Rating of
2/4
"The Happening" by yojimbo
Yojimbo - wrote on 01/25/12
When an unidentified airborne contageon causes people to kill and mutilate themselves in vast numbers, a small group of friends flee the city to find refuge. There's something about the modern disaster movie that means everyone making them seems to forget to attach an ending. I Am Legend, 28 Days Later, The Day After Tomorrow, the list goes on. MNS's crack at the genre chooses to make the aggressor invisible which COULD have worked (I suppose...) but it felt like a "spot the zombie" competition where there was an apocalypse but the apocalypse seemed to forget to show up. I must admit I was almost glad that one of his trademark "twists" didn't come lumbering over the horizon, and the scenes of mass suicide and self harm were effectively creepy, but in a film like this you need a pay off of SOME kind. ANY kind. In the end it was like watching Lost; it was pretty to look at and enjoyably enigmatic while it lasted, but the so-called ending makes you feel like you've just been jerked around for the past hour and a half. I know MNS has got another good film in him, and i wish he'd just get his shit together before everyone loses patience with him. A decent exercise in atmosphere, but the biggest problem with The Happening is that nothing does.
