When the opening credits are rolling and you find yourself getting bored watching white clouds billow in a blue sky, give in to the feeling to turn off the movie and go do something else. Don't waste your time sitting around waiting for The Happening to happen... it won't.

It isn't so much that there is anything really bad here, it is just utterly mediocre. Like salt-free oatmeal or the word 'blah', there is nothing good enough or bad enough to get excited about.

That said, I do have some specific complaints about The Happening and I'll start the actors. From beginning to end, they are prevented from doing their jobs by the horrible directing. I say this because I've seen Mark Wahlberg and John Leguizamo act before. There is a scene somewhere towards the middle of The Happening with a crowd clustered around a woman on her cell phone talking to her daughter as "it" happens to her daughter. The crowd stands still and silent and motionless as mother is horrified by the sounds coming from her phone and Wahlberg yells worried questions at her. ... With a full beat between each line of dialog so that the camera has time to bob around and lock onto the character between each line.

Secondly, the special effects... are... well, they really aren't all that special. For the most part, they don't work well. I liked the "raining people" scene and the way that the wind was blowing about was pretty convincing. Other than that, the FX were bad. The lion, the lawnmower, even the lady in the window, it was all bad. Laughable. If I was able to get past the wooden, unnatural acting, the special effects would immediately pull me back out of the movie.

Finally, the story. Generally speaking, the stories that I read or watch on TV or in movies, they don't follow the same structure that an essay does. They don't try to tell me what they are going to say and then tell me what they have to say. And then tell me what they just said. The Happening does pretty much that. There is no building of suspense and barely any mystery or wonder. That doesn't happen when the end of the tale is revealed, flat out, in the middle. I kept waiting for the "trick" or the real reveal, when either the mystery was cleared or a greater mystery was confirmed. Nope.

I did some poking around and found some mildly interesting tidbits. The more interesting is that supposedly Zooey Deschanel's pupils are CG'ed into heart shapes near the end of the movie. I missed that one... but it isn't quite interesting enough to pop this movie back into my Netflix queue. I also found a post that suggests that the mystery of The Happening is never actually revealed, that what happens is merely a by product of Wahlberg's character deciding to act as if it really is what he was told it was. That presents a mildly interesting possibility that is, again, not worth re-watching the movie to prove or disprove. Though I seriously doubt it.

So now you have the information that you need... to prevent it... from happening.

[well, I thought it was punny.]

Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: None of the Above
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older