The Happening Starts Off Good But Is A Major Disappointment

Rating: 3/10 (16 May 2009)

The Happening is another thriller if you want to call it that from M Night Shymalan who rose to fame with The Sixth Sense. His career hasn't been doing so well with flops like The Village, Unbreakable, and Lady in The Water. Which at least to me weren't that bad but weren't the greatest either. The Happening continues that trend unfortunately but the first forty five minutes or so are promising but things go bad quickly after that. The movie was a big disappointment compared to The Dark Knight which was my favorite movie of 2008, Iron Man, Wall-E, The Incredible Hulk, and even Indiana Jones. The Happening starts off strong with people randomly killing themselves in horrific ways. The cast for the most part did what they could with their roles. Mark Whalberg, Zoeey Deschnael, and John Leguizamo in a brief cameo bring a lot to their characters but unfortunately the rest of the film isn't as good. M Night Shymalan is a gifted writer and director but this movie doesn't even come close to the Sixth Sense. The ending of the film wasn't that great either. It was predictable leaving me feeling sort of cheated. The music by James Newton Howard was fitting and seemed to sync very well with the mood of the movie. But the bad outweighs the good and this could've been a far better apocalyptic thriller than it was. M. Night had stated this was his scariest film yet but unfortunately it wasn't very scary to me. The only thing startling about it were the deaths by the people who were offing themselves in gruesome ways. If you're a fan of M. Nights films than chances are you'll enjoy this one too. If you're not then don't see it because you would've wasted 90 minutes of your life that you can't get back.