The Happening 2008

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: The screenplay is a mess, filled with unfunny moments of intended humor and funny moments of unintended humor. Read more

Manohla Dargis, New York Times: 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. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: All that's missing is the head alien of Plan 9 From Outer Space dropping by to lecture the populace for disrespecting nature: 'Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!' Read more

Andrea Gronvall, Chicago Reader: Wahlberg turns in one of his worst performances ever, but then he's saddled with preposterous scenes (like one where he tries to placate a ficus) and such lame lines as "Could this really be happening?" Funny, I was wondering the same thing myself. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: Woeful clunker of a paranoid thriller. Read more

Nathan Rabin, AV Club: There are scattered moments of craft throughout, but the gulf between his lofty aspirations and feeble accomplishments has seldom been wider or more chuckle-inducing. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: Instead of shocks, we get moments of tension, suspense and violence between stretches of running scared. Nothing wrong with that, except that the stretches are awfully long in places. And in the end, it all comes to not much. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: You feel like you're not watching the end of the world but the end of a career. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: After the insufferably dense mermaid mythology of Lady in the Water, Shyamalan clearly wanted to keep things simple. He whizzed straight past simple to simplistic. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: It's also a bit sneaky of Shyamalan to set us up for a paranoid 9/11 thriller and then go all Greenpeace on us. He's trying to be socially conscious but he doesn't have the reformist's temperament. He has the temperament of a self-infatuated messiah. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: It's downright stupid. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: The movie demonstrates a smart movie geek's obsession with the rhythms and gory details of horror storytelling, undermined by a pompous insistence on spiritual lessons of the tritest kind. Read more

Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News: Mr. Shyamalan is plagued by a bad case of Robin Williams Syndrome, characterized by a desire to inspire and change the world through mediocre entertainment a" in this case, accompanied by ample and frequently creative bloodshed. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: A subtle, measured work, which means there will be many who find it dull and pointless. Read more

Rafer Guzman, Newsday: The Happening wants to scare us without providing a cause -- a trick only Hitchcock has managed. Read more

Anthony Lane, New Yorker: The Happening is an awful letdown, yet it leaves you with something new, as a gently waving tree -- that classical image of pastoral tranquillity -- mutates into a harbinger of doom. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: If Shyamalan's ever going to do something different then he should have made something manic, dark and twisted. But that's not Happening. Read more

Bob Mondello, NPR.org: If what audiences are looking for is a thrill ride, or even a pervasive eeriness, The Happening's just not happening. Read more

Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: The final explanation, which comes as no surprise, is more preposterous than profound. If you want to see a scary movie about humans wreaking havoc on their planet, watch An Inconvenient Truth instead. Read more

Kyle Smith, New York Post: No one will watch any of Shyamalan's recent films twice. A movie that features Wahlberg suggesting everyone try to outrun the wind can barely be watched once. Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: For a movie with the potential for so much global-warming electricity, it's disappointingly low on voltage. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: The plot is absurdly preachy and illogical, and the dialogue uneven, with stinging lines followed by stinkers. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: We don't care. It doesn't matter if they live or die, if there's a happy ending, or some kind of twist. The Happening is a movie to walk out of, sleep through, or -- best of all -- not to bother with. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Shyamalan's approach is more effective than smash-and-grab plot-mongering. His use of the landscape is disturbingly effective. The performances by Wahlberg and Deschanel bring a quiet dignity to their characters. Read more

Mary Elizabeth Williams, Salon.com: Shyamalan's such an eager recycler, grinding out the same ideas and images again and again. The man who showed such promise less than a decade ago has been leaving a diminishing creative footprint ever since. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: It's an entertaining movie, which is half the game, but it's not scary, which it should be. Neither is it something to be taken seriously, though it's intended to be. Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: The whole solemn concoction is preposterous and not always in a fun way -- even at 99 minutes' running time, the movie provides plenty of opportunities for watch-consultation in the dark. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: The attention paid to [Wahlberg and Deschanel's] piddling relationship woes vs. the entire fate of humanity is absurd. We never feel persuaded that they have a bond, much less invested in seeing them patch it up. Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: No mere actor could possibly escape the toxic dialogue oozing from M. Night's pen -- that's merciless. Read more

Philip Marchand, Toronto Star: Shyamalan seems to have lost his sense of the fine line between the disturbingly grotesque and the outright ridiculous. The film even seems to be a parody of the scientific method. Read more

Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine: Feeble gust of an environmental horror story. Read more

Nigel Floyd, Time Out: At first, a great deal happens, then nothing much happens for quite some time, then something so underwhelming happens that one is left wondering, 'Did that really just happen?' Read more

Christopher Orr, The New Republic: [A]n astonishment, so idiotic in conception and inept in execution that, after seeing it, one almost wonders whether it was real or imagined. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: Shyamalan tries to give the events a scientific underpinning. But his logic is spotty, so what are meant to be eerie moments are not convincing. Read more

Justin Chang, Variety: A patchy, uninspired eco-thriller whose R rating (a first for Shyamalan) looks more like a B.O. hindrance than an artistic boon. Read more

Robert Wilonsky, Village Voice: Effective nonsense, chilling nonsense, occasionally wrenching nonsense. Read more

Stephen Hunter, Washington Post: The Happening stutter-steps its way in this direction and that to a disappointing ending. Read more