The Happening (2008)

[Lasker]

So I truly adore M. Night and Walberg was truly "on the mark" in The Departed but I wanted to rip my eyes from my own sockets. The acting was horrific and the story was just as bad. Now I can handle quite a bit, but this was truly terrible. All I can really say is stop running from the foiliage and start running from this film. Literally, run from the film. As for M. Night, I'm dissapointed! You made a global warming film! A really bad global warming film. This movie sucks. You will either leave confused or angry and ready to stab the flowers just for giving M. Night this idea! (N)

[wildliquid]

not his best film but i still enjoyed it. better then alot of crap out there being made

[Hurmoth]

^ That's what I love about M. Night. He tries to give us something different and while it doesn't always work out for the better, it is at least original.

I constantly hear people complain that there's nothing original in Hollywood anymore, but there is with M. Night. I think his problem is he spends to much time trying to think of a cool twist ending way to much, but he doesn't start with that twist ending. Every single one of his films start off really good, but they fall apart as the twist ending approaches. If he started off with the ending during his writing process, then he might be able to pull off another "Sixth Sense".

At any rate, I'm still going to see this and I'll probably enjoy it just as I have his previous films.

[Bubbabyte]

did you really enjoy Lady in the water Hurmoth?

It was as if written my handicapped crackheads, it has and will always have my vote for the worst movie ever. While i understand what you're saying by him being original, he is absolutely horrible at trying to pull of these (could have been great) stories. I understand that the huge defense for lady in the water is to not come into it thinking it's a horror that it's more of a fairty tale type thing... but seriously, it was as if they were on crack and made up the story as they went along with whatever props were available. The lady can't come out of the water... because.. umm...there is a big bird that will come down and get her. And there are big wolf type creatures in the woods.. oh but that's ok.. the big monkeys in the trees will get them...lol It wasn't even a believable fairy tale.

I haven't seen this movie and really don't plan on it.. i've given up on M. Night as alot of others have as well. He had his chances to make great movies and he continuously let everyone down, he should just stop.

[Hurmoth]

^ Lady in the Water was definitely unique, but yes I enjoyed it.

And Lady is certainly not the worst movie ever made. Here's a list of some of the worst: Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans, Son of the Mask, Daddy Day Camp, Batman and Robin, Basic Instinct 2, Catwoman, Alone in the Dark, etc. That's just to name a few.

Or how about this, take almost every satire film, those are all the worst films. They all suck! But Lady is no where near some of those.

[Bubbabyte]

In my opinion lady in the water is the worst movie i've ever seen... However, that's not to say that it was horrible acting etc.. i just felt that it was so off the wall retarded that the whole movie was laughable. Now the movies that you had mentioned.. i agree they are some of the worst, but i think the difference between the 2 is that you watch a satire movie "expecting" it to not really be all that great.. but instead "hope" to get a laugh or 2. Perhaps it was my fault going into lady in the water thinking that i was going to be thrilled.. turns out i wasn't.

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

I was going to see this movie with some friends but ended up not seeing it because the tickets were sold out. Now, I'm glad I didn't see it. I guess I'll go see The Incredible Hulk instead. I'm truly disappointed though. M. Night Shyamalan has let me down. I guess it's too much to hope for another "Sixth Sense".

[~WinGz~]

I saw this film going in expecting a crap film. But was surprised. It wasn't all that bad.

I personally like the his sort of films because they are different.

Nothing like that is so mainstream, such as

Good Vs Evil, Aliens versus humans, or Save the world super hero crap.

[gregb0b]

Theres already a thread for this in the Parent section of this forum :-P

[HideAndGoatse]

Are you guys serious. How can this be original, I was waiting for the ending credits to say "produced by Al Gore". The plot was bad but it could have been pulled off by good acting, no, it didn't have that. I honestly thought this movie was a comedy at some points because the acting seemed as though they were purposefully being that bad. I cannot say enough bad stuff about this movie, I am truly sorry for people who like this movie. :no:

Possibly the biggest thing about this movie that made it bad was the fact that there were no new suicides! They used the same ones from the previews and didn't put any extra ones in. Come on M. Night

[Ayepecks]

^ Lady in the Water was definitely unique, but yes I enjoyed it.

And Lady is certainly not the worst movie ever made. Here's a list of some of the worst: Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans, Son of the Mask, Daddy Day Camp, Batman and Robin, Basic Instinct 2, Catwoman, Alone in the Dark, etc. That's just to name a few.

Or how about this, take almost every satire film, those are all the worst films. They all suck! But Lady is no where near some of those.

Airplane and Naked Gun were both awesome :p :D

[Razorwing]

it was pretty boring.

[+Troll Subscriber¹]

This is essentially copied from my movie review on my website...

The initial premise of a mysterious disease causing all that were affected to essentially commit suicide had some promise, but fell apart before the story could take hold. Some of the problems were that the actors didn?t act as normal people do, going completely out of the way of what you would expect. For instance, when the actors discover an abandoned truck, with keys in the ignition, they didn?t take said truck. Rather, they looked for a map and walked a couple miles.

These things were just nitpicking however. If you still wish to see this awful movie, then obviously don?t click on the spoiler tags or you?ll be reading the entire premise of the movie?

The movie fell apart in the middle when it changed from being a horror/suspense film like some of the previous offerings from Shyamalan into a political statement. This was first evident when the idea that plants were responsible for ?The Happening.? Afterwards, when the hypothesis was that human stimulation was causing the plants to react, it seemed like an absolute let down - Plants, scary? Sorry, not so much.

Shyamalan lost the audience when the twist at the end of the movie had an interview where the banter was trying to figure out if ?The Happening? was something caused by the environment due to a human threat, or if it was government testing. Unfortunately, he left no doubt as to his opinions and let the talking head make a comment claiming that he would believe the government wasn?t responsible if there was another incident in a different location. This was of course proven when a similar situation happened to end the movie, cementing the film as environmentalist while setting up Shyamalan for a sequel.

If you want to see a green movie this weekend, you?d be better off seeing The Incredible Hulk.

[plan-9]

I thought it was a decent movie. Definately not his best..that honor still goes to either Unbreakable or Signs.

When they found the truck with the keys in it, they already were thinking about what was causing the happening, taking the car and driving it around in a field wouldnt be a great idea now would it?

Everyone seems to be saying this is a green film. I look at it as the opposite. Nowhere does he say what truly causes the happening, yet the scientists needed to blame something for it instead of just saying it just happened and we wont understand it. He mentions this when they discuss the dissappearing bees. Now look at real life at the global warming discussions. You have majority of people saying we are causing global warming, yet they truly dont know this for fact. They dont know what will happen in the future.

This is the twist in the movie.

[utdarkviper]

Everyone that has been giving this movie bad reviews, isn't even taking this movie into perspective. Shyamalan's movies are not made to be thrillers, or to be exciting. They are meant to make you think and wonder at possibilities. Expecting someone who doesn't know what baseball is to go to a game and say how great it was is along the same lines. How can someone enjoy something that they don't understand? If you were to go into Shyamalan's movies with the understanding that the purpose is to make you think, not to have explosions and gun-fights, then you might surprisingly find you enjoy it.

[azcodemonkey]

Everyone that has been giving this movie bad reviews, isn't even taking this movie into perspective. Shyamalan's movies are not made to be thrillers, or to be exciting. They are meant to make you think and wonder at possibilities. Expecting someone who doesn't know what baseball is to go to a game and say how great it was is along the same lines. How can someone enjoy something that they don't understand? If you were to go into Shyamalan's movies with the understanding that the purpose is to make you think, not to have explosions and gun-fights, then you might surprisingly find you enjoy it.

Ah, the Shyamalan apologists! This is always the defense of his movies that I hear/read. Really, why is it that people that criticize him are accused of being stupid? The only movies of his I've enjoyed have been The Sixth Sense (because I didn't expect the twist at all, and it was well acted, beautifully photographed and directed), and Unbreakable (because I like comics and thought it was an interesting take on the genre, very human and real). Everything else has been utterly predictable with really weak plot mechanics to convey his "message". While the depth of his messages are debatable, his story for conveying them are, from what I've seen from Signs forward, poor at best. I shouldn't have to lower my standard of storytelling and suffer a crappy plot in order to get some pretentious message. (and I do understand that Signs wasn't about an alien invasion, nor The Village about a monster, although I think they both would have been better had they been.)

Notice that not once did I say you were stupid for having enjoyed his movies. You're not. You happen to enjoy something that I do not. It doesn't make me better and you worse, it just means we have different tastes. I don't enjoy Shyamalan's stories anymore. I have my reasons just as you have yours for enjoying them.

[utdarkviper]

...why is it that people that criticize him are accused of being stupid?...

To begin with, nowhere in my post did I call anyone stupid. If you were referring to a past post then I did not read that far into it. Also, there is a huge difference between the people who criticize his movies and those who just downright insult them. You, for one, are criticizing with valid points to back up your thoughts, whereas the people I was mainly directing my post towards are just insulting with no real reason other than "I hate his movies." I just felt the need to clarify that a bit.

[DELTETHISACCOUNT]

I don't even care who M. Night or Mark Whalberg is, I enjoyed to movie very much. Had me on the edge of my seat the entire tmie.

[Ferret]

I think this has to be the worst film I have EVER seen in my life - Utter **** !

And to anyone who said they enjoyed it, must have been watching something different !

[PL_ Veteran]

It wasn't that bad. I enjoyed myself, and if I can say that then the film was good. Not great, but it was worth the ticket (seriously though, ?7 to go see one film?!)

[Hurmoth]

So I finally went to see this last night and I must say it wasn't as bad as what some of you are making it out to be. The ending certainly could have used work, but it could have been a lot worse.

Actually this film made me think though about what humans do to the planet and while I'm not a fan of the man made global warming theory (I believe global warming is real, just not man made), I do believe we could do a lot better at trying to protect our planet and it isn't out of the question for the planet to turn against us to rid the world of the worst virus ever, humans. I don't think it could happen like it did in the film, but certainly plants can adapt to new threats very quickly.

I enjoyed the film, a little slow in some parts, but not horrible like what so many are trying to make it out to be.

3 out 5 stars from me

[Konstanov]

I saw this movie and Zowie seemed out of her role to be playing the girl who got scared all the time, after watching her play a huge bitch so very well in Failure to Launch. Also what is so bad about having dessert with someone after work? I eat lunch with co-workers all the time, but I would hardly say I'm dating Danny.

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

The worst movie I've ever watched. Truely terrible (N)

[david]

(N)(N) Terrible Movie

[Hardcore Til I Die]

Harsh.

I liked this film.