The Happening

[phirefly]

Briefly: when everyone else started going on about how horrible The Happening was, I was disinclined to take their word for it. After all, most people didn't like The Village, which I adored. I was wrong. It was horrible. The premise might've been acceptable with a better script and, seriously, even mediocre acting. This was Mark Wahlberg at his

Comments

[angus_mcnitt]

Jesus!!! It must be bad, you evoked the name of the Funky Bunch.

[phirefly]

Bad isn't even the word.

All I keep wondering is how they didn't see how god awful it is before releasing it. No, wait... I consider the previews they put on the DVD with it. They had to have noticed at some point. I mean, the last preview was for a direct-to-DVD release by the WWE. Which isn't about wrestling. Seriously.

[doc_smiley]

so what was it that was killing everyone? Was it bees?

[phirefly]

It was the PLANTS. But they weren't rising up like creepy zombies or anything. That might've made the movie campy and made the rest of its horridness actually acceptable because we'd know it was supposed to be bad. But no, there was just this wind which was carrying some kind of airborne toxin that the plants were releasing which made people insta-suicide.

At one point, Mr. Mark the Science Teacher is talking to a plant in an empty house and realizes how stupid he sounds when it dawns on him that the particular plant he's addressing is made of plastic. That was the movie's sole poignant moment, as if it were for but a fleeting instant self-aware enough to make fun of itself. Then it was gone, and we were back to the suck.

[angus_mcnitt]

So they remade Day of the Triffids? What is with doing bad remakes of good Sci-Fi/Horror?

If "The Day the Earth Stood Still" sucks this bad, I'm nuking Hollywood. Or de-orbiting a cold war Soviet spy satellite on it.

Bet that would make a good movie of the week.