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Happening, The
20th Century Fox


5.6

based on 38 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 429 votes
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FILM:

MPAA RATING: R for violent and disturbing images

Starring Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo, Betty Buckley, Spencer Breslin, and Ashlyn Sanchez

It begins with no clear warning. It seems to come out of nowhere. In a matter of minutes, episodes of strange, chilling deaths that defy reason and boggle the mind in their shocking destructiveness, erupt in major American cities. What is causing this sudden, total breakdown of human behavior?For Philadelphia high school science teacher Elliot Moore what matters most is finding a way to escape the mysterious and deadly phenomenon. (Twentieth Century Fox)

GENRE(S):	Drama \| Sci-fi
WRITTEN BY:	M. Night Shyamalan
DIRECTED BY:	M. Night Shyamalan
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: October 7, 2008 Theatrical: June 13, 2008
RUNNING TIME:	91 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA \| India

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

An unapologetic B-movie.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

A movie that I find oddly touching. It is no doubt too thoughtful for the summer action season, but I appreciate the quietly realistic way Shyamalan finds to tell a story about the possible death of man.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Even when his scripts aren't working, Shyamalan knows how to frame shots and build suspense. The Happening, even more than his previous films, has a visual elegance and subtlety that helps to overcome the less successful aspects of the plot.

Film Threat Stina Chyn

Whether you’re a casual or an ardent follower of M. Night Shyamalan's films, The Happening could alienate or dominate your thinking cap. Remember--it's perfectly acceptable to laugh one second and shriek the next.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

A divertingly goofy thriller with an animistic bent, moments of shivery and twitchy suspense and a solid lead performance from Mark Wahlberg.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

It doesn't help that Wahlberg, whose work usually ranges from solid to inspired, is bewildering off-key here, though it may have something to do with playing off Deschanel, who reduces the whole marriage story line to a parody.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

The movie seems more like a '50s science fiction film of extreme paranoia or an episode of "The Twilight Zone" that even at a swiftly paced 90 minutes feels padded.

Variety Justin Chang

In short, this is a Shyamalan movie minus the bravado, the swagger; there are no audacious attempts to pull out the rug from under the audience, no ham-fisted lessons about the importance of religious belief or the power of storytelling.

Village Voice Robert Wilonsky

What a bunch of nonsense--effective nonsense, chilling nonsense, occasionally wrenching nonsense, but nonsense nonetheless.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Some sure symptoms: The movie demonstrates a smart movie geek's obsession with the rhythms and gory details of horror storytelling, undermined by a pompous insistence on spiritual lessons of the tritest kind.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

As for The Happening, his throwback horror flick that plays like "The Birds" meets "The Blob," it's beyond good and evil. It's dumbfounding.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

It's an entertaining movie, which is half the game, but it's not scary, which it should be. Neither is it something to be taken seriously, though it's intended to be.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Think of the worst Spielberg thriller or one of Hitchcock's dull late career works, then make it ugly and fill it with bad performances; voila: The Happening.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Even in a misfire like The Happening, Shyamalan has a fine feeling for dread. He knows how to creep you out. But he has a tin ear for acting.

NPR Bob Mondello

If what audiences are looking for is a thrill ride, or even a pervasive eeriness, The Happening's just not happening.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Shyamalan has said he wanted to create the best B-movie ever made, but it fails to be the best C movie of the month. (Stuck or Zohan are better C movies.)

Empire Will Lawrence

A disappointingly slight offering from a filmmaker that we know is capable of so much more. Shyamalan says that The Happening was his easiest film to shoot. Sadly, it shows.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

The film never builds past its initial idea, the references to 9/11 feel cheap, the good actors are wasted, and the bad ones are distracting.

Slate Dana Stevens

The old-school horror tricks (the fake scare followed by a real one, the safe haven that isn't) feel more like cribbing than homage, but they get the job done.

Salon.com Mary Elizabeth Williams

The man who showed such promise less than a decade ago has been leaving a diminishing creative footprint ever since.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

M. Night Shyamalan's sixth film mines a rich lode of end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it clichés, but while the set up is spooky, the development is heavy handed and marred by Shyamalan's inability to write natural-sounding dialogue or convincing characters.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

It's neither dull nor stimulating, neither off-putting nor engaging.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

After the insufferably dense mermaid mythology of "Lady in the Water," Shyamalan clearly wanted to keep things simple. He whizzed straight past "simple" to simplistic.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Shyamalan isn't drawing the caliber of performances from his actors as he used to. Who can forget Haley Joel Osment's haunting portrayal in The Sixth Sense or that of Toni Collette, who played his mother, or Bruce Willis in arguably his best role?

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The Happening is a movie to walk out of, sleep through, or - best of all - not to bother with.

New York Post Kyle Smith

A movie that features Wahlberg suggesting everyone try to outrun the wind can barely be watched once.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Shyamalan still has an abundance of personality and ambition, and there are scattered moments of craft throughout, but the gulf between his lofty aspirations and feeble accomplishments has seldom been wider or more chuckle-inducing.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

He still sees dead people, only now they're the best thing in the movie.

Chicago Reader Andrea Gronvall

Wahlberg turns in one of his worst performances ever, but then he's saddled with preposterous scenes.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

A high-toned revenge-of-nature horror picture, it's a little depressed, with only gross-out shocks (gushing jugulars, bodies run over by lawnmowers) to relieve the torpor.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

The Happening is both too incoherenly weird and too narratively ambitious for its own good.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Film critics have been asked to say as little as possible about M. Night Shyamalan's new scare film about the perils of messing with Mother Nature. Fair enough. But I will say this: It's not happening.

Premiere Ryan Stewart

A disaster, representing a number of negative firsts for Shyamalan.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

You feel like you're not watching the end of the world but the end of a career.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Being risibly bad, The Happening is at least worth a laugh. Exactly one laugh, by my reckoning, and completely unintended but no less full-throated for that.

Time Richard Corliss

And now we have this ill wind, this feeble gust of an environmental horror story. The writer-director's disintegration from robust artistic health to narrative incoherence, from hitmaker to box-office loser, has an almost tragic trajectory. It's a saga worthy of being told by the young M. Night Shyamalan.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

To be honest, I would be perfectly happy to walk with a zombie after ninety minutes of this; it would feel like light relief.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

The Happening makes you wonder whether Mr. Shyamalan's own switch may have been flipped. How else to explain his film's befuddling infelicities, insistent banalities, shambling pace and pervasive ineptitude?

The average user rating for this movie is 5.6 (out of 10) based on 429 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

LarryL gave it a3:
A horrible movie...unless it was meant as a comedy/parody. The acting and the lines were so bad you wish everybody in the movie kills themselves. Including the film crew.

Stephen L. gave it an8:
This is a love it or hate it film as the ratings here indicate. I was more towards the love it end of the scale. Not one for the real horror fans that are looking for scare, but engaging and unsettling. Words that apply - Unnerving, Unsettling, Thought provoking, Fascinating, Eerie. Words that don't apply - Scary, Jump out your skin, horror. Don’t watch alone.

Graham D. gave it a2:
Horrible writing and bad acting take away from the horror elements.

C M gave it a3:
Simply horrible, in every respect. What a complete waste of a rental.

David C gave it a0:
I swore I would never see another M. Night Shyamalan movie after The Village...I should have known better because this was one of the WORST movies I've seen in the last 15 years, tied with Battlefied Earth. It's good for laughts, but not with the movie --- at it. Once again Mark Wahlberg has proven that he is a terrible lead actor, although he is a great supporting actor (e.g., The Departed).

Zack gave it a3:
This movie was bad. The acting was laughable and the dialogue awful. The overall concept wasn't bad as the exposition to a much larger film. However, the second half to this great epic (what happens to mankind after this) never happens. It just ends abruptly and anticlimatically. If you were to cut this down to the couple good scenes and add a new ending (which shows more aftermath) and have the actors give better performances (most of these guys are better then that). This could have been pulled off beautifully.

Andrew D. gave it a9:
Suprisingly creepy with a definite ecocide-in-reverse theme. The disdain with which bloggers treat M Nights films is a worry. No mainstream pulp director has ever received such scorn. Each and every film stimulated me intellectually and cinematically. In 20 years his films will be remembered and revisited again and again. Then witness the volte-face of the contempary critics who found his works to be egotistical. Methinks you do protest too much.

Happening, The 20th Century Fox

Happening, The
20th Century Fox