THE HAPPENING.

I really have no idea what to say. I was hyped for this movie for the longest time, then I started reading horrible reviews about it… and now that I’ve seen it… I feel somewhere in the middle. The Happening is about this event that happens only in the north-eastern United States that causes people to become disoriented before killing themselves. Everybody thinks there’s been another terrorist attack of some kind, but then the likelihood of that slowly starts to dwindle away. So when science teacher Elliot (Mark Wahlberg) hears what’s going on, he, his math teacher friend Julian (John Leguizamo), Julian’s 8-year-old daughter Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez), and his wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel)—with whom he’s having troubles with relationship-wise—hop a train out to go out into the middle of nowhere where Julian’s mother lives. Unfortunately, the train stops in an even more middle-of-nowhere place because they lost contact with ‘everybody’. So now the gang has to try and find a way to get away from the north-east region of the US to where it’s safe.

So, yeah, not sure what to think about it. There were some tense moments, sure, and there was quite a bit of comedy (I think it was funnier than it was scary). In fact, if the movie hadn’t taken itself so seriously, it might have made a decent horror-comedy. The gore is there, yet it isn’t there. They typically cut away right before showing much of anything (though some stuff was showed). And some of it was more ridiculous than others (such as the lion cage one).

The actual cause, which is revealed pretty early on, is borderline cool and just plain silly. At first I thought it was a bit weird and absurd, but I eventually got used to it, and the movie did garner some good suspense. Either way you look at it, though, it’s rather unique and original. Did it work, though? Semi-sorta.

The movie’s biggest downfall isn’t really in the script or the directing, though (so it really isn’t M. Night’s fault). The biggest downfall is the acting. Mark Wahlberg can be a pretty good actor when he wants to be. I’m not sure he really wanted to be this time. And I usually love Zooey Deschanel (in a lot of ways), but even she was ‘blah’ in this movie. John Leguizamo wasn’t too terrible, though. And Jess, the daughter, was really good… though that’s probably because she has all of two lines or so in the entire movie. Even worse than the main actors was the supporting cast. They could be just downright awful. So really, I blame the acting more than anything in this movie, because acting can make a bad script good or a good script awful.

That’s about all I can say about it. The music was good, and the visual style is good, as it usually is with M. Night. There’s no water-love this time around, though, and don’t go in expecting a twist ending, because there isn’t one. But that’s not really a bad thing, especially considering that most people’s main dislikes for M. Night after The Sixth Sense was that he was too predictable. But whatever. The movie isn’t a masterpiece, but I personally don’t believe it’s as God-awful as everybody has been making it out to be. I think people are just out to hate on M. Night, really. It has its moments, but some of the moments can really be negated by the acting. In other words, it’s not a total failure, but it isn’t M. Night’s ticket back into good standing with Hollywood, either.

Stop Saying Okay! Okay.