This movie is neither the worst or best movie M. Night Shyamalan has made. The Happening is clearly as not as creepy or clever as it tries to be. The Happening takes place in M. Night Shyamalan’s home town of Philadelphia and follows a high school teacher (Mark Wahlberg) who is discussing with his students possible reasons for why all the honeybees have gone missing. He is interrupted by a fellow co-worker to go to a meeting. In this meeting we found out there has been a possible terrorist attack in Central Park.
However the critical thinking science teacher known as Eliot Moore (Wahlberg) is not buying the government’s explanation of a terrorist attack in Central Park. Elliot and his wife (Deschanel) and co-worker (John Leguizamo) decide to board a train to Pennsylvania however they don’t get that far when the train abruptly stops in a small town called Filbert. Confused of what is happening Elliot approaches the train drivers who tell him that they have lost contact with the outside world.
We later learn that it may be a chemical release by plants that is causing these terrible mass suicides to happen, and these suicides are done really well and is easily the best parts of the movie, from people jumping off roof tops to a lion pulling off a mans arms these scenes are great to watch however sadly this isn’t enough to stop the Happening from being pulled down by a bad script and equally bad acting by everyone involved. Wahlberg gives us a bad performance however he is nowhere as bad as his on film girl friend Zooey Deschanel who’s acting abilities can only be compared to a piece of wood, not only does she act bad but her facial expressions throughout the film stay the same and the ‘confused look’ does get tiresome very fast.
The Happening is neither great like the sixth sense nor really poor like the lady in the water, it sits in the middle, and the Happening is OK but offers nothing really special to get people to watch the movie. I award the Happening 3 stars out of 5.
