King Size Movie Review: THE HAPPENING

M. Night Shyamalan’s movies were, at one time, considered “Events”. He burst onto the scene in 1999 with the brilliant “The Sixth Sense.” Its twist ending left moviegoers slack jawed and the word of mouth was phenomenal. He has spent the past nine years since trying to live up to that first blockbuster.

 

In that time each movie he released has been a successive step down. “Unbreakable” was good, “Signs” was OK, and “The Village” was awful, which brings us to his latest, “The Happening.”

 

Where do I start? First, let me warn you: I’m going to give away some plot points here. I can’t properly review the movie otherwise. However, I don’t consider it spoiling because you can’t spoil meat that’s already gone bad. Trust me; you’ll thank me for saving you the 8 bucks. However, if you don’t want to know any details, then read no further. You have been warned.

 

So the gist of “The Happening” is this: People suddenly, inexplicably start killing themselves. At first it is thought to be some sort of viral terrorist attack. It begins in New York City, in Central Park. People start talking gibberish, freeze in place, and then off themselves. The virus soon spreads throughout the Northeast. Here’s the first sign of trouble for this movie: When people start dying on screen, you don’t want to hear laughter from the audience.

 

Mark Wahlberg plays a science teacher that escapes on a train with his emotionally distant wife and his math teacher best friend. They soon speculate that the attacks are actually coming from the plants. Yes, you read that right, the plants. There are a few scenes that contain some scientific mumbo jumbo that attempts to explain how this could be possible. The explanation is that the plants and trees are defending themselves against humans. If Al Gore were to make a horror movie this would be it. The Earth Strikes Back!

 

Everything about this movie is laughably bad. It is chock full of horrible overacting, overdramatic music, and snicker-inducing extravagant death scenes.

 

In fact, everything about it was so bad that I began to suspect that that was the twist. It was bad on purpose. I began to think that this was going to turn out to be a high school play on the dangers of Global Warming, or perhaps a fictional story written by a child on the subject. No, in fact the twist is: There is no twist!! 

 

“The Happening” is so bad I think it has potential to end up a cult classic like “Showgirls”. This is what “Snakes On A Plane” tried to be. It’s deliciously bad. We now have a front-runner for Worst Movie Of The Year. It’s almost so bad it’s good. Almost. While I got some good unintentional laughs out of it and I think it has a lot of potential as a cheesy B movie, I can’t in good conscience recommend spending any money on this. I think the days of the M. Night Shyamalan “Event” movie are over. SKIP IT.