The Happening

Director: M.Night Shyamalan
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Zoey Deschaniels , John Leguizamo
Rating: 15 (R)
Company: Blinding Edge Pictures, 20th Century Fox, SpyGlass Entertainment, UTV Motion Pictures
Duration: 91 minutes

REVIEWED BY THE FILM SERGEANT
(Warning: This review contains spoilers and huge amounts of rage)

Right… Oh where, Oh where do I start on this film. From the trailers and publicity and the like, ‘The Happening’ looked like a decent flick with moments of terror and excitement… But and then I saw the dreaded words M. Night Shymamamamaamlan… I must admit, I’m not a great big fan of M. Night Showodywody. His previous films, barring ‘The Sixth Sense’, have been pretty much dreadful. We have all the reoccurring plot devices he frequently uses in this film and more… Weird crazy thing attacking the human race… Check. Freaky little kid who just stares and has some sort of mental disorder… Check. A brooding central male character… Check. It just seems like he is trying to shove his morals down our throat in this one folks using the same old clichés.

M. Night Shamblescrotum decides that we as people are not being eco-friendly enough so decides that the trees can release a deadly neurotoxin which causes us to kill… ourselves! Yes, It does sounds rather stupid doesn’t it? Oh, but the explanation in the film is right at the start and so it gives no sort of eerie or mysterious motive that most films like this cause us to think. The characters keep tacked on the mentality that “the terrorists did it “ with enough vigour that the audience begin to get frustrated, shouting out “It was explained 5 minutes ago that it was the trees by a pleasant hillbilly with a love for hot dogs!”

What are we staring at?

I grated through ‘The Happening’ for one solid reason. The trailer made me do it. The trailer is one of the most misleading phenomena of all time!  It shows us all the best bits of a film and so we are enticed to watch the hour or two of crap that isn’t interesting to get to these points. I have seen many a film solely under the provision of a good trailer and sadly, a lot of them destroyed my vision and blown my mind through its sheer awfulness… They are that bad! Oh, the publicity and distribution agents would be proud of this gross misinterpretation!

M. Night Shootmeintheheadifitakethepissoutofhislastnameoncemore really needs to get a new gimmick. I’m really not sure who he is trying to fool with this lazy attempts at film making. The concepts are dry, outdated and bordering on the completely imbecile. I mean, I know it has become his “thing” to do a twist ending but if the audience is expecting a big twist now it takes away from the impact almost entirely.

A special mention goes out to the dialogue. It is truly god awful, especially the liners given to Mark Wahlberg and Zoey Deschanel. I don’t care if you’re a mild-mannered teacher and a bitch that leeks about as much emotion as a rusty trowel, If people were being killed all around you, I’m sure the first thing you say would not be “Excuse me sir, Thank you for shooting the ghetto kid but I’m going to leave now with grace because I’m an amicable human being.”

And what the hell is happening with the title of this movie anyway? (See what I did there?) It sounds like a cheesy B Movie title like ‘The Re-deadening’ or the brooding M. Night Shittheseareeasytodo can just say goodnight to this film being in the same league as ‘The Sixth Sense’. My anger can’t be controlled about this… it was his only good film to date and I’m not sure if that’s due to it being the first film he made so his gimmicks weren’t tiring by that point, or Bruce Willis can just carry a film really well.

Simply and bluntly put, ‘The Happening’ will end up in bargain bins all over the world. This has to be because while watching the movie no one can understand what the hell is happening in the film rather than what is happening to their minds as they are watching this drivel. It feels as if he was purposely wanting to make a corny badly written film as a means of satire and such but failing miserably to make something just horrible… driving the audience freaking insane! Presenting the new film ‘The M. Night Survivinganotheroneofhisfilms-aning’.

0/5