Synopsis:

On a peaceful day in central park, a girl sits with her friend on a bench reading and talking.  Her friend says, "what page was I on?".  Hearing a scream in the distance, the girl is startled away from her conversation, glances at her friend and says, "whew! that scared me."  Her friend doesn't respond for a second, then utters "what page was I on?".  The girl surveys the park to see that everyone in sight is frozen in place, motionless.  She asks her friend, "are you seeing this?".  Her friend says, "what page was I on?".  Slowly her friend reaches back to grab a sharp object and motions it towards her own throat...and...fade to black.  This is a part of the trailer for The Happening.  They've been promoting the heck out of this thing, revealing nothing in press junkets, hinting that this is M Night Shyamalan's first R-rated movie and it should be better because he isn't confined to a PG-13 rating, etc...  20th Century Fox should be praised for their marketing efforts and especially their trailer editing.  It really made me want to see it, so much so that I had to on opening night over The Incredible Hulk.

Elliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg) is an energetic high school science teacher in Philadelphia, a favorite of his students and an all around good guy.  Struggling to keep his marriage together with his wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel), Elliot finds himself amidst an incredible scientific event.  After the "event" described above occurs in New York City, Elliot's Philadelphia classroom is disrupted and the students and teachers are sent home for fear of a terrorist attack.  Soon the events spread and begin to occur in other major cities.  Elliot, Alma, Elliot's best friend Julian (John Leguizamo) and his daughter Jess are soon kept trying to keep one steap ahead of whomever or whatever is causing these chatastrophies.

The Freak's Rating: D : All the good parts of the standard green-band trailer are shown in the first 10-15 minutes of the film.  Too often the best moments from the trailer are the best moments in the film, scattered throughout the film allowing the trailer to be somewhat of a spoiler for strong moments.  So I was still pretty pumped, forgiving the horrendous script to that point and hungry at the potential of what was to come.  I had forgiven the clichés of a humorous best friend, a definitively doe-eyed girl (Deschanel) and even the smart teacher who could somehow solve any problem except those in his personal life.

Then came the next hour and a half of the film, each moment more disappointing than the next.  Starting out with a frightening concept of an unknown contributor to the end of the human race, The Happening runs out of steam 20 minutes in and treads stagnant water for the remainder of its duration.  With many gestures towards post-911 paranoia, pollution of nuclear power and, of course, global warming, the movie comes off as more of a failed political message from its creators than anything else.

Wahlberg is still one of my favorite actors and I don't blame Deschanel for her work.  On paper this should be a hit with the unrestricted R rating, a new mystery/thriller from Shyamalan, a frightening concept, etc...  There is just nothing here to work with, nothing at all.  This is one of the worst scripts I've ever seen brought to the big screen, laughable for the most part.  Dialogue is overwritten, characters are over the top in every way imaginable and some scenes just leave you dumbfounded on their believability.

After The Sixth Sense, The Village and Signs, one readies themselves to watch an M Night Shyamalan film in patience, waiting for the reveal that will either knock them off their seats or at least provide an, "Oh, so that's why..." moment for them.  In The Happening, the reveal never comes.  Content to meander through its mediocre script, Shyamalan has no twist in store for the audience.  The "villain", if you want to call it that, is revealed in the first half of the film and that is all you get.

The opening 15 minutes of the film are what saves the film from failing.  Death scenes are brutal throughout the film and unexpectedly violent at times, always a necessity for a suspense thriller like this.  The "happening's" effects on humans is incredibly creepy, but wears thin by the second act of the film.  Marketing had to be good for this film, because word of mouth will be terrible.  Seeing the film with a group of friends, nobody in the group had a positive thing to say afterwards.  The rumor mill says that Shyamalan had a difficult time obtaining his desired budget for The Happening after his last two box office failures, Lady In The Water and The Village.  At this point M Night should be scouring the want ads.  Sadly it appears The Sixth Sense was the only good film in him.  The team that put together the trailer deserves all of the praise for the opening weekend box office take.  This will be an enormous dropoff for its second week run.

Lori's Rating: D- : I kept looking for a deeper meaning thinking they couldn't have given the complete plot line in the first 30min.  But they did!  I do not recommend this to anyone, even when it comes out of DVD. 

Shan's Rating: D : Huge disappointment, don't waste your money going to theaters and watching it, wait 'til it comes out on DVD.

Jen's Rating: D- : What a disappointment this one was!  I do NOT recommend this movie to anyone.  It appears to be so much better than it was.  There were random parts that made no sense, poor acting, horrible writing, bad directing...nothing really good about this movie.  Don't waste your time.

Daniel's Rating: F : Horrible stupidest enemy ever if you wanted to stop them just light a match and throw it in the woods

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