Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you a running real-time commentary of The Happening.
0:00 – All right, time to start. I’m seeing credits over clouds and boring music. Remember the theme from Signs? That was awesome.
3:25 – Credits over. Let’s get started.
5:07 – The movie starts off with a nice sense of dread as people stop dead in their tracks and a woman on a bench notices. However, the knitting needle to the neck looked really bad. Whoever cast that latex was drunk on the job.
5:36 – I’m now to the scene from the trailer where the construction dudes are falling off the building. Wow, this scene has some awful acting from the people in it. The scene is supposed to be grotesque, but it’s one of the funniest things I’ve seen all day… almost like it’s a bad SNL skit.
6:40 – Mark Walberg: high school teacher! I can’t buy this guy as an intellectual.
7:58 – The guy in class doesn’t care about bees. Neither do I. Do something, movie!
9:00 – Marky Mark is a terrible teacher.
10:52 – Marky Mark has just been told there’s been a chemical attack and he sends his kids out of school and into the middle of it without even telling them that there is an emergency?
11:02 – John Leguizamo! Yeah… he’s a math teacher, we get it. Thanks for that exposition. I’m also going to speculate that he’s going to die horribly as minorities are prone to do in these movies.
13:10 – Mrs. Marky Mark is getting a call, so she throws her cell onto the coffee table and stares at it. Can’t you just ignore the call? Did you have to yeet your cell phone?
14:06 – Wow, the terrible bar has just been raised thanks to the acting of Mrs. Marky Mark.
15:34 – Why does Leguizamo always speak out of one side of his mouth? It looks like the poor man just had a stroke.
18:07 – Another scene from the trailer. A cop takes his gun and shoots himself. Tell me, how do you shoot yourself in the head and then catch yourself with your arms when you fall?
19:05 – Ha, ha, ha! Shoot yourself, drop the gun, someone else takes it, bang, drop the gun, someone else gets it… It’s like passing a “shot!”
19:58 – Marky Mark repeats the news, “Another park?” like it’s important or any real person would actually pick up on it like it was a clue or something. That’s giving me a raging clue. My clue is pointing in this direction.
21:38 – Why does Marky Mark always have that facial expression like he’s sitting on the toilet?
22:11 – Omigod! Marky Mark is awful in this movie!
24:09 – Marky Mark is having a conversation with the cute little girl that’s making him look like a pedophile.
25:10 – Lions disarm a man. Seriously, they bite a man’s arm off! That is the funniest thing I’ve seen in the movie so far.
26:36 – This is the calmest group of panicking people I’ve ever seen. It’s amazing that the man who brought us The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable is showing this level of incompetence when it comes to showing how people react in a crisis.
29:08 – This is the flattest heartfelt goodbye scene I’ve ever seen. Probability and math should not figure into heartfelt goodbye speeches.
30:00 – Thirty minutes into the movie. There’s been death and an evacuation, but I still feel like nothing has happened! They should have called this Nothing’s Happening!
31:21 – Congratulations, Marky Mark, you’ve hitched a ride with the whackjob idiot that talks to plants, has a stupid theory, and is probably right.
32:09 – Ha, ha, ha! The chick in the jeep starts screaming at people hanging from the trees and it’s only AFTER this that Leguizamo tells her not to look out the window.
33:57 – Jeep crash. All right, I have to admit. That was cool and by far the only scene in the movie that has been adequately directed.
34:40 – RIP Leguizamo!
35:10 – Marky Mark is one of the least surprised surprised people I’ve ever seen.
36:40 – It’s Gomer Pyle!
37:40 – Marky Mark, all of the sudden, thinks that crazy plant man is right and that plants are killing people. Wait, what? Why? What evidence do you have, Mr. Scholar?
39:21 – This is the least concerned concerned mother I have ever seen.
40:33 – Let me get this straight. This disease or gas or plot device or whatever it is makes people loose their sense of self-preservation and kill themselves? Is THAT what’s going on? It’s like a passive aggressive form of a 28 Days Later plague.
40:45 – Snap. Marky Mark has an emotional crying scene and M. Night shoots it from a distance. If something is so terrible even M. Night doesn’t want it in this terrible movie, it’s has got to be really terrible. I’m talking at least three scoops of terrible.
42:16 – Crazy plant man has too many crazy convenient explanations. Is this man Jesus?
44:07 – Let’s split up our group in the middle of a crisis. What a brilliant plan.
44:32 – Nice move, Mrs. Marky Mark. Hey, honey… I know we’re all going to die but I need to tell you… I cheated on you.
46:10 – Wait… It IS the plants behind it?
46:22 – Plants.
46:59 – The darn plants!?
48:00 – (hysterical laughter) Holy crap! They’re actually outrunning the wind! One of them is chunky and she’s OUTRUNNING THE WIND!!!
48:55 – The wind won.
49:33 – Nothing happened. I was really rooting for the trees at this point.
51:14 – I just realized. RIP Crazy Plant Man. If he returns, then that will seal the deal… he is Jesus.
51:46 – Wait, was that a map from Dennys?
It’s a house in the middle of nowhere with fake furniture! I have a feeling that a nuclear bomb is about to go off and the only way out is hiding in the fridge.
52:17 – Marky Mark is speaking to a plant in a very pathetic attempt at humor. And it’s plastic which… makes it funnier, I guess.
53:15 – It’s a house in the middle of nowhere with fake furniture! I have a feeling that a nuclear bomb is about to go off and the only way out is hiding in the fridge.
53:58 – Wow, okay… I’m a teacher myself and if I had to spend the last few days of my life with another teacher who elected to teach me things every chance he got, I would shoot myself. STOP TRYING TO TEACH PEOPLE, MARKY MARK!!!
54:50 – OM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM! That lawn mower scene was too hilarious. Gratuitous, but hilarious.
55:54 – All right, Marky Mark has been lecturing these kids for hours about science, but the second they offer him advice, he gets all up their grill.
58:37 – Useful tip. If you’re in a national crisis and you happen upon an abandoned house that’s boarded up and there’s someone inside, don’t try to peer in the windows or make demands. They’re probably armed.
59:23 – Marky Mark is singing. Now it’s just torture.
59:50 – I TOLD YOU SO!!! RIP annoying teenagers. You were asking for it, you idiots.
1:00:00 – At least we’ve reached the hour mark with two annoying characters getting offed in front of a little girl. That will ring up some therapy bills later.
1:01:21 – Too bad this movie isn’t making more of a statement about fear of terrorism. It’s trying, but it’s just being stupid.
1:03:01 – Enter the creepy old woman
1:05:15 – Filler, filler, filler, filler, filler.
1:06:00 – Sudden child abuse! Awesome!
1:07:13 – Is it just me or are Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch meeting the craziest and strangest people on this trip? Seriously, is there no one who is normal in a world overrun by killer plant pollen?
1:11:05 – OVERACTING!!! I thought that the crazy old woman was going to shoot a turd out her butt.
1:11:57 – The wind is back! Quick, everyone! Let’s hide from the wind! Where’s the duct tape for the windows and doors?
1:12:32 – Wait a minute, did this movie just turn into Night of the Living Dead?
1:12:58 – All right, crazy lady busting windows with her head is officially the first creepy thing I’ve seen in this movie.
1:13:36 – If anything, Marky Mark has that wide-eyed open-mouthed somewhat surprised look down pact.
1:14:13 – These people have been running from killer plant pollen for the whole movie and when Marky Mark tells Mrs. Marky Mark to stay inside and shut the doors, she answers “why?” with a straight face. Why do you think!?
1:15:42 – Wow, now Marky Mark is whining.
1:15:50 – The characters think that this is the end? I could only be that lucky.
1:17:45 – We’re a hour and seventeen minutes into the movie and NOW they’re hitting us with attempted character development? Nice try, M. Night. Nice try. This, my friends, is lipstick on a pig!
1:18:27 – Wait a minute… are the trees causing the wind to blow? I mean, what’s the deal with that?
1:19:58 – These characters are indestructible! WHY WON’T THE TREES KILL THEM!?
1:20:10 – Marky Mark just mumbled something that I’m sure was crucial to understand what just happened, but I couldn’t understand a word of it.
1:20:15 – Three months later.
1:22:22 – All right, everything’s been explained by the TV. Thank you, magic talking box.
1:22:51 – And we go off the rails with the terrorism thing and jump on the environmental track. Yeehaw! This movie has no point!
1:23:37 – Aw, she’s pregnant! I can’t wait for her to tell Marky Mark and have him look with big wide eyes and an open mouth.
1:24:37 – The movie faded out and I thought it was over. Now it’s back.
1:25:35 – And NOW the movie is over. Not a moment too soon; I was about to start negotiations with my fichus to take me out lest I suffer more.
Jason Gaston 