Boring is Happening in The Happening
By: Wes Beckwith
I was so looking forward to this movie, I think after I was disappointment with Lady in the water I was really looking forward to a M. Night Shyamalan hit. I loved Unbreakable and we all know how amazing the Sixth Sense was... okay Signs was disappointing but we all gave ol' M. Night Shyamalan some slack as he was batting over 500 after all. Well The Happening is not it a hit, it is not even a base hit, it's a foul out of a film. I found myself waiting for this movie to turn the corner but it just never did. There are parts you can just feel it getting ready to astound you, scare you, excite you but you will be let down again with a predictable outcome. The story could have been so much more, the premise is intelligent, and M. Night Shyamalan has pulled off some really nice films in the past but I think he tried to be too.... odd with this one. I think he tried to hard and just never got in the zone. Well I am being too hard on him, he was in the zone for a few of the death scenes, whoa!
The movie starts out with Mark Wahlberg teaching a class of students science, asking them where the bee's have gone LOL. He tried to come across as a caring, intelligent teacher that pulls the best out of his students but on screen it just comes across like that teacher you had who wanted to be everyone's friend, and it is boring. The whole first 30 minutes that should be spent pulling you into the characters, making you care about them was spent feeding us boring dialog and some unnecessary scare tactics at best.
Then we get to meet Julian (John Leguizamo) who is a great actor but the dialog with Elliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg) is mostly about the trouble Elliot is having with his wife, Alma (Zooey Deschanel). This dialog really has nothing to add to the movie and just takes up about 45 minutes of the film and is... well quite boring and makes the film feel awkward.
The film does have shocking moments as the trailer suggests but the trailer really covers them quite nicely. Yes the scenes where people die or kill themselves are very realistic and some quite gruesome but these are the only highlights to the movie.
IMHO the trailer is not true to the film, it is another case of Hollywood dragging us in with a great trailer only to spend 10 bucks on a movie that in my opinion might and that's a stretch... might be a good rental
Conclusion:
The CG in the film is great, you are hard pressed to find it as there are no monsters or creatures to watch but it is there and a lot of it done by our friends over at CafeFX, that's David Ebner!. In my opinion this film had fantastic potential, the story could have been amazing but the directing and dialog just kills this one.
Go see it if you dare and let me know what you think :)
Ratings:
IMDB Film User Rating: 6.3/10 (1,569 votes) C+ average rating, I give it a 2.5 out of 5 stars
Other critics comments:
"It's scary how (unintentionally) funny this one is."
"Nothing in The Happening is particularly lively."
"...a feature-length Twilight Zone episode..."
"This paranoid thriller has its moments, but weak story and characters do more damage than any neurotoxic menace."
Credits:
Actors
Mark Wahlberg
Zooey Deschanel
John Leguizamo
Spencer Breslin
Ashlyn Sanchez
Betty Buckley
Tony Devon
Victoria Clark
Frank Collison
Robert Bailey Jr
Visual Effects by
Danny Braet .... digital compositor
Gene Crucean .... visual effects generalist
Rif Dagher .... effects lead
Beth D'Amato .... digital paint and roto supervisor
Ante Dekovic .... digital compositor
Pallavi Devabhaktuni .... digital compositor: CafeFX
Amit Dhawal .... visual effects supervisor
David Ebner .... visual effects supervisor
Katherine Farrar .... visual effects coordinator
Jordan Freda .... roto artist: CafeFX
Rachel Galbraith .... visual effects production assistant
Vicki Galloway-Weimer .... visual effects executive producer: Cafe FX (as Vicki Galloway Weimer)
Jeff Goldman .... compositing supervisor: CafeFX
Bryant Terrell Griffin .... visual effects
David Hochstadter .... digital compositor: CafeFX
Grzegorz Jonkajtys .... visual effects
Shant Jordan .... compositing supervisor
Apirak Kamjan .... matchmover: CafeFX
Richard Ivan Mann .... visual effects producer: CafeFX
Ryan Martin .... technical assistant: ILM
Tory Mercer .... digital compositor
Desi Ortiz .... visual effects managing editor: CafeFX
Craig Peck .... visual effects production assistant
Richard R. Reed .... digital compositor
Parimal Sandhwar .... visual effects production manager
Danny Torres .... systems admistrator
David Weinstein .... pre-visualization
O.D. Welch .... production executive: CafeFX
Justine Whitehead .... visual effects producer
Jason Michael Zimmerman .... digital compositor
Marios Kourasis .... visual effects (uncredited)
Produced by
Barry Mendel .... producer
Sam Mercer .... producer
Jose L. Rodriguez .... co-producer
John Rusk .... associate producer
M. Night Shyamalan .... producer
Original Music by
James Newton Howard
Cinematography by
Tak Fujimoto (director of photography)
Film Editing by
Conrad Buff IV
Casting by
Douglas Aibel
Stephanie Holbrook
Production Design by
Jeannine Claudia Oppewall
Art Direction by
Anthony Dunne
Set Decoration by
Jay Hart
Costume Design by
Betsy Heimann
MPAA: Rated R for violent and disturbing images..
Runtime: 129 min... 45 min too long
