IESB Presents - FilmGeekz.com - The Happening

The Happening - Review

DVD Reviews

Studio: 20th Century Fox
Genre: Thriller • Drama
Street Date: October 7, 2008
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Number of Discs: 1
MPAA Rating: R
Cast: • Mark Wahlberg
• Zooey Deschanel
• Betty Buckley
• John Leguizamo
Running Time: 90 minutes
Format: Standard

DVD Specs: Video: Widescreen 1.85:1 Color

Audio: ENGLISH: Dolby Digital 5.1 [CC], SPANISH: Dolby Digital Surround [CC], FRENCH: Dolby Digital Surround [CC]

Subtitles: English, Spanish, French
Special Features: - Deleted Scenes with Introductions by M. Night Shyamalan
- The Hard Cut Featurette
- I Hear You Whispering Featurette
- Visions of The Happening: A Making-of Featurette
- A Day for Night Featurette
- Elements of a Scene Featurette
- Gag Reel
Version: Standard
Review: The Happening was extensively advertised as M. Night’s first R rated movie; my question however is “Why?” There’s not much gore, no sex, little in the way of adult language, and even less coherent plot…oh wait is the MPAA now giving R rating for films with little to no sensible story? If so there’s I expect High School Musical 4 is going to be NC-17.

Now rating questions aside the movie itself is really just a prime example of a decent idea that’s so poorly executed and down right awful you have to wonder just what the bloody hell went wrong. The idea of our planet deciding to defend itself against us humans is not a bad bit of subject matter but what happens throughout this movie just makes it not only difficult to suspend belief for it makes it hard to stay awake for. I mean come on Al Gore the guy who was made fun of for being dull put on a slide show about how the environment may someday kill us and it was insanely more entertaining than this thing is.

M. Night has always kept his actors performances at a low speed and volume and up until now it’s always worked (for the most part) but here it just makes you feel like the whole movie is on mute and that the director only showed up on set enough to be seen in the extra features section of the DVD. Throughout the entire movie I kept expected it might pick up and get better, I even began praying for a lame twist. All expectations and prayers went unanswered.

Whatever happen to Shyamalan the last few years one hopes it wears off and he gets back on track, but considering he’s now got as many failures as successes the next movie will be the dipping point of his career. While I was pretty un-thrilled by The Happening I am rooting for the guy to turn it around.

Overall: Whatever’s Happening Avoid This One
Buy It Now:
Rating: .5 Stars

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