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Rated R for violent scenes of violence
Reviewed by Karl Scot 

In The Happening the wind and trees get together to wreck havoc on the human race. Since The Birds tried and were only moderately successful it is now up to the trees and wind to show what they can do.  

 

Mark Wahlberg stars as a schoolteacher.  He is on the run with his wife and a child from the wind and trees.  Seems one morning the wind and trees woke up and said let’s mess with people in the NE USofA.  The breeze kicks up and people in NYC start standing still.  Then they walk backward a little bit.  Then they find a way to commit suicide.  Many of the people in the theater were considering the same thing about 30 minutes into the movie.  

 

M. Night Shyamalan is back as writer, director and producer for another go at the horror genre.  After The Sixth Sense it's been all downhill.  I thought after his last two dreadful movies, The Lady in the Swimpool or Water and The Village that things couldn’t get worse.  The good news is they don’t.  They just don’t get any better.  

 

For about the first 60 minutes, this movie has a scary creepiness and mystery but by the last 25 minutes things have pretty much dragged to a stop.  A dead stop.  The main characters traipse around the Pennsylvania countryside witnessing all manner of suicides, which have been completed or shown first hand.  People die by gunfire, falls off buildings, car crashes, runaway lawnmowers and boredom.  You get to witness it in all its gory and bloody detail.  That’s why MNS got his first R rating.  Eventually the movie moves from its dead in the water stop to a 3 month later follow up and then a “no surprise” ending that can be seen coming as easily as spotting the sun on a clear day.  The big MESSAGE at the end is right out of dozens if not hundreds maybe even thousands of 1950’s SciFi films, which is, don’t mess with mama nature or she might mess back.  

 

The theme song to the popular TV series and hit movie MASH was by Johnny Mandel. The name of the song was Suicide is Painless.  The Happening proves just the opposite. Take some aspirin and skip The Happening.
 
Rated 1.2 out of 4 reasons I will never see another movie by this guy unless it’s free on the internet and runs no more than 10 minutes.