The Happening Review

Whatsa happening hot stuff? The Happening is happening on this week’s episode. Follow Marky Mark and a whole funky bunch in this M. Night Shyamalan stinker.

Synopsis

The Happening starts out with a mass psychosis event in Central Park NY, where all of a sudden everyone decides to kill themselves. Mark Wahlberg plays Elliot Moore, a pretty dumb high school teacher that with family and friends trys to escape whatever is causing the psychosis. 

What could possibly be causing The Happening? Theories abound. Could it be a terrorist attack? Could it be bees? Could it be trees? Could it be a 60s performance art exhibition? No one knows. 

Review for The Happening

The Happening has a reputation for being a bad movie. It was really the nail in the coffin for M. Night Shyamalan’s ability to create a quality movie. I’ll say that the consensus is not wrong. This is a pretty bad movie. It’s not painfully bad, but is laughably bad in parts. 

This is mostly because of M Night’s clunky writing. It’s very unnatural, and makes every character seem like they came from an alternate universe where infomercials were reality. What makes it more frustrating, is that there are scattered gems of quality dialogue or situations that in a better movie would have been endearing moments. In this film however, it just makes you wonder how someone that is capable of writing convincing human moments would decide to write the rest of the movie like everyone has a head injury.

The second problem with the film is the casting of Mark Wahlberg as the lead. He is just not a good actor, and has no possible hope of saving the dialogue through his performance. In fact almost all of the unintentional humor is created by Mark’s line delivery and stupid facial expressions.

As with any M. Night Shyamalan movie, regardless of quality, there are some interesting ideas and concepts. Most of the creativity here comes from the various deaths throughout. The premise of a mysterious viral mass suicide event is a genuinely interesting premise, and can be truly disturbing at moments. However, the posited explanation is so dumb, you’re left wondering why you even bothered sitting through this shit show.

Score

3/10