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Just no. This movie has Shyamalan’s typical signature in creating suspense (a spooky house with a spooky landlady), which tempts me to give it three stars, but unfortunately everything essential is amiss. The love motif doesn’t work, the relationship between the main characters is incomprehensible and there is no trace of interesting dialogue or a final point. The Happening is a bland, sometimes exciting and sometimes naïve farce, cooked in water salted with James Newton Howard’s music from Signs. (09.06.2008)

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. (20.07.2008)

Quite fun. How much you’ll enjoy it will depend on when you give up hope of a chilling thriller to make do with a parody of catastrophe movies. I did it during the first ten minutes and I could watch the rest with a smile on my face. I don’t think there’s any other way to be satisfied, because Shyalaman simply could not mean this seriously. Or maybe he did at first, but when he realised that Wahlberg and Deschanel weren’t the right casting choices, he decided to use them differently and turn the thriller he had planned into the utmost B-movie. What takes the film down very deep are the dialogues and the way the actors utter them, otherwise it would’ve been alright, there’s even some atmosphere here and there. I really want to believe in what I’ve just written, but unfortunately, I’m not that sure. If Happening is so bad unintentionally, we are witnessing an enormous failure by a director. There’s one exchange by the end that gives me some hope that my theory is true. In the scene when Elliot is telling about the time he went to buy cough syrup. Alma: “Are you joking?” (Elliot nods in agreement). Alma: “Thanks.” (05.07.2008)

The only question I have in connection with this film relates to the budget. I’d even suspect Shyamalan of preferring to embezzle a little something into his own pocket as if he suspected that his latest venture (as is slowly becoming his habit) wouldn't even make money. But now more seriously: I was not at all disappointed because this is exactly the kind of intimate thriller I was expecting. Shyamalan plunges ordinary characters into a marginal situation that cannot be properly rationally explained, leaving them groping not only over the question of mysterious deaths but also over their own relationships. These relationships are stressed in the extreme, even if some of the dialogue suffers from "romantic B-movie" syndrome. It's not about bogeymen, it's about questions we need to start asking. PS: At times, Shyamalan and his cinematographer Fujimoto did such great work that I thought about how good it would be if he had made Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. (21.07.2008)

When mom gets pissed, her offspring shakes with fear in the corner. When Mother Nature loses patience, not just human kind, but also good movies and Shya’s reputation go up the spout. Unfortunately. I sincerely don’t give a damn if this is meant seriously or not (of course it is), but the result is neither fish nor fowl. Occasionally ridiculous and unintentionally entertaining and at other moments precisely the type of movie I wanted to see (in a few shots Night comes closer to the atmosphere of “The" Birds by Du Maurier than Hitch himself does). Primarily the atmospheric landscapes with a myriad flowers were really impressive; look out, Gardener’s World. I’m sorry that in many scenes I find myself laughing at my favorite and not with him. But this isn’t downright ridiculous, nor is it boring and definitely not unbearable. But thanks to Wahlberg’s “acting performance", it is unintentionally camp. If it weren’t for him, I would go higher with the marks. And what’s the movie actually like? Hard to pin down. Sometimes it just ends up that way. In my eyes, this is the first and I hope the last time this happens for M. Shit happens. What happened happened. Too bad, today is another day. ♫ OST score: 3/5 (12.06.2008)

We will get a point, 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 comments that constantly repeat borrowed complaints from reviews about the lack of a point and the presence of boredom? Happening is already the third film in a row by Shyamalan that the public expects to combine The Sixth Sense and Signs and be a similarly nerve-wracking affair like the two mentioned. And as a result of these expectations, a harsh impact comes. I 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 to reconcile with the unpredictable Indian Master will be on the agenda again. (23.06.2008)

There's a movie… and it's about nothing… but then… Zooey Deschanel walks in… there's a movie… and it's about nothing… but it has its charm. A typical example. (20.04.2011)

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 (20.09.2008)

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. (03.09.2008)

An ordinary, straightforward, and boring film. And if it wasn’t for the big creaking house with a strange landlady, I wouldn't have even known that it was made by a master of tension and brilliant twists, and the fact that Shyamalan isn't afraid to show the "action" directly this time and doesn't shy away from the camera doesn't suggest this either. So, we have several truly interesting and bloody accidents that are striking and real enough to captivate (construction site, car, combine harvester), but the atmosphere is nonexistent. There are a lot of unnecessary peripheral that make it impossible for the plot to thicken and work on the tension. And the final twist isn’t surprising, either, it was expected considering the name of the director. (08.10.2008)

I'm probably tuned to a different wavelength than most users, but I quite liked The Happening. It doesn't have the feel of The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable or Signs, but it's still a film with a good atmosphere and an appealing "We pissed off nature - now it’s going to get even with us" idea. By the way, the film reminded me in many moments of King's book “Cell" (admit it, Shyamalan, you read it in one sitting too), in which something similar actually happens. Pros for The Happening: Scenes like the workers falling, the suicide shooters, "sleepovers" in the old woman's house, the ending. The actors aren't bad (except for a whole hour and a half of weirdly freaked out Zooey Deschanel), and Newton Howard's music is as good as ever. Cons: In terms of suspense, Shyamalan remains behind his previous films (the wind rustling in the treetops is no match for the cornfields), there is little that is scary, nerve-rattling or unexpected in The Happening... And there is also no particularly shocking point. It gets three stars. (20.07.2010)

I suppose (and I may be wrong) that what M. Night Shyamalan originally intended was to write a few quirky dialogues to lighten up the atmosphere of this otherwise gloomy film. The result, however, lacks all invention whatsoever. The characters’ words are lacking substance, uttered in the least appropriate moments, concern stupid things and are spoken by totally unsuitable actors. Mark Wahlberg and especially Zooey Deschanel form a very malfunctioning central couple. As for the little girl, despite her being the third main character, present nearly throughout the entire film duration, she is so useless that one almost forgets she is even there. When, at last, there is a glimpse of an appealing character (the hearty gardener played by Frank Collison) who has something to say to the storyline, he suddenly starts to blather about the popularity of hot dogs, leaving the scene after just two minutes. The icing on the cake is that, when the apocalypse and extinction of millions of people become imminent, Alma’s (Zooey Deschanel) main concern is her own remorse for having cheated on her husband (Wahlberg) by going out for a sweat dish with another man. My goodness! What kind of alternative world does this story take place in? (19.06.2018)