Written, Produced, & Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo
Released: June 13, 2008

I was really looking forward to this flick the first time I set eyes on the movie poster. It had a very cryptic, creepy tone, and once I heard this was to be M. Night Shyamalan’s first R-Rated feature, I was downright giddy. But the more and more I saw the trailers and read exceprts from early reviews, I slowly started to get worried that this may not be the big return to form I was hoping for. Though many have been put off by his movies for years, I’ve greatly enjoyed all of Night’s flicks. Even with their we-know-it’s-coming twist endings and somewhat predictable storytelling at times, they’ve always felt well-written and, more importantly, well-acted to me. Well, that is… up until now. The Happening is a prime example of a good idea that is crushed into utter lifelessness by dull, listless directing and acting.

As most people know by now from the trailers and TV spots, The Happening follows a group of people as they try to outrun and escape a rash of unexplainable mass suicides. The media is chalking it up to terrorist chemical attacks, but there’s something a lot more sinister going on here in our East coast cities. We have people jumping off of buildings by the dozen, people hanging themselves from trees with gardening equipment, people aerating their jugulars with hair pins, people turning themselves into lawn mulch, etc, etc. That’s well and good, but who are our heroes for this movie? Who’s company will we be traveling with through this emo wasteland? Well, the story follows a high school science teacher, Elliot Moore (Marky Mark – sorry, Mark Wahlberg), his bug-eyed wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel), Elliot’s fellow teacher and friend Julian (John Leguizamo) and Julian’s daughter Jess as they try to escape the spread of this mysterious outbreak by heading West, where no attacks seem to be occurring.

Now, trust me… this synopsis is infinitely more exciting than the whole of the movie. It’s a good idea, I’ll give Night that. He’s never a man to write anything uninteresting. It’s just the fact that this time, it’s executed so poorly that it’s hard, if not impossible, to get into the story and really be swept away by it. Why? Because, quite simply, this movie is boring. A movie penned as a supernatural thriller that contains barely a shred of suspense is a massive failure in my opinion. There was no sense of menace! No sense of danger! Nothing that happened during the course of the film made me fear for these people’s lives. Plus there’s the fact that they practically come out and tell us the cause of the epidemic half way through the movie, leaving not a single trace of mystery or uncertainty as to why this is occurring. Sure, there were some pretty graphic death scenes (which were all in the damn previews I might add), but none of these scenes featured anyone we as an audience had become emotionally attached to. It simply didn’t pay off.

Additionally, the acting is atrocious across the board. There was no flow; no sense that anything bad is actually happening to these people. The tone and reflection in each actor’s voice sounded flat and fake… as if each were reading off cue cards and had no freedom to put their own emotion and perspective into their performance. That isn’t something we want to see in a movie that should be conveying suspense, or hell, any movie for that matter. It’s hard for me to beleive that Mark Wahlberg didn’t take a second to stop and really listen to the lines he was speaking and the manner in which he was speaking them and realize how unnatural and preconceived it all sounded. “From Whom?” FROM WHOM? Who the hell says “whom”?

While I can appreciate the message and story M. Night Shyamalan is trying to get accross with The Happening, I cannot appreciate the hour and a half he made me sit through to convey it. Still, I look forward to his next project, and as always, I’ll cross my fingers and hope it will be his true return to form. But either way, perhaps he can do us all a favor and ask for some writing or directing help next time.