"THE HAPPENING"
Movie Review
by Chris Alexis
| * (out of 5 stars) Rated R Opens June 13, 2008 Studio: 20th Century Fox Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan Back to Movie Review Home |
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M. Night Shyamalan is known for his endings. And I have to say, that’s what killed this movie for me.
It wasn’t that I needed some big twist ending to satisfy me. I just needed, well, an ending.
For most of the film, I enjoyed the story of a group of people running from a mysterious force that causes people to kill themselves. A wind will blow through the scene and people will stop what their doing – and begin immediately killing themselves with whatever means they have at their immediate disposal. Sounds interesting, right? Is it the government? Is Mother Nature causing this?
The movie follows Elliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg) and a group of survivors as they flee the mysterious force, which affecting more and more people in the northeast.
I will give Shyamalan credit – he knows how to create suspense. And I was enthralled for a big part of the movie, and excited and curious as to where the story would end up; I was ready to be intrigued.
But the movie is a like an exotic dancer – all teasing and no pleasing.
I won’t give away how it ends, but it wrapped up so anticlimactically that I felt all the intensity had been building up to nothing. Some people have said the ambiguous ending makes it all the more intriguing, but it felt... lazy to me.
And then, in retrospect, it made the whole story seem kind of dumb.
I’m a fan of Zooey Deschanel overall, but her whiny character grated on my nerves. The rest of the performances, however, were solid enough. Mark Wahlberg has proven himself to be an actor of high caliber and I look forward to his movies.
This will probably be the last big movie Shyamalan does. After people didn’t visit “The Village” much and “Lady in the Water” drowned, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the last big studio project that Shyamalan has “happening.”
