7. The Happening (2008)
The poster promises apocalyptic suspense and visual style; the film awkwardly delivers Mark Wahlberg talking to a plant. Whether or not Wahlbergs character survives the movie's predicaments, the actors one-sided conversation is just one more happening he (and we) won't ever want to relive. The poster, again, speaks for the movie, though to opposite effect: nothing is there, and that makes both the poster and movie discomforting. However, only the poster strategically pulls off such discomfort to its benefit; to the movie, such discomfort is not from the kind of fear the story would wish to illicit. Perhaps we viewers should have followed the car drivers lead in the poster and abandoned the movie had we, too, seen the disaster ahead. Of course, those car drivers felt compelled to exit due to the unexpected, horrible troubles of a trance-like experience, but does this action not translate as well to theatergoers of this film?
