Directed by:
M. Night ShyamalanScreenplay:
M. Night ShyamalanCinematography:
Tak FujimotoComposer:
James Newton HowardCast:
Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo, Ashlyn Sanchez, Betty Buckley, Spencer Breslin, Frank Collison, Jeremy Strong, Alan Ruck, M. Night Shyamalan (more)VOD (2)
Plots(1)
The film opens onto New York City's Central Park with a crowd of people enjoying an idyllic summer day. The carefree scene soon takes a terrifying turn, when out of nowhere, hordes of people begin to commit suicide en masse. Cut to Elliot (Mark Wahlberg), a science teacher in Philadelphia. When he learns of the attack on New York, he meets up with his wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel), his friend Julian (John Leguizamo), and Julians's daughter, Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez). They make plans to get out of the city via train, but the train is evacuated in the middle of a small Pennsylvania town. (20th Century Fox)
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Reviews (13)
Except for Marky Mark’s somewhat odd performance and my expectation of a more powerful moral than just that people are mostly a bunch of scumbags who deserve to die (btw our Slovak brothers' title ‘Event’, is a catchier than the Czech ‘It Happened’) I quite liked it. The opening scenes, especially the one with the flying workers, are flawless and people behave wonderfully freakishly. Zooey Deschanel was fantastic as was John Leguisam's mathematician. Shy the director still knows how to make a movie. He can create the right atmosphere and so on, but Shy the screenwriter should take a break for a while. Wait for better ideas and prepare a big comeback. Too bad he didn't have a jab at Potter.
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Mother Nature can’t be thrown into a cell at Guantanamo, so what’s left for us to do? Change our email signature to: “Think of yourself… Print this email in as many copies as possible!” It seems we can't do anything. Shyamalan usually hits the right note with his choice of themes and presentation, but here, even with its slim runtime, there’s a lack of coherence, the relationship to the central duo at the heart of the apocalypse is entirely indifferent, and Professor Wahlberg's "performance" wouldn’t even suffice for modeling underwear. However, it makes no sense to pretend it didn’t happen. Compared to The Last Airbender, it’s still an attractive spectacle.
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We get a climax, the story moves forward along a path lined with tension, and the actors guide us through this depressing world with such ease that the hour and a half flies by almost on its own. So why am I staring at ultra-low ratings and reviews that constantly repeat borrowed complaints from reviews about the lack of a climax and total boredom? The Happening is now the third film in a row from M. Night Shyamalan that the public expects to combine The Sixth Sense and Signs and end up with a similarly nerve-wracking affair like those two. And as a result of these expectations, a harsh impact comes. I can understand this mistake with The Village, which I still consider one of the best films of my life, but with the excellent Lady in the Water, I understand it less, but if someone can't learn even on their third try, so be it. Perhaps it would be good to go to the cinema without prejudices and false expectations, and reconciling with the unpredictable Indian master will be on the agenda again.
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Well, I don't know, I'm kind of on the fence about this... If that's supposed to be a warning, it's a pretty lame one... in any case, I see it as the story of two people who didn't get along very well, their marriage stagnated, but thanks to something going on in the background that made them see a lot of dead bodies, they got back together... I guess :D
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It’s a pity that the wind didn’t also engulf Václav Klaus, at least Shymalan's ecological agitprop would have had some useful effect. Now, seriously, Shyamalan hasn't lost his directorial skill and he can still make scenes that give you chills, but the problem here is in two things: the half-baked concept, where logic takes a vacation quite often, and then the leading duo. Mark Wahlberg, as much as I like him, is absolutely unsuited to the role of a high school biology professor and bumbling husband (Mark's pissed-off macho characters are best with a gun in his hand) and whenever he tries to play some serious emotion and speaks up, he ruins all the action on screen with his perpetually furrowed brow and unbelievable speech. Mark, sorry, this didn't work out (and now I’m afraid of Jackson's The Lovely Bones). And Zooey, that doll with big eyes, gives it an even bigger punch. So Shyamalan lost with the casting and the half-baked script, but I'm still a fan.
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Gallery (122)
Photo © Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation
![The Happening - Photos](http://image.pmgstatic.com/cache/resized/w663/files/images/film/photos/160/817/160817896_bb54c4.jpg)
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