Happening, The

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

An unapologetic B-movie.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

A movie that I find oddly touching. It is no doubt too thoughtful for the summer action season, but I appreciate the quietly realistic way Shyamalan finds to tell a story about the possible death of man.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Even when his scripts aren't working, Shyamalan knows how to frame shots and build suspense. The Happening, even more than his previous films, has a visual elegance and subtlety that helps to overcome the less successful aspects of the plot.

Film Threat Stina Chyn

Whether you’re a casual or an ardent follower of M. Night Shyamalan's films, The Happening could alienate or dominate your thinking cap. Remember--it's perfectly acceptable to laugh one second and shriek the next.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

A divertingly goofy thriller with an animistic bent, moments of shivery and twitchy suspense and a solid lead performance from Mark Wahlberg.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

It doesn't help that Wahlberg, whose work usually ranges from solid to inspired, is bewildering off-key here, though it may have something to do with playing off Deschanel, who reduces the whole marriage story line to a parody.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

The movie seems more like a '50s science fiction film of extreme paranoia or an episode of "The Twilight Zone" that even at a swiftly paced 90 minutes feels padded.

Variety Justin Chang

In short, this is a Shyamalan movie minus the bravado, the swagger; there are no audacious attempts to pull out the rug from under the audience, no ham-fisted lessons about the importance of religious belief or the power of storytelling.

Village Voice Robert Wilonsky

What a bunch of nonsense--effective nonsense, chilling nonsense, occasionally wrenching nonsense, but nonsense nonetheless.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Some sure symptoms: 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.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

As for The Happening, his throwback horror flick that plays like "The Birds" meets "The Blob," it's beyond good and evil. It's dumbfounding.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

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.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Think of the worst Spielberg thriller or one of Hitchcock's dull late career works, then make it ugly and fill it with bad performances; voila: The Happening.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Even in a misfire like The Happening, Shyamalan has a fine feeling for dread. He knows how to creep you out. But he has a tin ear for acting.

NPR Bob Mondello

If what audiences are looking for is a thrill ride, or even a pervasive eeriness, The Happening's just not happening.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Shyamalan has said he wanted to create the best B-movie ever made, but it fails to be the best C movie of the month. (Stuck or Zohan are better C movies.)

Empire Will Lawrence

A disappointingly slight offering from a filmmaker that we know is capable of so much more. Shyamalan says that The Happening was his easiest film to shoot. Sadly, it shows.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

The film never builds past its initial idea, the references to 9/11 feel cheap, the good actors are wasted, and the bad ones are distracting.

Slate Dana Stevens

The old-school horror tricks (the fake scare followed by a real one, the safe haven that isn't) feel more like cribbing than homage, but they get the job done.

Salon.com Mary Elizabeth Williams

The man who showed such promise less than a decade ago has been leaving a diminishing creative footprint ever since.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

M. Night Shyamalan's sixth film mines a rich lode of end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it clichés, but while the set up is spooky, the development is heavy handed and marred by Shyamalan's inability to write natural-sounding dialogue or convincing characters.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

It's neither dull nor stimulating, neither off-putting nor engaging.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

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.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Shyamalan isn't drawing the caliber of performances from his actors as he used to. Who can forget Haley Joel Osment's haunting portrayal in The Sixth Sense or that of Toni Collette, who played his mother, or Bruce Willis in arguably his best role?

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The Happening is a movie to walk out of, sleep through, or - best of all - not to bother with.

New York Post Kyle Smith

A movie that features Wahlberg suggesting everyone try to outrun the wind can barely be watched once.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Shyamalan still has an abundance of personality and ambition, and 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.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

He still sees dead people, only now they're the best thing in the movie.

Chicago Reader Andrea Gronvall

Wahlberg turns in one of his worst performances ever, but then he's saddled with preposterous scenes.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

A high-toned revenge-of-nature horror picture, it's a little depressed, with only gross-out shocks (gushing jugulars, bodies run over by lawnmowers) to relieve the torpor.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

The Happening is both too incoherenly weird and too narratively ambitious for its own good.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Film critics have been asked to say as little as possible about M. Night Shyamalan's new scare film about the perils of messing with Mother Nature. Fair enough. But I will say this: It's not happening.

Premiere Ryan Stewart

A disaster, representing a number of negative firsts for Shyamalan.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

You feel like you're not watching the end of the world but the end of a career.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Being risibly bad, The Happening is at least worth a laugh. Exactly one laugh, by my reckoning, and completely unintended but no less full-throated for that.

Time Richard Corliss

And now we have this ill wind, this feeble gust of an environmental horror story. The writer-director's disintegration from robust artistic health to narrative incoherence, from hitmaker to box-office loser, has an almost tragic trajectory. It's a saga worthy of being told by the young M. Night Shyamalan.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

To be honest, I would be perfectly happy to walk with a zombie after ninety minutes of this; it would feel like light relief.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

The Happening makes you wonder whether Mr. Shyamalan's own switch may have been flipped. How else to explain his film's befuddling infelicities, insistent banalities, shambling pace and pervasive ineptitude?