5/5 Complexity explained,,,,,,
  by Gerald Aboud (Trinidad)
I think the writer/producer expressed a situation where there could be a world where without meaning the human mind would not wish to live. This is obvious in psychology. If there is no meaning then there is no reason to live, believe me most would kill thenmselves. Love is the only meaning. To have love or need love or to need or be needed by someone is to have purpose. It drives us but subconsiously we do not know it. The reason the couple lived was because the represented units that actually need each other to live. There are people in this world that require such and cannot sustain themselves alone. Yet there are those who go about life without ever getting to have that need fulfilled. Perhaps the producer created a scenerio where only people who really loved or rather relied on each other for survival were immune from the whatever toxin. The tree's rely on eachother yet the humans do not. Although complex, I understand the movie's meaning. As for rating I give it a 5 only because the producer challenges humanity for the answer. Most will not understand because their creativity has not reached that level.

2/5 Wait...What Happening?
  by Michael J. Tresca (Fairfield, CT USA)
There's a lot wrong with The Happening.

At base, The Happening is a nightmarish parable about our crowded society in modern times. We threaten the world, director M. Night Shyamalan seems to say, with our sheer numbers. On the other hand, being completely isolated isn't the solution either, creating a suspicious, isolationist attitude that leads to a self-destructive spiral.

But The Happening is mostly about watching people commit suicide in terrible ways. This ranges from terrible echoes of 9/11, when workmen jump from a building to their death, to the cartoonishly absurd, when a zookeeper taunts a lion and it tears his arm off. Anyone who watches the Discovery Channel or Animal Planet knows that big cats go for the neck first.

Anyway, The Happening's premise is spooky: what if something in the wind made people commit suicide in the most immediate and awful way possible? Where would you go? What would you do?

Night has all the elements of a good horror story: the aforementioned disaster, the strained relationship between Elliott Moore (Mark Wahlberg) and his distant wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel), and even an innocent little girl (Ashlyn Sanchez) thrown in for good measure.

The Happening should be a great horror film. It's spooky. The premise that a gust of wind could bring about a fatal, nightmarish end lends an ominous shadow to the events. We can expect plenty of drama, morally ambiguous choices, and desperate survival tactics as our protagonists flee for their lives from an alien foe.

Actually, I was just describing Spielberg's War of the Worlds, which took the same premise and made a creepy, nuanced film about parents, children, and the distance between them. The two films have a lot in common: the insidious enemy that pops up out of nowhere, the little girl in distress, the long journey against all odds to a haven that might already have been destroyed.

The Happening follows the same script but fails miserably on almost all counts. Oh, Night's got the scary part down. But what carries a film like this is the emotional heft of characters brought to the brink. Wahlberg does a workman-like job of trying to be clever and sarcastic, but the script forces him to spew mouthfuls of pseudo-scientific gobbledygook at a rapid fire pace that he can't keep up. Deschanel, never a strong actress to begin with, is comedically awful. There isn't the slightest romantic tension between her and Wahlberg. And the little girl? She barely says a word.

The list of what's wrong goes on and on: citizens leave New York in an orderly fashion without snarling any mass transit; victims go to inordinate and improbable lengths to kill themselves; a father abandons his only child in a vain quest to find his wife; nobody seems to think traveling with a gas mask might be a good idea except two old ladies sitting at home.

They're the smart ones.


1/5 This movie sucks!
  by Robert M. Renicker (Lake Ozark, MO)
This movie is really, really bad. The director has fallen a LONG way since sixth sense. I found myself laughing when I was supposed to be scared. If I could have given this movie negative stars, I would have.

1/5 Another miss by M. Night Shyamalan
  by Peter A. Gemmer (Space Center, FL)
This movie begins like all his other movies; basically scary at the beginning (the sitting on the end of your seat type scary), with a promise of a truly frightening experience to come over the course of the next 120 minutes. It begins with people frozen in place, walking backwards, or dieing by their own hand. I am a Mark Wahlberg fan, and his performance was good, as were the other characters. Since I don't act, can't sing, and dance poorly, I do not fell qualified to comment on their performances except to say you won't be dissappointed in this area. But as the mystery unfolds as to the cause of the phenomenon (The Happeningg) is finally being understood, by them, because it really wasn't clear to me sitting in the peanut gallery. As Mark and friends live happily ever after, the eastern states mostly dead, no real answer to the WHY the phenomenon started, WHY then and not before, and if it was a one time happening or could happen again tomorrow. You really should watch this turkey; you may see something I have missed. But on a scale of 1 to 10, even a 1 is stretching a point. Pebbles Rubble is more scary.

2/5 Did that really just happen.
  by Kellen Patrick (Flagstaff, AZ USA)
Having seen, and really enjoyed Signs and The Village I had high hopes for this movie! However, disappointment set in quick and I mean real quick. The opening shots in New York City are intended to quickly catch the audience's attention and keep it through the film. While my attention was caught for a moment, as people unexpectedly stop moving, it was soon lost by how quickly gore was added to the plot. The needle to the neck thing was not needed, I got the idea something was wrong without the gory image. Then came Mark Whalberg, an A-list Hollywood star who should know not to be a "nice guy" in a movie. This flick follows up The Departed and Shooter, both movies in which Whalberg is a [...] and does a great job playing a [...]. This is almost as bad as Gerard Butler following up 300 with P.S. I Love You and Nim's Island. Anyway, I am degressing, back to The Happening. The movie progresses with a nice Mark Whalberg and the occasional person jumping under a running lawn mower or getting eaten by a lion. Naturally, everyone seems to be dying in a gruesome Saw like fashion except for Mark and his on-screen family. This movie ends kind of like a Disney flick, happily ever after, well at least for Whalberg and company. That is except for whatever reason, the closing shot of the movie is a recreation of the New York City scene this time it just happens to be in Paris, why, I really don't know. The only reason this film gets two stars is because the scenery is very nice and enjoyable to look at, however it seems pretty much like all we get to see with M. Night movies is Pennsylvania. Again, at least it's pretty. If you want to see a good horror flick save your money on this. If you want gore, go see Saw, or if you want scary see The Blair Witch Project, or Paranormal Activity. Just leave the nice Mark Whalberg on the self at the rental store.