where horrifying news arrive. This is where the film stops being interesting. Things happen in a rather haphazard way; characters remain uninteresting or just outrageous, like a Miss Havisham-like old lady, this film's counterpart of Tim Robbins in "War of the Worlds." Bad acting from the leading players does not help.
But who is really to blame for the incredibly weak and incoherent storyline? Apparently co-producer/writer/director M. Night Shyamalan borrowed sci-fi thriller elements from such masterpieces as "The Birds." Borrowing itself is not a bad thing, I know; what makes "The Happening" really bad is the way it borrows. Just because "The Birds" does not show the true reasons for birds' violent attacks on humans doesn't mean that you can leave the crucial part of the film's plot unexplained AFTER giving us so many hints and clues. Why does IT start in the park? Why does it happen only in the certain area of the United States? The film changes rules more than once as if trying to cover the facts that it actually has no coherent logic behind the random deaths of the people.
Mr. Shyamalan did one good thing in "The Happening," though: he stopped acting, restricting his role to a much smaller one, a voice on a cell phone. At least he listened. I sincerely hope he listens again.
 Waste of Time July 27, 2008
Barbara Spier (Moscow, Russia)
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
This was one of the most boring "thrillers" I have ever seen. There's no real story line, the actors are unconvincing at best, and I just didn't get it.
 It has its moments. July 26, 2008
Cestmoi
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is movie is supenseful and shocking in some scenes.
**** SPOILER. DO NOT READ THIS if you HAVE NOT WATCH the film.
For example, in the scenes where people were fleeing the city. Everybody was puzzled and did not know what's happening. I could see the anxiety and puzzlement on their faces. In another scene, it shocked me when the kid was shot in the face after he banged on the door of the house.
The thing that let me down the most was the love between Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel. There's some chemistry between them but it's not portrayed strong enough. It it had been, it would have made the movie more touching and lovely.
It's still worth watching once.
 Best Film Since The Sixth Sense July 23, 2008
Ron (Berkeley, CA USA)
6 out of 12 found this review helpful
I realize I'm in a minority here, but I thoroughly enjoyed THE HAPPENING. Unlike modern-day suspense thrillers that rely too heavily on special effects, THE HAPPENING required its audience to pay attention to the cinematography and dialogue in order to experience the suspense in the film. In a way, THE HAPPENING was a throwback to a Hitchcock film, such as THE BIRDS. It was also darn funny at times. If you have an ounce of brain and not part of the MTV generation that has a low attention span, then you may just like THE HAPPENING.
An act of nature or an act of terrorism, and we'll never fully understand it July 23, 2008
R. Kyle (USA)
9 out of 11 found this review helpful
The film opens with a group of people in Central Park abruptly losing orientation and killing themselves as brutally as possible.
Next, we move to a high school classroom, where Elliot Moore (Wahlberg) is teaching science. He's trying to cudgel his class into thinking why the honey bees have begun to disappear. In walks the Vice Principal. Class is dismissed. It seems that everywhere people are being struck with some kind of condition where they are disoriented and kill themselves.
Elliot and his best friend Julian (Spencer Breslin) have a few moments of guessing what's happening. Then, the flight begins. The problem is, there really is no place to run on the Eastern Seaboard. Elliot and his wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel) end up with custody of Julian's daughter Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez) when Julian leaves to find his wife who's taken an alternate route from the city.
The question is--will the three survive? For that matter, will Elliot and Alma even be able to hang together through this?
What I was hoping for was an interesting bunch of suppositions and maybe even a solution from our science and math teachers. Unfortunately, I didn't get it. What I got instead was a series of successively bloody and gory suicides with no real answer. The science and math guys really just didn't 'pay off' in this plot.
By the end of the film, both my companion and I agreed "The Happening" just wasn't happening for either of us. One good aspect--the eerily beautiful soundtrack by music master James Newton Howard. That was a highlight.
Rebecca Kyle, July 2008
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