'Happening' Shines Through MetaCritic Score

By Katey Rich

Though Film Journal only posts its review to the site Rotten Tomatoes, the other major review-aggregator out there, MetaCritic.com, is often a better source for the real picture of what's going on out there. Instead of simply assigning a "fresh" or "rotten" label to an individual review, the geniuses (or robots, or monkeys, or whatever) at MetaCritic assign a number rating to the review, based on how positive or negative it is. An all-out rave earns a 100, while something more guarded with a few complaints might get an 80. It's a weird science, but the result is an aggregate score that gives a more accurate read of the critical zeitgeist than RottenTomatoes' more crude "fresh rating."

The differences between the two become really clear with a film that gets mixed reviews, and this weekend's The Happening is a great example. The RottenTomatoes score is a dismal 21%--that's worse than Speed Racer got-- while the MetaCritic score is a much fairer 38%. Having read many of the reviews, it makes perfect sense. Most critics are crediting Shyamalan for his use of style and some genuinely original moments, while slapping him on the wrist for putting together a movie that, in the end, is incoherent. Unfortunately, that kind of equivocating doesn't show up in a Rotten Tomatoes rating that only accepts "good" or "bad" in its score. With a movie like The Happening, which could be well-described as "a good kind of bad," the nuance gets lost in the shuffle.

It makes me sad that so many people will see The Happening's 21% rating and brush it off entirely, because there's a lot of good stuff in there. Granted, much of it is overshadowed by Mark Wahlberg's horrendous acting and some plot twists seemingly pulled out of a hat. With competition like The Incredible Hulk this weekend, Shyamalan's movie doesn't stand much of a chance. I'm grateful, as always, for Rotten Tomatoes' publicity for Film Journal, but I hope they make sure their readers peek through the glaring bad rating to see some of the compliments critics had for this strange movie.