I don’t really do movie reviews but I felt compelled to write one for M. Night Shyamalan’s latest movie, The Happening, because it was hard to describe how I felt about this movie initially. After being thoroughly disappointed with his most recent iterations, The Village and The Lady in the Water, I didn’t have very high expectations for this one. However, after seeing the red band trailer which was filled with sweet looking suicides, I felt like this movie could be promising. Man, was I wrong.

The Happening tells the story of a group of people trying to survive a strange natural disaster that plagues the north-eastern U.S that mysteriously makes people kill themselves. For sci-fi movies, I usually let unbelievable things like this go and try to enjoy the movie, but the way people commit suicide in this movie were just so ridiculous at some parts that I could not possibly go along with it. Like am I supposed to believe that the trees and the grass are releasing toxins that make a guy turn on a lawnmower and lie down in front of it? The main beef I have with this movie is that it depicts a serious subject about how we should take care of the environment or there’s going to be a backlash from it, but the move shows borderline comical consequences like feeding a lion your own arms. It makes me think about the motivation of the movie. Is it serious? Is it supposed to be a joke? Are we supposed to care about the environment or not?

The movie did not feel natural. Everything flowed very poorly. The dialogue seemed very unconvincing and unrealistic. There was a conflict between the two main characters (portrayed by Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel) where they were squabbling over a brunch one of them had with a co-worker, which was deemed to be unfaithful. WHAT? It was nonsense. The whole motivation for action in the movie seemed so illogical too. “There’s a deadly toxic substance that’s being excreted by the plants outside, what should we do? I know! Let’s go outside and run around in the fields!”  What really did it for me was a scene near the end, when the main characters stumble upon a rundown house in the middle of nowhere with a crazy old lady sitting on the porch and she offers to let them spend the night at her house. “When the wind, blows people die, and this old lady is letting us stay in her crappy little house with broken windows. Sounds like a good idea to me!”  Suspense was built around this crazy old bat when she believes that Elliot (Mark Wahlberg) is stealing from her and trying to kill her in her sleep. I don’t know why this scene was even included because this came out of nowhere and had nothing to do with the movie.

The bottom line is if you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve seen the best parts of this movie. Don’t go see the movie and let the rest of the movie spoil what good this movie had. Anyone who liked this movie is probably confused with the movie’s good intentions because The Happening did have some pretty good intentions. However, good intentions don’t make a good movie. Poor execution, horrible story, not entertaining to say the least. Save your 12.50$. Go see something else.

So bad, you’ll want to kill yourself too.