Painful to watch

Rating: 2/10 (5 July 2008)

I have been a huge fan of all of M. Night Shyamalan's movies. So I went into this realizing it would probably not be the typical Hollywood blockbuster, but is so much worse than that.
There is no character development. No plot development. The dialogue is terribly forced and seems very much out of place.
I am sure that fans of this movie will argue that those who don't line just don't understand what Shyamalan was trying to achieve. They will say he was kicking against the Hollywood status quo. Making the viewer have to think and work a little bit (Much like he he did in "Lady in the Water"). I don't mind some work, but the real work was forcing myself not to run screaming out of the theatre.
This movie was quite similar to a Twilight Zone episode. The problem is that instead ob being 20-25 minutes long it was stretched into an excruciating 80 minutes.
Shamylan has encouraged viewers to go into the theatre expecting a fun "B" movie. The Happening definitely had similarities to to a "B" movie, such as: Bad acting, unnecessary dialogue, no real plot, completely anti-climactic and really not making one lick of sense. But Shamylan also seemed to try to hard to make the movie "fun." He threw in smatterings of non-nonsensical/weird dialogue in an attempt to be funny, but it really just made me angry.
Once again, I have enjoyed all of M. Night Shyamalan's previous films, and believe he is a brilliant filmmaker. But The Happening, to put it bluntly, is a worthless piece of crap.