The wind should blow this out the shop window!

Rating: 2/10 (24 July 2011)

M.Night.Shynamalmamama has made one good film, "The Sixth Sense" and because of that success he now thinks he's God! He thinks that everything he makes is absolutely brilliant. He's notorious for his twist endings and so i kept on watching "The Happening" just to see what the ending would be. To see that I wasn't wasting my time, and wait for it to explain everything to me. There wasn't one.
So many things are wrong with "The Happening" and to be honest I was actually quite intrigued in the first 20 minutes or so, it was a nice introduction and it seemed as if it had some nice potential, but then I started to notice that not a lot was HAPPENING! (Pun is absolutely intended) It seemed to reflect a sort of zombie apocalypse film, without the zombies. Or the excitement. Or the suspense. Or the gore. Or the interesting characters. Or the... Yes I could go on and on and on. Truth is it was dull.
Another big problem is that it didn't know what it wanted to be! Was it trying to be a horror? Was it trying to be a drama? Was it trying to be a thriller? Instead of picking one of those genres and sticking to it, it decided to combine all three (and probably some others) making a loose story with a very dry execution. The story to me sounded like an eerie horror film, yet nothing much about it was horrific enough. M.Night.Shymanamamalam had some great opportunities to actually get some fantastic deaths (let's face it, that's all it had going for it) but instead all the gory deaths were off-screen, not giving us any chance of us seeing anything! ANNOYING! M.Night.Shylmanaman also thinks that he's some sort of Quentin Tarantino in the script department. He tries to mimic (unsuccessfully I might add) the great suspenseful dialogue which Quientin trademarks in his films, yet Mr.Shylanmanamama messes it all up by talking complete b***ocks all the time about plants talking to us and being in a large group effects the plants and all this nonsense. It's stupid an unnecessary. He also tried to be clever by blatantly making the characters say "happening" every minute, yeah, ha ha, here my genuine laughter.
Then there's the characters. Not one of them is likable and when "The Happening" rushes to its heart-felt tender finale (it's not by the way) instead of being on the edge-of-your-seat for them to live, we're egging them on to hurry up and die! (Well I was) the kids were really annoying as well. Although it doesn't help when the story actually doesn't go anywhere. Running away from the wind is something that isn't intense of frightening in the least. Then there's this stupid sub-plot with this stupid man going to find his wife which quickly goes down the pan! That was very unnecessary.
Probably the worst factory was the acting, I don't know why Mark Wharlberg is in so much stuff because he can't act for a toffee apple! The woman was really wooden as well (don't know her name) the love for each other didn't come across I'm afraid. That crazy granny was also actually unintentionally hilarious! When she was smashing her head through those windows it just looked insane, and completely daft.
So if you want a plot that goes nowhere, doesn't know what it wants to be and is as unstructured as this review, then get your glad rags on because you're in for the night of your life!