Give me a minute! Maybe we can OUTRUN the wind...

Rating: 1/10 (15 June 2008)

"Unbreakable" (an excellent film IMHO) begins with a train wreck. Alas, "The Happening" IS a train wreck. This movie is so badly made, the director should be named M. Night ShyAMATEUR. I had hoped this movie would at least be entertaining on SOME level, but from the early moment when the camera showily spins around a construction worker who can only stand in one spot and cry while his buddies plummet to their deaths around him, I had a suspicion this would be more like "The Cr*ppening". STUPID dialogue, SHALLOW characters at best, TERRIBLE acting by every person on screen, and LEADEN direction. I especially laughed/cringed at the scene where Wahlberg stops running across a field with a bunch of other ciphers and pleads "Just give me a minute to think!" over and over, until he finally thinks that maybe they can outrun the killer wind...then of course, they wait for the wind to start blowing across the field before they start running.
And yes, that's essentially the fearsome element of this movie: wind. Ooooh, the wind, so scary to hear, so FEEBLE to watch on a movie screen! I came THISCLOSE to walking out several times, but again, it's like a train wreck or a car wreck - it's so bad it's hard to look away. And I was in a very comfortable theater, and not in a great rush to get back outside in the 90-degree temperatures. So I stayed, curious to see if the ending would be as groaningly awful as the rest of the movie. It was.
Seriously, I could have eaten a reel of Kodak stock and defecated a better film than this. I hereby give up on M. Night Shamalamadingdong and anything else he ever plans to make.