# The Happening (SPOILERS!) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 14, 2008, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-happening-spoilers/452896 "2008-06-14T05:15:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![lobotomyboy63](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobotomyboy63/32/2900_2.png) [@lobotomyboy63](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lobotomyboy63)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2008, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-happening-spoilers/452896/21 "2008-06-15T15:12:21Z")
> **[The Happening (2008) ⭐ 5.0 | Adventure, Drama, Sci-Fi](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0949731/)** > > 1h 31m | R Rated 6.2 on imdb? :dubious: :eek: 😕 :mad: I guess Shyamalan’s reputation gets him some automatic points or something. ---
**Author:** ![NineToTheSky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5a626/32.png) [@NineToTheSky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NineToTheSky)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2008, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-happening-spoilers/452896/22 "2008-06-15T16:08:15Z")
Hey - come on guys! I’ve just come back from seeing it, and I thought it was a really entertaining fantasy - and that’s what it was: fantasy. Like plants aren’t \*really \*going to take over the world tomorrow. So you can suspend disbelief for 90 minutes. There were a good number of shocks/jump in your seats moments. I couldn’t guess what was going to happen next, and I was interested enough to want to know. No, it’s not going to change cinema history, but I think everyone’s being a bit too cruel. ---
**Author:** ![Cuckoorex](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ad7895/32.png) [@Cuckoorex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cuckoorex)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2008, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-happening-spoilers/452896/23 "2008-06-15T18:27:03Z")
What a TWIST! ---
**Author:** ![Illuminatiprimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/illuminatiprimus/32/11520_2.png) [@Illuminatiprimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Illuminatiprimus)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2008, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-happening-spoilers/452896/24 "2008-06-15T21:02:48Z")
I agree with **NineToSky** , I went to see it with a friend yesterday and I really enjoyed it. Sure when I was thinking about it afterwards I thought to myself “Going from ‘eliminating the brain’s survival mechanism’ to people actively seeking ways to kill themselves is a bit of a stretch” but there were some scenes that really made me jump and I was quite tense for a lot of the film. However I thought the whole marital problems sub-plot was completely redundant, it had no impact on the film. Don’t even get me started on “Don’t take my girl’s hand unless you mean it”. I’d give it a 7/10. ---
**Author:** ![Orual](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/779978/32.png) [@Orual](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Orual)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2008, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-happening-spoilers/452896/25 "2008-06-16T00:20:21Z")
Mr. Shyamalan’s brain is so weird. I thought it was a diverting enough hour and a half. There were creep-out moments that made me jump. The pacing was off, and Mark Wahlberg’s performance struck me as very odd. He seemed awfully gormless for a science teacher. But really, if one really is in the market for a good ‘Revenge of the Plants’ story, they should just read _Day of the Triffids_. ---
**Author:** ![Rachael\_Rage](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/71c47a/32.png) [@Rachael\_Rage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rachael_Rage)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2008, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-happening-spoilers/452896/26 "2008-06-16T00:35:38Z")
[QUOTE=OatmealB] One thing that took me out of it right away and repeated itself at the end: In each of the initial “attacks” there seems to be one person completely immune to the effects. The girl at the beginning just watches her friend stick a hairpin in her neck, but the girl herself isn’t zombified like everyone else. Same thing with the guy at the end – everyone else in the park is frozen, but he seems to still be of sound mind. It just didn’t make sense to me [/QUOTE] I haven’t seen the film but couldn’t it just mean that some people are… …immune to the effects of the toxin, or whatever? In every post-apocalyptic/plague movie, there always seem to be a handful of people who don’t catch the bug. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2008, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-happening-spoilers/452896/27 "2008-06-16T00:40:42Z")
Yeah it wasn’t terrible IMO, it was pretty dumb, but had its moments. To me it played like an over-long episode of the X-Files (a couple parts like a decent early X-files episode, most like a rather mediocre later episode). And it was Twelve Monkeys compared to the that Andromeda Strain remake (though I didn’t fork out $20 bucks for that). That said, both me+my GF heard those [sound glitches](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=469868) again, that some people recon are a DRM tool. So out of principle I got a refund from the manager. Anyone else hear any sound glitches ? or have we been listening to much loud music 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![gaffa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e68b1a/32.png) [@gaffa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gaffa)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2008, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-happening-spoilers/452896/28 "2008-06-16T01:31:01Z")
Just got back from seeing it. Damn, I’m disappointed. I enjoyed _The Village_ and _Lady In The Water_, but not as much as _Signs_ or _Unbreakable_. And both of those were disappointments compared to _The Sixth Sense_, a truly great film. I went to see it because there is a lot of backlash against Shyamalan, usually accompanied by jokes about his name. As if schoolyard taunts would convince me of the quality of a film. The thing is, I love going to the movies. I’ll see a mediocre film in preference to not seeing any film at all. I try to see any film I think I might enjoy, and I’m just about the ideal audience member for any filmmaker. It takes a pretty bad film for me not to get into it. This is, tragically, such a film. But I believe he has some good work still in him. Perhaps he can work as a director for hire and not try writing anything for several years. He needs to write a lot of scripts and shred 90% of them. One especially revealing detail about his current status in Hollywood was right at the beginning: The main studio was [UTV](http://www.imdb.com/company/co0131238/), who mainly produce and distribute Bollywood movies. I only knew them because I enjoy Bollywood films. ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2008, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-happening-spoilers/452896/29 "2008-06-16T01:31:40Z")
[QUOTE=griffin1977] That said, both me+my GF heard those [sound glitches](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=469868) again, that some people recon are a DRM tool. So out of principle I got a refund from the manager. Anyone else hear any sound glitches ? or have we been listening to much loud music 🙂 [/QUOTE] I didn’t notice anything like that, but I saw both this and Iron Man during this past week, and saw those “cigarette burn”-like marks in the upper right corner once during each film. ---
**Author:** ![Moirai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/96bed5/32.png) [@Moirai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moirai)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2008, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-happening-spoilers/452896/30 "2008-06-16T04:49:54Z")
[QUOTE=Ferret Herder] I didn’t notice anything like that, but I saw both this and Iron Man during this past week, and saw those “cigarette burn”-like marks in the upper right corner once during each film. [/QUOTE] Really? I didn’t think they still did that. It’s the sign to the projectionist that the current reel is about to end, and to start the next one… isn’t it? ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2008, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-happening-spoilers/452896/31 "2008-06-16T04:57:05Z")
[QUOTE=EJsGirl] Really? I didn’t think they still did that. It’s the sign to the projectionist that the current reel is about to end, and to start the next one… isn’t it? [/QUOTE] It used to be, now its a unique ID they burn in electronically so they can track which cinema a particular bootleg DVD was filmed in. There is a rumour that the sound problems people (myself included) heard in the latest Indian Jones was similar thing for audio. ---
**Author:** ![gaffa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e68b1a/32.png) [@gaffa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gaffa)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2008, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-happening-spoilers/452896/32 "2008-06-16T05:11:08Z")
The reel marks are still there. They are distinct from the “anti-piracy” red dots. ---
**Author:** ![tesseract](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bb73d2/32.png) [@tesseract](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tesseract)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2008, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-happening-spoilers/452896/33 "2008-06-16T06:16:41Z")
[QUOTE=griffin1977] Yeah it wasn’t terrible IMO, it was pretty dumb, but had its moments. [/QUOTE] That’s what I thought. It was somewhat entertaining, and I like MKS’s crazy brain, and some parts, like the construction guys falling, were pretty riveting, I thought. As others, I also entertained myself looking at Old Wide Eyes and checking out her pupils. Worst moments for me: Don’t take my girl’s hand unless you mean it; and the very idea that the little girl’s dad would leave the little girl to go look randomly for the wife with whom he has no cell phone contact. It’s already likely that the wife is dead, so he, with his mathematical/statistical mind is going to 1) go try to find his probably dead wife who he probably can’t find anyway, at the cost of 2) possibly leaving his daughter an orphan and 3) leaving the daughter with other people, including a woman he doesn’t trust, in the middle of a terrorist/bio-whatever attack? That was harder to believe than the neuro-toxins. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2008, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-happening-spoilers/452896/34 "2008-06-16T06:29:46Z")
I saw this thing today. It should have been called “The Crappening.” This movie just lays there like a turd on a hot sidewalk. It has a few individual shots which are almost interesting, but the mood just wasn’t there. Blowing trees aren’t scary. The acting was subpar as well, though Brando couldn’t have sold that talking to the houseplant scene. If you’re thinking (like I did), that you know it’s going to be bad, but you might get some enjoyment out of it on either a campy or prurient level, it just isn’t there. If Shyamalan wants to save his career at this point, I think he needs to get that _Sixth Sense_ kid out of the mothballs and conjur up some more dead people for a sequel. I don’t know what happened to him. I think he once had some talent in there somewhere. I rather liked _Unbreakable_, and I didn’t think _Signs_ or _Lady in the Water_ were unwatchable, but I was dozing off during this thing. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2008, 7:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-happening-spoilers/452896/35 "2008-06-16T07:21:54Z")
The wife and I saw it yesterday. We thought it was okay. A hell of a lot better than his last two! My question is where was Shyamalan in the film? He always does an Alfred Hitchcock-type cameo, but I could not spot him. The [imdb.com](http://imdb.com) website says he was Joey, but you never see Joey or even hear his voice. He’s only ever on the phone to Alma; you only hear Alma talking to him. Did we miss a Joey sighting somehow? ---
**Author:** ![Grossbottom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ba8739/32.png) [@Grossbottom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grossbottom)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2008, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-happening-spoilers/452896/36 "2008-06-16T12:48:23Z")
Shyamalan has shit up his last 2 hours of my life. What a waste of time. Dialogue like a lead balloon, in addition to everything else that’s been said. Do not go see this movie. I saw Eddie Izzard on Saturday night and I’m telling you, after watching the latest shitacular entry from M. Night Fuckface, I’m barely breaking even for a weekend well spent. Want my money back. ---
**Author:** ![singular1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ba9def/32.png) [@singular1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/singular1)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2008, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-happening-spoilers/452896/37 "2008-06-16T13:19:26Z")
[QUOTE=Siam Sam] My question is where was Shyamalan in the film? He always does an Alfred Hitchcock-type cameo, but I could not spot him. The [imdb.com](http://imdb.com) website says he was Joey, but you never see Joey or even hear his voice. He’s only ever on the phone to Alma; you only hear Alma talking to him. Did we miss a Joey sighting somehow? [/QUOTE] They were just talking about this on the Adam Carolla show. He says “Hello” on the phone. They were laughing about what an enormous ego Shyamalan has to expect everyone to recognize his voice. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2008, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-happening-spoilers/452896/38 "2008-06-16T13:54:09Z")
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic] If Shyamalan wants to save his career at this point, I think he needs to get that _Sixth Sense_ kid out of the mothballs and conjur up some more dead people for a sequel. I don’t know what happened to him. I think he once had some talent in there somewhere. I rather liked _Unbreakable_, and I didn’t think _Signs_ or _Lady in the Water_ were unwatchable, but I was dozing off during this thing. [/QUOTE] What he needs to do is sell his services as a director for hire. He’s actually pretty skilled at directing, but he needs a producer to keep him in line and someone else to write his scripts. Not everyone is meant to be an auteur. ---
**Author:** ![OatmealB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bc79bd/32.png) [@OatmealB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OatmealB)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2008, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-happening-spoilers/452896/39 "2008-06-16T14:01:54Z")
[QUOTE=Rachael Rage] I haven’t seen the film but couldn’t it just mean that some people are… …immune to the effects of the toxin, or whatever? In every post-apocalyptic/plague movie, there always seem to be a handful of people who don’t catch the bug. [/QUOTE] Could be, but (not sure if spoilers are necessary, but erring on the side of caution): The person at the beginning you never see again in the movie. Maybe it acts slower on some people, I don’t know. It just seemed like the “immune” person in each scene was there to contrast what was happening to everyone else, but there wasn’t really a need for that. It would have been just as effective if everyone in the scene fell victim to it. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2008, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-happening-spoilers/452896/40 "2008-06-16T14:29:17Z")
[QUOTE=OatmealB] Could be, but (not sure if spoilers are necessary, but erring on the side of caution): The person at the beginning you never see again in the movie. Maybe it acts slower on some people, I don’t know. It just seemed like the “immune” person in each scene was there to contrast what was happening to everyone else, but there wasn’t really a need for that. It would have been just as effective if everyone in the scene fell victim to it. [/QUOTE] The girl in the first scene who was slow to react evenually did succumb. It was subtle, but if you watch her face at the moment her friend is jamming the needle into her throat, you can see that her expression has now gone blank and she is showing no response or surprise to the sight of her friend killing herself. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-happening-spoilers/452896.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-happening-spoilers/452896.md?page=3)