Such great potential, such a weak story

Rating: 6/10 (25 June 2008)

and um...
well... where to start? many people are considering this as M Night Shama-lama-ding-dong's worst movie yet... i'll stick up for the failing director and say that this was Definitely better than Lafy in the Water.
over all, i personally enjoyed watching this movie. the concept was very interesting. its an idea that i myself wouldn't mind writing a script for and possibly making a new movie on. its an idea that has extreme potential, potential for infinite possibilities for an audience to see in a movie. but possibilities that M Night refused to give us... and it just leaves the viewer asking themself, "Why not?" many people say this movie is simply full of terrible acting. i disagree. i wont deny that i spotted several parts throughout the film where the acting was weak.. but i believe that M Night was trying to achieve the reality of how ordinary people would act in a situation such as 'the happening'. but in my opinion, i think some of the acting was certainly in need of better directing.
and i couldn't help myself... i had to laugh when they ran from the villain of the movie... the wind, HAHAHA!!! but there's one fatal error that M Night made in this movie. its too simple. although hes known for being a simplistic director, shamalan went way overboard with the idea of trying to create a movie as simply as possible. in return, he ended up creating a movie where nothing actually... 'happend' (no pun intended). it seemed too simple.. so simple, that it looked like the entire film was pulled off with less than a million dollar budget! and with most of the budget going to the two big name stars of the flick; Mark Walberg and John Leguizamo and M Night's first R rated film????? ARE YOU KIDDING ME???? that was PG-13 all the way! unless if the version i saw was edited, (which i saw via internet sources from japan) but this movie was just... OK. i give props for an interesting idea to mass human suicide, but the movie loses points for such a WEAK story.
with all due respect, M Night Shamalan needs to stop writing movies. not directing, but writing. hes an incredible director, and comes up with amazing ideas to films, but he should make like steven Spielberg and hire somebody to wirte his scripts for him.
The Happening (where nothing happened) 5.9 out of 10 stars