Simply Millennial

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more inconsistent artist than M. Night Shyamalan. His movies are either incredible, or fantastically anticlimactic. “The Happening” falls into the latter category. 

I had high hopes for this film simply because of the cast. Mark Wahlberg, John Leguizamo, and Zooey Deshanel are all faves of mine. Wahlberg in particular has a history of casting a slight spell on me-not just because of how much he reminds me of an ex-boyfriend, but also because he’s pretty darn talented. In this flick, however, not so much. Leguizamo is usually the comic relief in his movies, and here he is everything but. Perhaps it was his attempt to be taken more seriously. To be honest, the best actor in the whole thing was Deschanel. She still brought her brand of quirkiness, but somehow ended up being the “rock” of the entire film.

In this movie, Shymalan takes a stab at teaching us a lesson about how we treat our planet. It’s a good message, but there never really was a “hey, check this amazing scene out,” moment. The whole movie was as stable and linear as ten Tibetan monks chanting for an hour and a half. The only difference? The movie had no spiritual enlightenment. 

Shymalan gets two out of five popcorn tubs from me on this one. One for having a good idea, and the other for Zooey Deschanel holding the whole thing together. I would say it’s still worth renting, but on the Shymalan scale, this was truly a disappointing use of his potential.