I went to see The Happening "after" work today. I wanted to see a movie and it was the first thing playing when I got there, and on top of that, the only other semi-interesting movie this week that came out was Kung Fu Panda. So, I saw The Happening.
The movie was actually set up pretty well. I dug it quite a bit, and for the first time since the Sixth Sense I was totally surprised by the ending of a Shamalamadingdong movie. Why was I surprised? It was because there wasn't a twist. There wasn't an ending either, but that is beside the point. The point is that the movie didn't have some twist to it.
As with Cloverfield, this movie wasn't really a full story. It started with something "happening" and then went on to escalate the "happening" and then it stopped "happening" with no explanation. I have nothing against this as long as the stories remain pretty good. The problem with movies that don't really end is that it leaves the door open for a bunch of hack writers to come in and do nothing. It could happen that a romantic comedy won't have an ending, or a movie like Die Hard doesn't end. Instead of Hans opening the safe and trying to get away, it ends right after he gets away from Bruce Willis the first time. Wouldn't that be anti climactic? Or maybe instead of just ending there it jumps forward to one year later where they don't even mention what happened to Hans Gruber.
I think that it is cool in some movies, but it won't work well in others. Anyway, I hope we don't start seeing a lot of movies coming out like this.