... Night Shyamalan's new movie The Happening, and in the flip a coin style basis of the writer/directors career this is a good movie. It's not been since 30 Days Of Night that I have seen anything quite this dark and sinister, Stephen King's The Mist went part way, but The Happening takes us ... Read review
In this heart-pounding apocalyptic thriller from M. Night Shymalan, the writer-director of ... more
The Sixth Sense and Signs, an unstoppable event threatens the world's population by attacking the most basic human instinct of all - survival. Academy Award Nominee Mark Wahlberg (2006 Best Supporting Actor - The Departed) stars as Elliot Moore, an ordinary man trying to save his family from a terrifying, invisible killer. As Elliot discovers the incredible possibility of what is happening, it is clear that no one - and nowhere - is safe. This edition features an extended cut of the original film with scenes too shocking for cinemas.
In this heart pounding apocalyptic thriller from M.Night Shyamalan, the writer-director of ... more
The Sixth Sense and Signs, an unstoppable event threatens the world's population by attacking the most basic human instinct of all survival. Academy Award Nominee Mark Wahlberg (2006 Best Supporting Actor The Departed) stars as Elliot Moore, an ordinary man trying to save his family from terrifying, invisible killer. As Elliot discovers the incredible possibility of what is happening it is clear that no one and nowhere is safe.This extended Edition of the film contains extras too shocking for cinemas, as well as a bonus Digital Copy of the film - now you can see The Happening wherever and whenever you want.
Lady in the Water director M. Night Shyamalan puts PG-13 suspenseon pause to tell this ... more
grim apocalyptic tale about a family fleeinga natural disaster that poses a grave threat to the whole ofhumanity. Philadelphia high-school science teacher Elliot Moore(Mark Wahlberg) is discussing the disappearance of the bees withhis students when the staff is summoned to the theater and briefedabout a mysterious event that is currently unfolding in New YorkCity. According to reports, citizens in the vicinity of CentralPark have suddenly and inexplicably begun seizing up just beforekilling themselves by whatever means are at their disposal. As thephenomena begins to spread and talk of terrorism fills theairwaves, Elliot, his wife, Alma (Zooey Deschanel), their friendJulian (John Leguizamo), and his daughter, Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez),board a train bound for the presumed safety of the country. Whenthe train screeches to a halt before arriving at its finaldestination, however, the frightened passengers are forced to fendfor themselves as each consecutive news report paints anincreasingly grim picture of the situation in more urbanized areas.Theories abound on what could be causing the unexplainable rash ofsuicides, but the only thing that everyone seems to agree on isthat it's some kind of airborne contagion that is carried in thewind. It would appear that humankind's reign on planet Earth hascome to an end, but perhaps if this small band of survivors canfind a safe place to lie low until this all blows over, all hopefor survival of the species might not be lost just yet.
Thriller - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring: Timothy West, Neil Morrissey, Tara Fitzgerald, Annette Crosbie, Pauline Quirke, Rob Brydon, Denise Van Outen, John Thomson, Kevin Whately, David Suchet
Production Year: 2002 - Thriller - Director: K.C. Bascombe - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring: Jesse James, Rachel Skarsten, Charles Powell, Linda Purl, Kevin Zegars
Production Year: 2002 - Thriller - Director: Bharat Nalluri, Rob Bailey, Andy Wilson - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring: Matthew MacFadyen, Keeley Hawes, David Oyelowo, Peter Firth, Jenny Agutter, Lisa Faulkner
Advantages: Incredibly bleak horror movie from the new US master Disadvantages: Some cheap effects
...a building site and having the horror of seeing one of your best friends fall from a building onto the floor dying instantly. Worse still imagine watching on in horror as nearly every one of your work colleagues fall from the sky hitting the floor and dying straight away. No warnings, no time to say goodbye; there one minute gone the next.
This is the horrific opening to M. Night Shyamalan's new movie The Happening, and in the flip ... ...dark and sinister, Stephen King's The Mist went part way, but The Happening takes us on very dark territory; this is by far Shyamalan's most dark and sinister work.
I think what makes this offering so effective is that it is based around a horror that we all know, expect, and feel. The events of 9/11 and the London bombings bring the thought of terrorism home to us, the audacity of these horrific events lead us to believe that anything ... more
Imagine working on a building site and having the horror of seeing one of your best friends fall from a building onto the floor dying instantly. Worse still imagine watching on in horror as nearly every one of your work colleagues fall from the sky hitting the floor and dying straight away. No warnings, no time to say goodbye; there one minute gone the next.
This is the horrific opening to M. Night Shyamalan's new movie The Happening, and in the flip a coin style basis of the writer/directors career this is a good movie. It's not been since 30 Days Of Night that I have seen anything quite this dark and sinister, Stephen King's The Mist went part way, but The Happening takes us on very dark territory; this is by far Shyamalan's most dark and sinister work.
I think what makes this offering so effective is that it is based around a horror that we all know, expect, and feel. The events of 9/11 and the London bombings bring the thought of terrorism home to us, the audacity of these horrific events lead us to believe that anything is possible. Shymalan's movie goes out of its way to indicate that the horror in this movie is based in the roots of terrorism.
The cast is led by Mark Wahlberg who plays lecturer Elliot Moore, who one day while working at school comes to discover that the world he knew had changed during the course of a lesson. There is something most strange about watching Wahlberg teach, it's an incredible piece of casting, he really looks and acts the part.
When it becomes evident that the effect of the "terrorism" is regional, Elliot decides to get his wife and family out of the city and head for safety. In typical Shyamalan style there are a series of strange and sometimes unexplained subplots weaved into this as Elliot's wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel) starts the movie as she means to go on, slightly weird. Julian (John Leguizamo) too is a little bit weird, with cagey behaviour and a feeling of disconnection between his character and the real world. It's actually rather bizarre that the only constant in the movie is Elliot, who remains strong, steadfast, and loyal to the movies end. Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez) is the daughter of Julian and to be fair she is like the movies big red herring, you have all sorts of expectations regarding her that are never really met, she is simply the child thrown into the piece in order for you to feel concerned about her, but there is no character development to follow it up, she is just simply present.
The illness, or infection if you prefer in the movie is not the routine type that you see in movies, no walking zombies or deliberate acts of violence on others, once infected the only course of action is to exit this life. I was not frightened but disturbed by the harshness of the death in the movie, people having behaved normal suddenly slicing their wrists, hanging themselves, or blowing their own heads of with guns. And while to be honest you don't really see anything, this is very much a case of less being more and your imagination is enough to make this an incredibly dark movie.
Unlike The Sixth Sense or The Village, both of which in my opinion are the best of the directors work; The Happening does not have one of those shock twist endings, yes there is bite back; but nothing to put a tingle in your spine, though in fairness watching the movie throughout puts enough tingles in your spine that to be honest with you, a shock ending is not needed.
The Happening is rather like the character of Julian a really disconnected movie, Elliot is warm but there is this big void in both his and everyone else's personality, presumably to add more suspense to the piece. The only way to describe the shell of the movie is hollow, you really feel like you're on the outside looking in, not allowed at any point to be sucked into the movie like you're going along for the ride, I'm not sure if this is a good or bad thing.
As a whole the movie really impressed me and is one of the best Shyamalan movies, but there are the odd thing that occurs that cheapens this otherwise big impressive looking movie. The worst offender of this is a man seen on iPhone while Elliot and the others are stranded in the middle of nowhere. "Oh my God my sister just sent me this!" a woman screams, and as people gather round mobile phones we see a tiger handler attempting to perform a trick with his pets, however they rip his arms off, but with remarkable ease, none of this slow tearing simple pulling off with little effort put into it at all. It was at this point that I thought the film had veered off into cheap Z movie standards, it was just so terribly out of place, but then when I thought about it a little Shyamalan is very capable of bringing suspense, but his history of special effects has been dramatically less impressive.
The performers all do a great job, if you forgive the deliberate detachment of emotion, there are some great blink or you'll miss it cameos; Ferris Buellers Alan Ruck swings by to talk about "The Happening", M. Night Shyamalan does his usual cameo role as effectively the enemy, French Dogma star Stephane Debac gives a brief cameo as a bicycle enthusiast, while 70's video nasty star Stephen Singer gives television watchers a harsh wake up call.
While not a twisted surprise the movie ends with a last wake up call for anyone thinking that this one might be different from the usual Shyamalan fare. While the director is often criticised for his varied output, you cannot deny that he does put considerable thought into his movies, The Happening is certainly no exception. And most importantly for me, it brings us the biggest blockbuster chill of the year.
Advantages: Original plot idea is good; Some genuinely creepy bits Disadvantages: Poor casting and acting; Idea poorly developed; Excessive editing
...Buckley - Mrs Jones
The director M. Night Shyamalan has built a career around reworking pop culture staples, having given makeovers (with varying degrees of success) to ghost stories in "The Sixth Sense", science fiction in "Signs", historical fiction in "The Village", comic books in "Unbreakable" and fairytales with "The Lady in the Water". In "The Happening" he turns his attention to the disaster movie. The film was critically panned after its ... ..."The Lady in the Water" where he was modest enough to cast himself as a visionary writer with the potential to save the world) I decided the DVD was still very much worth a watch. The film is billed as big in topic and ambition, and is clearly intended to be a big thought-provoker, a conversation starter, a topic of debate and discussion around the water cooler. The result didn't perhaps provoke so much thought as disappointment, however, and any ...
Collingwood21 31.12.2008
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of The Happening (DVD)
Advantages: None. Nada. Ziltch. Zero. Zip. Disadvantages: Too many to fit in this tiny space.
'''In the beginning…'''
I have had a very interesting day. Firstly I went into town to finally pick up my calendars, so I finally have somewhere to write my "appointments" while staring at a hot guys butt. More on the other calendar…he he. After this I decided to go grab new shoes and ended up getting the ones I wanted half price, saving me near £40.
Upon getting home from work, dropping my flatmate at the pub and phoning the boyfriend, I have ... ...needed) alone time, away from the world. What have I done with this time so far? Well, I've put on some washing, made the tea, oogled my calendar, had a glass of wine, separated my tin of celebrations into individual piles (more so I can get the ones I want out before I take them to work tomorrow, less due to some psychotic need to separate chocolates), moaned about the abundance of Mars and Snickers to myself and then decided to watch a movie.
...
ryanando 19.01.2009
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of The Happening (DVD)
Advantages: Some good camerawork, its quite creepy at times and its quite intriguing Disadvantages: The ending might well disappoint, Wahlbergs over acting, seemed a bit too short & OTT at times
- Story - The Happening is all about one morning in central park in New York when suddenly people seem to self destruct, randomly throwing themselves off building sites and otherwise committing suicide but not just a few people, large volumes of people are doing it and it appears to spread right down the east coast of the US. What could be causing this, is it a terrorist attack? we follow a high school science teacher, Elliot, his wife and his friends ... ...Opinions - I thought the movie was a bit too over the top, with the almost ubiquitous disaster movie scenes like where people go their different ways, the emotional moments with the classical score adding to the atmosphere and so on. I thought that Wahlberg overly used his panic stricken facial expressions. Its a typical M Night Shyamalan movie in as much as the intrigue keeps you watching and you know there'll be that twist that explains it all, ...
IzzyS 28.08.2009 (29.08.2009)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of The Happening (DVD)
Advantages: Mark Wahlberg Disadvantages: Bad story, not scary
Nothing actually Happened!!
The Happening is a 2008 American Horror Movie, written, produced and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. I had actually never heard of it before but it was showing on the airplane recently when I took a trip and I have really enjoyed some of his other films so I was excited to see it.
M Night Shyamalan has directed such films as The Sixth Sense, Signs and The Village, films that have a bit of a sci-fi element to them, are ... ...at the end. The Sixth Sense was nominated for six academy awards but unfortunately The Happening was panned by critics and according to an article I read, during its entire American run it grossed only slightly more than Signs made its opening weekend. This is probably why I had actually never heard of it and I wish I had read this information before bothering with the film!
It stars Mark Wahlberg (ok, so there was one reason why you should watch ...
Spottydog11 31.03.2009
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of The Happening (DVD)
Advantages: Good start Disadvantages: The rest of the film falls tp pieces
...that terrorists aren’t responsible for the harrowing events that occur early on a Tuesday morning, could what’s responsible be a warning from God?
High School science teacher Elliot (Mark Whalberg) loves his job and has an avid interest in the subject that he teaches, when the Central Park events are released to the teachers they are told to send all the pupils home. When the severity of the incident emerges and this freak incident begins to spread ... ...his wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel) the four frightened people board the train. The train stops and after speaking to police they inform Elliot that they’ve lost contact with everyone around them. After the group split up, Elliot and his obnoxious wife Alma are left with Julian’s daughter Jess to find a way out of this living hell… but how?
After seeing the trailers for this film last year it piqued my curiosity and I went to see this, the trailers ...
Great_reviewer07 18.07.2009
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of The Happening (DVD)
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Advantages: Different idea Disadvantages: Doesn't really go anywhere
The Happening is a strange film in that it doesn't really build from the intial opening 10 minutes.
Starring Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel (who give as good a performances as the storyline allows them to do) as the lead characters the plot is based around a virus that makes people commit suicide. The initial sequences in portraying this are fairly good but the film does not develop any further than this and never really explains why or what is going on and what the point in it all really was.
Although the lead roles are adequately played by Wahlberg and Deschanel , their characters are never really dealt with in any depth and you are left not really knowing why they were important to the storyline. The twist that you are expecting never comes (as this is from the director of the sixth sense) and the end of the film does not ...
Advantages: There aren't any. Disadvantages: Everything.
waste of 99 minutes but you're supposed to take with you a message. Something about looking after the planet probably. Sadly for me and many others, we didn't catch it because we were too busy laughing at having wasted our time and money on such a travesty.
Don't make the same mistake and waste your hard earned money on this DVD, there's not a lot more I can say about this terrible terrible movie other than 'It should have never happened.' (Oh he went there!) ...
Advantages: Different, intriguing story Disadvantages: Weak acting, a bit weird
or upsetting, I don't think the film is particularly scary, in spite of all the violent scenes.
Conclusion
I did quite enjoy this film, and it had some interesting ideas, although perhaps not particularly original, but I wasn't really sure if there was meant to be some message behind it or anything. It was more just a kind of "what if" film - in this case what if there was a chemical that could interfere with our brains and make us all suicidal? I was fairly impressed with the deathy scenes, but the main characters did not really move me much and were only recognisable, not memorable. I think this film was nothing brilliant, one of those types that if it happens to be on and you want to kill time or see something a bit different you might as well watch it. Otherwise I would not go out of my way to see it. I wouldn't bother buying the DVD ...
Contains frequent images of suicide and moderate bloody injury
Video Category
Feature Film
Country Of Origin
United States of America
Plot
In THE HAPPENING, M. Night Shyamalan serves up a slice of apocalyptic strangeness. The film opens onto New York City's Central Park with a crowd of people enjoying an idyllic summer day. The carefree scene soon takes a terrifying turn, when out of nowhere, hordes of people begin to commit suicide en masse. Cut to Elliot (Mark Wahlberg), a science teacher in Philadelphia. When he learns of the attack on New York, he meets up with his wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel), his friend Julian (John Leguizamo), and Julians's daughter, Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez). They make plans to get out of the city via train, but the train is evacuated in the middle of a small Pennsylvania town.
Release details
DVD Region
DVD
Studio(s)
20TH CENTURY FOX HOME ENTERTAINMENT; CINRAM LOGISTICS
Languages
Main Language
English
Technical information
Aspect Ratio
16:9 Anamorphic Wide Screen
Sound
Dolby Digital
Professional reviews
Review
THE HAPPENING is a divertingly goofy thriller with an animistic bent, moments of shivery and twitchy suspense and a solid lead performance from Mark Wahlberg (New York Times, 01/10/2008)
DVD Description
In THE HAPPENING, M. Night Shyamalan serves up a slice of apocalyptic strangeness. The film opens onto New York City's Central Park with a crowd of people enjoying an idyllic summer day. The carefree scene soon takes a terrifying turn, when out of nowhere, hordes of people begin to commit suicide en masse. People scramble to make sense of the pandemonium, and many believe it is a terrorist attack. It appears that some sort of deadly toxin is being released into the air. Cut to Elliot (Mark Wahlberg), a science teacher in Philadelphia. When he learns of the attack on New York, he meets up with his wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel), his friend Julian (John Leguizamo), and Julians's daughter, Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez). They make plans to get out of the city via train, but the train is evacuated in the middle of a small Pennsylvania town. When they learn that the mysterious toxin is spreading its way across the Northeast, they break up into groups, with Elliot, Alma, and Jess running through open farmland in search of safety. They are unsure of where to hide, or what exactly they are hiding from, until Elliot slowly forms a theory about the threat. He fights to keep Alma and Jess free from harm, and the film builds to a bizarre, unsettling climax. Shyamalan's premise of escaping an unknown, unexplainable attack is a timely one, and is quite chilling in concept. THE HAPPENING succeeds in creating the frenzied scariness of THE BIRDS, combined with the outlandish death scenes and unusual plot line found in B-movie classics. For fans of campy horror in the vein of THE EVIL DEAD, it is truly something to behold.
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