M. Night once again does his best to not dole out cookie cutter films...

Rating: 7/10 (14 June 2008)

Love him or hate him, his movies have a unique signature upon them that definitely separate him from the dozens of movies release each month from Hollywood. As a matter of fact, Hollywood apparently has run out of ideas remakes upon remakes, and now worse with movies like The Departed, Strangers, The Ring, and Bangkok Dangerous they're down to ripping off European/Asian movie directors for their ideas.
This time M. Night strikes back with notable differences from all his other movies. First of, M. Night usually forgoes direct violence and gore and replaces it Hitchcock styled atmosphere/sound over gore. Looks like studios are tired of this and forced his hand. Interestingly enough, even with the added gore and violence, there was still a great deal of that "atmosphere" utilized to heighten everyone's awareness. A good deal of work was put in the sound fx to also put some flavor into several key moments.
Like all M. Night's movies, there are SERIOUS flaws in The Happening. Bad acting across 4-5 scenes you simply cannot deny, just really dry delivered lines. A surprising number of no name actors is probably the reason for this, which leads to the music of the film. I haven't seen music this bad in a film this decade. It sure seems as if studios are cutting M. Night at the knees financially. Lastly, this blame will fall solely on the director, the pacing was a tad uneven, abrupt in some places that failed to achieve the desired effect I would say.
Despite it's flaws, the plot and premise is quite interesting, even if it's a bit far-fetched. Once again I found myself smiling throughout the movie and enjoy this movie as if it were one of those old 50s B&W goofy horrors about a giant brain eating up half the planet. Shyamalan doesn't explain the plot in total detail, leaves you with several clues as to what triggered the main events and how the main characters dealt with those events. If you like weird sci-fi with dashes of brilliant horror footage, this is your movie. If you like M. Night movies not because they're full of action and violence, but because they're interesting and different.. you'll love The Happening. However if you have ADD, adrenaline junkie, or hyper-critical in your films.. you'll hate this film steer away.