Product Details

• Actors: Mark Wahlberg, John Leguizamo, Betty Buckley
• Directors: M. Night Shyamalan
• Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English
• Subtitles: English, French, Spanish
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Studio: 20th Century Fox
• DVD Release Date: October 7, 2008
• Run Time: 91 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (408 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B001DZOC6Y
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #18,786 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "The Happening" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

You'd expect the end of the world to be no day in the park, but in M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening, a day in the park is where the end begins. One otherwise peaceful summer morning, New Yorkers strolling in Central Park come to a halt in unison, then begin killing themselves by any means at hand. At a high-rise construction site a few blocks over, it's raining bodies as workers step off girders into space. And all the while, the city is so quiet you can hear the gentle breeze in the trees. That breeze carries a neurotoxin, and what or who put it there (terrorists?) is a question raised periodically as the film unfolds. But the question that really matters is how and whether anybody in the Middle Atlantic states is going to stay alive. The Happening is Shyamalan's best film since The Sixth Sense, partly because he avoids the kind of egregious misjudgment that derailed The Village and Lady in the Water, but mostly because the whole thing has been structured and imagined to keep faith with the point of view of regular, unheroic folks confronted with a mammoth crisis. Focal characters are a Philadelphia high-school science teacher (Mark Wahlberg, excellent), his wife (Zooey Deschanel) and math-teacher colleague (John Leguizamo), and the latter’s little girl (Ashlyn Sanchez). Instinct says get out of the cities and move west; most of the film takes place in the delicately picturesque Pennsylvania countryside, with menace hovering somewhere in the haze. There are no special effects (apart from a wind machine and some breakaway glass), but the movie manages to be deeply unsettling in the matter-of-factness of its storytelling. Especially effective is its feel for what we might call the surrealism of banality. One warning sign that someone has been infected by the neurotoxin is irrational or erratic speech and behavior, yet Shyamalan has a genius for dialogue that sounds normal and everyday as it's spoken, yet flies apart grenade-like a second later as its logic (or illogic) sinks in. Then there's Deschanel's eye-rolling dodginess about the messages some guy has been leaving on her cellphone. Or the fellow (Frank Collis) who addresses his greenhouse plants as though they were his children--has a stray toxic zephyr wafted his way, or is this just his idea of normal? --Richard T. Jameson

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Stills from The Happening (Click for larger image)

Product Description

Stars:Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel
Item Type: DVD Movie
Item Rating: R
Street Date: 10/07/08
Wide Screen: yes
Director Cut: no
Special Edition: no
Language: ENGLISH
Foreign Film: noSubtitles: no
Dubbed: no
Full Frame: no
Re-Release: no
Packaging: Sleeve

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

58 of 75 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Is it happening?, October 11, 2008

By 

Judy K. Polhemus "Book Collector" (Louisiana) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Happening (DVD)

OK...Umm...Uh...OK, just stall words to keep me from getting started. OK, here goes.

First the negative: "The Happening" just is not happening as a successful film. Did M. Night really think a movie with the wind blowing trees and grasses would be frightening? Or that the addition of music as a character with the wind would be ominous enough? Perhaps it is with Mark Wahlberg that he expected the movie to be scary. After all, Wahlberg is noted for his intense acting and those serious facial contortions. One scene shows a side view of his face all screwed up. All I could think was how deeply creased his forehead would one day be! A scary movie should not allow me to think that!

However, one of the few really scary parts occurred when the greenhouse guy was in the scene. First, he tells us that plants respond to human voices (true, long-time studies have confirmed this) and that they can respond negatively as well--deep foreshadowing! After the close-up of his misaligned facial features, I fully expected this dude to be hit with neurotoxins and go beserk. Didn't happen. Red herring!

Another really scary part involved the old woman living in isolation, who revealed herself to be beserk without help of neurotoxins. Maybe that was M Night's point: Nature needs to help along the deletion of unsavory human beings, especially including Average Joe (the construction site jumpers--it is no telling what they have done to the plant world!!), but also the truly insane (the old woman who wisely chose to live in the safety of isolation).

I'm going to leave the last three months alone. I could tear into the problems there, too.

Now the positive: Some of these comments are just the reverse of my negative ones. For example, the addition of Wahlberg in the film was a plus because of his intensity. He pretty much makes the whole plant thing believable--well, almost believable. I was even convinced his and Alma's love stopped the neurotoxins. Actually, because of the mystery entwined throughout the story, there is no reason not to think their love stopped the toxins. In other scenes the galloping fear of toxins seemingly increased the plant rampage.

Overcast skies, wind and music, discordance between words and actions, palpable fear, Wahlberg's panic attack, the Hitchcock-like house and old woman--all lent themselves to an increasing sense of unease to dis-ease. The film does work in some ways.

I leave further arguments to others.

47 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Shockingly bad, October 7, 2008

By 

K. Sebastian - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Happening (DVD)

Let me preface by saying I'm not a troll that 1-Stars movies lightly. But this? It plays out like a parody of those old 1950s movies, before things like film-acting and special effects were invented (just kidding...uh...somewhat...).

Its been a looooong time since I've seen actors phone in their performances like Wahlberg and Leguizamo have done here. NO, WAIT! Tim Allen in ZOOM, yeah, its about that speed.

Truth is, though, when things fall apart, I'm a "blame the director" type of viewer (but come on guys, didn't you watch the dailies???). Fascinatingly misdirected by Shymalan, you will swear you're watching a student film. And I liked everything he did up 'til Lady in the Bathtub.

Beware: Zooey's facial expressions aren't for the faint of heart.

63 of 84 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Utterly Disappointing, October 10, 2008

By 

S. Schell (Mason, OH United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Happening (DVD)

Someone save M. Night Shymalan from himself. For a man who insists on writing, producing and directing his own movies, he's digging an early grave for his career as a filmmaker and "The Happening" has breached the six-foot mark for his burial. Sporting a lousy script and lousy performances to boot, Shyamalan's much talked-about first R-rated film is a travesty of filmmaking that deserves no better than a 30% rating. If it were a tomato, it'd be pretty darn rotten.

The film begins in the early morning hours in Central Park. People are milling about, casually strolling, going about their business. Two young women sit on a bench chit-chatting when one of them hears a shrill scream and turns her head in the direction of the sound. What she begins to see after a moderate breeze blows through are people suddenly frozen in their tracks, still as statues, an act that mirrors that of a real-life coordinated event once performed in NY's own Grand Central Station (and I have to wonder whether the film was somehow conceived from that). As she turns to her friend Claire to tell her what she sees, her friend begins mumbling incoherently and slowly removes the hairpick from her tightly wound chignon, deliberately stabbing herself in the neck.

From there, we are taken to a construction site three blocks away at 8:39 am, only six minutes into the future from the strange occurrence at Central Park. A body drops from a fatal height and several foremen rush to his aid, only to witness several more men fall to their death. We are then scooted along to a small high school in Pennsylvania where science teacher Elliott Moore (Wahlberg) is giving an animated lecture at 9:45 am. He is suddenly pulled aside by the school principal and taken to a room where the entire faculty hears of the strange events in New York. The American media assumes at first it is some sort of biochemical terrorist attack, due to the fact that only major cities are being targeted while small towns remain safe. This theory is quickly busted when small towns suddenly fall prey, the safe zones growing smaller and smaller as Elliott, his wife Alma (Deschanel) and fellow teacher and close friend Julian (Leguizamo) try to find a haven from this unseen and presumably unstoppable force.

"The Happening" glows with promise in its first ten minutes but withers quickly after, leading its audience into a deep dark abyss of disappointment. At a tight 1 hour and 30 minutes, the film is still agonizingly long, what with its laughable scientific theories and hackneyed performances. Wahlberg and Deschanel embarrass themselves time and time again, but I have to wonder whether it's really their fault. Is it due to Shyamalan's joke of a screenplay or his poor direction? These actors are better than this and their other films are proof of it. Leguizamo is the only semblance of a saving grace, making the most with what little he's got. The rest of the cast come and go, largely unknown and largely insignificant still.

Bottom line: There isn't much more to say about "The Happening" except that it ain't happening, if you get my drift. Feel free to watch it and formulate your own opinion if you wish, but don't say you haven't been warned.