My Movie Review: The Happening

"This movie's hurt'n" - Ryan McDaniel
"There is not one redeeming quality from that movie" - Beth Gianopulos
"There has to be a good reason why this movie was so bad. Maybe is was M. Knight's way of giving Hollywood the middle finger." - Kipp Garrett

Those were just a few of the quotes from my wife and friends as we stood around outside the theater trying to comprehend what we just saw. I'm as big of a M. Knight Shyamalan fan as you'll find anywhere. I not only have loved all is previous movies (including The Village and Lady in the water) but I own them. Ever since I read the premise last summer of his newest film 'The Happening", about earth finally having enough of mankind destroying it so it begins to purge the world of humans by releasing a poisonous gas into the air, I thought this movie would be a work or art. Boy was I wrong.

What I got was 89 minutes of bad story, bad acting, bad dialogue, and unlikeable characters. The movie reminded me more of a cheesy Twilight Zone episode and less like the brilliant, thought provoking summer blockbuster I've been use to from Shyamalan. I've read some interviews from M. Knight where he claims this was a tribute to the old 50's B-movie horror flicks that flooded theaters back then. Which is fine. But just because you were trying to make a B-movie tribute doesn't mean that you had to make every aspect of this movie unwatchable.

Give me a 50'd B-movie horror flick any day over what I had to endure this past weekend. 1/2 Stars (the only reason is wasn't 0 is my respect and affection for M. Knight)

Comments

Joel Smith said…
Thanks for keeping me from spending any money on this film. It looked intriguing, but I guess it was just another dog. Honestly, I've never been impressed with much of this director's work. The Sixth Sense was good, but other than that I can't think of any of his films I'd recommend. Perhaps I'm just shallow and don't comprehend his points.

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