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[A]n astonishment, so idiotic in conception and inept in execution that, after seeing it, one almost wonders whether it was real or imagined.
The Happening is an awful letdown, yet it leaves you with something new, as a gently waving tree -- that classical image of pastoral tranquillity -- mutates into a harbinger of doom.
For a movie with the potential for so much global-warming electricity, it's disappointingly low on voltage.
It almost dares you to roll your eyes or laugh at certain scenes that are supposed to be deadly serious. But, you know what, I appreciated this creatively offbeat, daring sci-fi mind-trip.
All that's missing is the head alien of Plan 9 From Outer Space dropping by to lecture the populace for disrespecting nature: 'Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!'
Feeble gust of an environmental horror story.
Horror film is long on peril, but thin on plot.
Shot in the inimitable Shyamalan lugubriousness
Shyamalan sve lo%u0161ije reagira na gubitak statusa holivudskog bo%u017Eanstva
Seeing The Happening is like going on an outing with an earnest person, who happens to be a drunk. Every time it starts to make sense, it slurs its speech and starts dropping things -- such as coherence and credibility.
More than anything, what bothers me about it is a sense of cheapness that ... centrally comes from a concept mainly built for shock value.
Undoubtedly M. Night Shyamalan's weakest thriller to date...
While not as laughable as the narcissistic Lady in the Water ,it fails just as miserably as narrative and even more miserably with its flat characters and tone deaf dialogue.
Besides telegraphing the cause of the ho-hum havoc, this yawner is beset by a host of flaws, including wooden acting jobs by Zooey Deschanel and Mark Wahlberg who barely demonstrate the emotional range of the zombies everybody around them is turning into.
It's a great idea. A silent, unknown killing machine knocking people off while a science teacher tries to figure out why. But it just didn't work.
Shyamalan's latest is an improvement, but a full-fledged comeback ain't happening.
Shyamalan is a master at a visual iconic moment - but the "filler" (you might have learned about it in English class by this name: "story") gets weaker and weaker every film.
The M. Knight brilliance is there in quick jolts of suspense and terror, but those moments are the exception in this otherwise flat little thriller.
Shyamalan's religious ideas are a lot like Bush's: Nearly theology free.
M. Night Shyamalan offers up low-intensity thrills that fail to match the shivery shudders of his best work (THE SIXTH SENSE, SIGNS). His patented approach - mixing domestic drama with horror - plays out on a much larger canvas.
It is the first film of his career that feels incompetent and utterly gratuitous at times.
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