Dire!

Rating: 3/10 (19 June 2008)

I am a casual fan of 50's b-movie thriller and horror films and have seen a few real stinkers in my time, but also some true works of genius. A film can be bad and awkward and messy and still achieve greatness, the Happening did not.
Lord knows what they spent the $50,0000,000 budget on - there were virtually no effects, a short filming schedule, outside naturalistic location shoots, minimal extras and only a few big stunt shots. The actors (whilst good actors in my opinion) are hardly high-salaried Hollywood a-listers so I doubt it went on them.
The acting was bad. Stilted, awkward and in places downright amateurish. At points you could almost see the actors trying to be bad it was so bad. This style of acted bad acting just didn't work and it made the film feel really childish, rather than b-grade. I had images of little kids playing in the yard putting on a play or something, not b-movie! There was nothing amazing in the cinematography; the camera work did nothing to build a sense of tension nor intrigue for me, it was just really flat and uninteresting. In particular there was one shot with very little movement where the boom mic came down into the frame - really inexcusable and if it was done on purpose to make it look b-grade then they should have backed this up with other such touches.
The story you could scribble down on a post-it note. If this had been a 30 minute short film or something it may well have just about clawed enough substance together to be interesting but the film just went on and on and on and was punctuated by some truly awful and clanging expositions from characters throughout.
Basically this film could have been done really well. The concept is interesting but M Night it seems is not skilled enough to make a contemporary b-movie. As such the elements which attempted to make it so were heavy handed, misplaced and jarring throughout. If you want to see a fantastic b-movie then I suggest that you look to Grindhouse's Planet Terror and Deathproof - two genius contemporary homages to the genre.
Save your money, there's better stuff out right now.