The Happening

“The first stage is loss of speech, the second stage is physical disorientation, the third stage is fatal,” and the fourth stage involves being posthumously subjected to a farcically horrid abomination titled “The Happening” from once-magnificent scare master M. Night Shyamalan. Okay, so I made the last one up, but that’s what sitting through ninety minutes of this pseudo-scientific twaddle feels like. Right from the drawn-out opening sequence, I knew this one had debacle written all over it, because Shyamalan insists on generating premature anticipation that rarely follows through on its promises. None of the emotive spirit present in the “The Sixth Sense” or “Signs” ever shows up, so it’s exhausting to muster up even a passive interest in anything that’s happening, or in this case not happening.

First of all, the script is clearly out to become one of those “It seemed like a good idea at the time” faux pas due to its cross between “Outbreak” and “An Inconvenient Truth” and for a while I was thinking things might not be so bad. The mood is genuinely eerie following the citywide evacuation, because we’re given little data as to the nature or source of the threat and flashes of 9/11 undoubtedly ran through my mind at the time. However, the moment the characters open their mouths is about the time I gave up and decided that “The Incredible Hulk” may have been a more rousing selection for a rainy Friday evening.

Seriously Mr. Shyamalan, is this the best you can do? Is treating your characters as if they’re blank slates just waiting for something superfluous to say really what your audience has come to expect? I think not, but the dialogue here just reeks of lazy desperation and I’m shocked that an Oscar-caliber talent such as Mark Wahlberg would sign on to play such a bumbling pushover. I didn’t think anyone could have on-screen chemistry more uncomfortable than Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou in “The Da Vinci Code,” but Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel manage to outdo them in nearly every scene. Their emotional range consists primarily of vacant stares, which is precisely what I had during the last half of this film.

Maybe I’m being too harsh, but I just wasn’t into this cluttered environmental nightmare at all. The suspense was non-existent, the pacing was dull, and the carnage took place just so Shyamalan could flex his R-rated muscle. When your most intense scenes are inducing more boisterous laughter than chills, I think you need to reconsider what direction the script is taking and attempt to recapture the supernatural lore that made you a sensation in the first place. He had numerous chances to do that with such a promising foundation, but instead opted to create another trite message movie that constantly gets in its own way.

By the time Betty Buckley lets her inner whack-job loose as a reclusive woodswoman, the film was already past what Kansas would refer to as the “Point of No Return.” Am I surprised at how awful this turned out? No, but I did expect better from a proven commodity. Much better.

- * out of 4