I just can't imagine how this made it past quality control

Rating: 1/10 (2 July 2008)

I've seen a lot of films in my time. I thought i had seen the worst films to be seen in appalling titles such as "transporter 2", "Epic movie" and "Alone in the dark". But now to my surprise comes a film so bad that i really cant understand how it made it into main stream cinemas.
I'll begin with the only spark your going to see in the film, and that is the first 10 - 15 minutes. These are quite promising and actually lead you into believing that your about to sit through 1 HOUR 31 MINUTES of mediocrity. A genuinely bridging on intriguing introduction without going into detail (and "wrecking" it for you ahahahah (seriously don't watch this movie)) . However you are quickly reassured that no, in fact not even the most open minded fan will be able to really BS their way through a high rating of this "film" (and if they can they are incredibly creative).
Then comes the fall... There's to many "flaws" (for want of a better word) in "The Happening" to really go through, so i will list just a few of the worse ones and hope it keeps you stray of this atrocity. The script is TERRIBLE, i really do believe it had lines like "say the word "what's happening is it the trees!" repeat at least every 5 minutes"(spoiler so sorry!). following on from that the film try's to add in other factors of horror completely unrelated to the film that do not work at all so laughable that it makes it hard to believe it wasn't made by students that had never seen a film before and trying to work out what it was (example after seeing literally 100's of people dying he gets really upset after 1 more dies that he met 5 seconds before and completely unemotional again after he views about 10 people die. Though this falls really into the actors abilities... which leads nicely onto to the lack of them. Zooey Deschanel is absolutely terrible in this film. At first i though it was just a character trait that she had been set to but no after having to watch more than 20 minutes of her staring at the camera as if shes a toddler thats had a toy taken away you just want her to go the way of everyone else in the film. She drags down the rest of the actors as well and by the half way point even Mark Wahlberg seems to think "hes been paid to BE in the film why bother acting in it".
This film is diabolically, mind numbingly bad. Featuring scenes like running away from the wind (which is apparently now controlled by plants?!?!) to really bad film work that was designed so that even the brain dead would get fed up of all the unnecessary explanations and lead ups (e.g.. (spoiler) the news-report: "if only this incident had happened somewhere else in the world maybe we would believe it" then the next scene is exactly that, and there are countless times this happens thought the dreadful 91 minutes).
So very very bad, you almost want to get the effect featured in the film just so the pain will not be prolonged further. Please don't watch this film. (sorry about all the spoilers.)