Review of The Happening (2008)

Moving picture, 91 minutes

Seen in 2013.

Kitsch. The author does not understand basic biology. Frustrated, he portrays the very ambition to understand the catastrophic event as hubris, and places an assertion to this effect in the mouth of the scientific establishment. The film is a fantasy world where the author thus exercises the power to make scientists “humble” by making them drop their own ambition to understand nature for the common good. The author then substitutes terrible ad hoc hypotheses for reasonable inquiry, and makes these correct. At the most basic scenario level, The Happening is foolish and anti-scientific to an amusing degree.

moving picture fiction