Movie review: The Happening *possible spoilers*

This weekend I had the chance to take in the new movie "The Happening". The basic plot of the movie is that the earth is upset with us for doing all of the bad things we do to it, so it decides we are a threat and goes into population control. It does so by releasing toxins into the air that basically re-wire the human brain to go from feeling the need to protect your body, to feeling the need to do yourself harm. Scary, yes.

Basically, it was a 2-hour political statement on how we are mis-treating the earth, and how if we aren't careful, we run the risk of the earth deciding we need to be wiped out. I didn't leave this movie feeling like I needed to be smarter about how I used and abused the environment, I left this movie feeling like we needed to do one thing: KILL ALL THE PLANTS. Those motherfuckers are out to get us.

I felt the movie had an interesting concept: releasing toxins into the air that make us want to kill ourselves. But I feel as a topic, it's a bit overdone. We have already had a real-life issue with something similar. Every time I hear a song by Daughtry, I in fact want to kill myself. Screw worrying about earth, what are we going to do about Daughtry? And everytime I hear Paul McCartney's "Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time" I think I could easily punch small children or orphan puppies in the face.

Good movie? It was okay. I'm not so sure it was worth the $118 I paid for the movie ticket, which, if you haven't been recently, is now the standard movie price. Everyone is bitching about gas prices, but what the hell are we doing about movie ticket prices? There's no way "fast and the furious 4: brazilian ball buster" will be worth that much to see.

Summary: It was an interesting movie, for about the first hour. After an hour of watching people kill themselves, you eventually start to consider your own options.

Movie Grade: C+