[THE HAPPENING
screens Saturday May 2nd at the Cedar Lee Theatre as part of 12 Hours
of Terrible.]
Review by Bob Ignizio
M. Night Syamalan’s THE HAPPENING
is sort of a modern version of those seventies “nature gone
amok” movies like KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS and DAY OF THE
ANIMALS. The difference is those movies knew they were cheese,
so they didn’t take themselves too seriously. They hired scenery
chewing hams like William Shatner and Leslie Nielsen to star, kept
the budgets low and, while still getting their ecological messages
across, had fun. Unfortunately M. Night Shyamalan doesn’t realize
how painfully silly his screenplay about killer trees is, so he
treats this material with the same air of funereal seriousness as all
his other films.
