The Happening

cant.  i'm waiting for the dvd.

:SPOILER:

there isn't a twist ending.

no, i caught it. there's no twist ending. I guess there's the sort of Tales From the Crypt "the evil is still alive!" kind of ending but I wouldn't call that a "twist" more like a "cliche."

The only thing good about this movie I can find is that it did give a lot of people a job and some money coming in for the 2-3 months they were filming it.

i'm going to see it, and I know I'll like it becuase I like the Village when everyone hated that too.

I like Shyamalan alright, I mean, I like Signs and Unbreakable and Sixth Sense a lot. But I watched The Sixth Sense a while back, and I kind of think his movies need more heart, like Sixth Sense had, to be great again. Lady in the Water I even liked a bit, I didn't hate it like everyone else. I thought it was pretty funny, whimsical and stuff, it was flawed definitely, but I didn't mind it very much. I haven't seen The Happening, but I kind of wish he would make something great again with a lot of heart.

Sixth Sense, the relationship between the kid and his mother really made that movie heartbreaking at points. Bruce Willis was great, as well as the plot, too. Toni Collette is awesome.

There was a great lien on an Ain't it cool news review by Capone that aaaaalmost made me want to see the film:

Answer me this, does a film in which the heroes spend the entire film running away from wind sound thrilling? You have no idea.

Wise Guy Show on Sirius Radio did a review of this.  And I thought they ruined the ending - but reading these posts make me think otherwise.

Does the ending have anything to do with nature?  That's as cryptic as I can make it...

and a lot of shots of hurricane force winds that start up and stop as needed.

The title sucks.  I'd expect a movie about some really hip dance club on the beach where teenagers hang out and try to keep a crotchety real estate developer from turning the club into a mall or a timeshare community, and then hook up with each other in the last five minutes of the movie.

The trailer leads me to believe otherwise.

Just got a message from my roommate "The Happening SUCKED, dont even see it."

I was really excited to see this. Le sigh.

I just saw it online. It's meh. Decent if you want to watch a slow not really suspensful suspense movie on a lazy day.

If stealing Jack Black's "rock sauce" is wrong, I don't want to be right. And seriously, you know going into it that The Happening is not worth 10-12 dollars, hell it's not even worth 5.

Also, the movie would've been better if the people looked as if they were in pain/trying to resist the neurotoxin while killing themselves. Only the chick in the beginning looked the least bit of "I don't want to do this". It could also have been better if instead of a large percentage of the population killing themselves, you had a smaller percentage killing lots of people. That would be much scarier. Suddenly all the cops start gunning down innocents in the streets, military personnel begin fighting themselves, random people begin stabbing and killing their loved ones. Then no matter how large of a group you were in, you wouldn't be able to trust everyone.

Come out with a fairly decent version of that in a suspense/thriller Signs kinda way, and then I'll fork over a fiver.

The Happening did in fact, suck ass.

I actually don't hate M. Night Shamalama-dingdong for being as pretentious as a guy who would name himself M. Night with a straight face surely must be, but I'm not a Night Rider on his jock, either. First three movies, I totally enjoyed. Then... the Village and the Lady In The Water came out and I've slowly lost more and more respect for the dude. 

This movie was about as anti-climactic as you might be able to imagine. And yes, that title is terrible. Shoulda called it The Gaping, because that's all that happened. Lots of wooden, gaping stares and pregnant pauses that led to literally nothing. Lots of not answerin questions while not closing mouths. Staring. And oh yes, lots of shots of trees and grass blowing meanly. 

The entire first exchange between the crazy broad and Mark Wahlberg's character was ridiculous. More gaping. And why he would never ask where his wife and that little girl were or even really try to find them as he wandered around in Creepy Lady's room made no sense to me. Plus... we never actually saw her die, so why would you  The two random kids who joined them as obvious "Red Shirts" were utterly without value for the entire movie. And how is it that in just three months, a city of millions of people - the overwhelming majority of whom have died horrible deaths in massive numbers - is not only back to clean and tidy, but also in need of bus drivers to take the kids to class?

Ultimately, it was bad but  not as disappointing as the that insult-to-a-legend Indiana Jones flick. I think that if M. Night and George Lucas teamed together, two negatives might make a positive... and either make for a decent script or create a vacuum and the two of them would disappear forever.

I wrote a review of it on my blog here:   www.theinvisibletruth.blogspot.com

If I wrote the review now, I would give it 3.5, instead of 4 out of five stars.

I can't believe people took it so seriously.  I found it really funny because it was parodying all the apocalypse movies coming out. It 's a ridiculously good bad movie, in the "Snakes on the Plane" vein, but higher quality.

i agree. even marky mark and zooey deschanel couldnt save it. in fact, mark wahlbergs raising inflection at the end of every sentence was prolifically annoying. i blame shyamalan or however you spell his fucking name. even good actors can be shitty because of shitty writing/directing. or maybe he was just pulling a sean connery in league of extraordinary men.

It was a total parody!  Holy shit... I mean Wahlberg was overacting like crazy, and his wifey was totally deadpan:  underacting.  A slight ironic twist on the "opposites attract" cliche...

I still can't believe people are taking it seriously.  That's almost as funny as the movie itself.

My thoughts exactly.

I thought the movie was terrible from beginning to end. Like others here, I laughed the entire time. Interesting idea, terrible execution. And Mark Wahlberg did a terrible job. I don't believe he did a good job at properly conveying his emotion. It all seemed so fake. "Oh noez! Teh treez and wind are going to get me and my big scary eyed girlfriend that hates me!" and "Damn, the old lady doesn't want me 'eye-in her lemon drink."

Another part that made me laugh is that the trees gave off those neurotoxins, but I think that I heard "hemotoxin" used by seomone as well. My firends and I laughed the whole time about the "Emo-toxins" that made people kill themselves.

Also, when the construction workers were falling off the buildings in the beginning, I took the opportunity to sing "It's Raining Men" :D

I want to see this movie. As usual all I need is a cute blonde chick with a drivers license to bring me.

I cant really go for Mark Wahlberg in any serious role. Hated him in The Departed. Hated him in Shooter. Love John Leguizamo but really didnt like him in this. It was like everyone was trying to be serious when they knew it was all just a big joke. Didnt like it. And that last part- in like France or whatever- was subbed in Swedish in my copy. So I dont know what they said. But I bet it was stupid. Was M Night in the movie anywhere? Or did I just miss him?

The train conductors a black guy...

both my wife and I laughed our asses off when we read about the emo-toxins. I almost spit out my drink when I saw you had sung "It's Raining Men". freakin' hilarious.

I never liked M. Night Shyamala-fuck-a-camel-an. And when people ask me why, I now have the very existence of this movie for use as evidence. It lacks the twist ending which made his other stuff even remotely watchable, the plot involves plants or wind or something infecting people with the emo-toxins (thank you for that WRITEMETOLIFE, I will be using that regularly from now on). And as for the death scenes? Some footage of a guy feeding himself to lions in order to secure an R rating does not necessarily equal a good movie. It's just a shitty movie with some footage of a guy feeding himself to lions. And we didn't even get that much! The "director" managed to pan away at the last moment to show the character's reactions, like so many disapointing PAIN OLYMPICS videos on youtube. For shame.