Every once in awhile, a film comes along that's so bad, its almost hilarious in its awfulness. And then there's this mess. For me, its the worst movie I've ever seen and I watched it again to see if it was truly as bad as I remembered. Yep, THE HAPPENING is truly that bad.
Rather than taking time to elaborate on the plot, which is so dumb it doesn't bear any time, let's look at some of the most shockingly bad moments in this parade of ineptitude.
* Mark Wahlberg plays a science teacher. Look, I like Wahlberg in action roles and real life hero roles, but science teacher? Yeah, he cant pull that off.
* The film starts off really strong for about 8 minutes, with thousands of people suddenly freezing in place and then suddenly finding ways to kill themselves like some massive tribute to "The Omen"s freaky death scenarious. For about 8 minutes, and then it goes off the rails and through the wall.
* At one point, a man holed up in his house brutally shoots two unarmed teens, killing them on his porch. It's meant to be a big dramatic moment, but the acting is SO bad and the direction is so pretentious, that it's unintentionally laugh out loud funny.
* Betty Buckley is a great actress, but here she plays a character so poorly written, she's like a bi-polar lunatic that serves virtually NO purpose in the story (the plants are killing us)
* At one point, mid-movie, four characters are prepping to try and escape the unseen killer force (it's the plants) and they spend about a minute talking about if they like hot dogs. Hot dogs. Really? Did my grandson write this movie?
* The last twenty minutes is so boring and stupid that the two main characters talk to each other through a secret hole in the wall between rooms and....oh who cares
* Zooey Deschanel is so appealing and attractive and witty in "New Girl", but if you've only seen her here, you'll think she's a horrible actress lacking any sense of timing and wit. Poor Zooey.
This was the film that made me swear I'd never see another M. Night movie and I swore off them for a long time until SPLIT brought me back to the theatre.
That crazy old lady in this one is not the only bi-polar player. How Shyamalan makes movies as great as 'Sixth Sense" and "Unbreakable" and then turns around and makes this total POS must have two sides to his talent.
Roger Ebert actually liked this movie, saying he found it gentle and powerful. I wanted to go back and make sure we watched the same movie.
This is without a doubt, one of the worst movies ever made. If you approach it as a comedy, you'll have a pretty good time. (The planet is killing us)
But as a drama, its a very long 90 minutes of pretentious sermonizing, bad writing, horrible acting and even worse editing.
I just hope no one tells you what's really happening (the trees are trying to poison us because we are poisoning the planet and they are targeting any large group of people) because that would be a real shame and ruin the movie and save you 90 minutes of your life you could never have back.
This ain't HAPPENING and it gets an F.
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