Oh boy, I hate this movie.

M. Night Shyamalan has brought us a movie that fails almost every step of the way, but for a strange reason, still has my respect. I feel some sort of sympathy for him, because he kicks off his film making career well with The Sixth Sense, but has been going downhill ever since. Sure, he can create a moody premise for The Happening, but it’s the writing that makes this movie ultimately fail, which makes me think that he’s already used up all of his great ideas and will never make a movie like his first again. I like to think of The Happening as his film making experiment, and that he’s just trying to settle on a comfortable genre. Just look at his last movies he’s written and directed:

The Sixth Sense (1999)

Unbreakable (2000)

Signs (2002)

The Village (2004)

Lady in the Water (2006)

As you can see, these movies have nothing in common, besides the twist endings, which is a trademark that he lost, and what I believe is his strong point. I still believe he has what it takes to make a good movie, even if The Happening is this bad. If Shyamalan can make a movie like The Sixth Sense, and follow it with three other good movies (yes, I like The Village), he still has the ability to make his comeback movie to get him back on the top. What he needs to do is to start directing other people’s material, or maybe even a new genre, then start writing films again.

So back to The Happening. The story starts when an unexplained mass suicide starts in New York City. It seems to be caused by some sort of terrorist, in which toxins are being released on the East Coast. But as the deadly toxin slowly spreads, this theory becomes less and less likely. Caught in the middle of this disaster is Elliot Moore, a science teacher played by Mark Wahlberg, along with his wife and his coworker’s daughter. The suicides in the movie are what earns the well-exploited “R” rating. It only makes for some shock value in some scenes, but others, it makes me wonder how they got shot. (For example, a man lets his arms get ripped clean off by lions. What?)

Part of why this movie is so agonizing to watch is due to the acting, or the lack of it. I know that Mark Wahlberg is a damn good actor, so why does he act so sculpted? This goes for the rest of the actors/actresses involved, which makes us hard to immerse in the story. Maybe it’s Shyamalan’s directing, or just the actors. Either way, it’s bad, and somebody should have noticed this during shooting.

I can see where this film went wrong, and that is with the lack of tension. It doesn’t thrill the audience, or leave anyone with any sense of dread or excitement. There are no twists, and I’m not complaining about the lack of twist at the end that people are so eager to hate the movie for. I’m talking about the fact that the whole story, complete with the final explanation, is spilled out way too soon, and leaves the rest of the film empty and boring. Furthermore, it’s not even developed, or clear if this theory is correct. It’s like the people involved couldn’t decide whether to explain the phenomenon or not. We’re hanged between the two at the film’s conclusion, which sends the audience out unsatisfied.

Speaking of the ending, that’s another thing that adds to the pile of flaming mediocrity that is The Happening. It’s one of the laziest endings I’ve ever seen in a film. It’s like the movie was a moving car that suddenly crashed into a brick wall. It’s an ending that sucks so hard that it radiates through the Multiplex, an ending that says “piss off” to every single person in the theater waiting for a big payoff at the end for all their troubles. Overall, I walked out wishing that I had seen The Incredible Hulk instead. Maybe Wall-E will cheer me up and help me forget about this mess.