Ummm . . .

Rating: 8/10 (13 August 2012)

Don't know quite how to rate this; wish IMDb had a N/A.
First, most of the audience should have been warned that this is a massively manneristic movie so forget any Hollywood conventions. Nothing wrong with either the acting or the direction.
Second, the movie is about evoking a sense of unrelieved dread in the audience without providing a comfortable denouement to release the tension it builds up. I saw it on FMC; if I'd been in a movie theater I'd have been out of there half-way through precisely because of that tension. Then I would have looked for it on Netflix (they don't have it).
As I watched, two analogs immediately came to mind: John Wyndham's book, The Day of the Triffids (not the movie) and the movie, The Uninvited (1944). The book echoes the movie's sense of increasing isolation in the face of a (initially) inexplicable 'natural' force and the movie (Uninvited) echoed the unrelenting sense of dread and tension (which were relieved). And that's what The Happening is all about, period. It wasn't about the characters (you want bad acting in a manneristic Film, try Kramer vs Kramer or Diary of a Mad Housewife).
The characters in The Happening are there to be watched, observed, not identified with. They were meant to be distanced from the the audience. That's what the pacing was about: basically stopping everything every so often just to send the audience back into the theater, and that's why the characters just seem to pause, foreshadowed by the sudden pauses that presaged the attacks. That's why the characters go suddenly flat periodically and that's why there are no panicking hordes or scenes of urban destruction with fires and sirens. The Hollywood goal of drawing the audience into the movie is turned on its head.
Bottom line: this is very spooky movie that, however you feel about it, does what it intends to do And has a nice turn on the ubiquitous Carrie ending: a return to tonic instead of a kick in the groin.