As writer, director and co-producer of this movie, Mr. M. Night Shyamalan should be ashamed of himself! Although I have to admit that I was not a huge fan after seeing “The Sixth Sense”, he had me at “Unbreakable” and just kept them coming with “Signs”, “The Village” and most recently “The Lady in the Water” which I loved for its simplistic fairytale-like qualities. How he ever went from all of those highly suspenseful, intensely dramatic movies to “The Happening” is beyond me.

If you have never been a fan of M. Night Shyamalan’s work, this movie will solidify your dislike for his films. If you ever were a follower of his masterpieces, prepare to be disappointed with this one. I’m not sure what Mr. Shyamalan was going for exactly, but whatever it was he seems to have missed his mark.

“The Happening” is confusing, frustrating and overly violent and disturbing. The plot is non-existent as far as I can tell and the relationships and character development are immature and childish. Once we get through the initial pointless and horrifically gruesome death scenes we learn that there is apparently some kind of natural phenomenon that is causing humans to kill themselves in massive numbers. We are given no explanation as to what has caused this attack to begin, nor any idea of what is triggering the human response and when, if ever, it will stop. Through the eyes of high school teacher, Elliot Moore (played by Mark Wahlberg) we are lead to believe that this inexplicable behaviour is related to nature and wildlife, namely plants, who are trying to defend themselves from the human race which is slowly wiping it out. This is the only theory that is provided and a pretty weak one at that. Then we follow Mr. Moore as he struggles to stay alive and ahead of whatever invisible gases are triggering people to commit suicide while he drags along his estranged wife, Alma (played by Zooey Deschanel) and his best friend’s 8 year old daughter, Jess (played by Ashlyn Sanchez). We spend the majority of the film watching Mark Wahlberg out-run the wind and yelling for no apparent reason. His character... in fact, all the characters could have been played by anyone and it would not have changed a thing; the story, character development and dialogue still sucked and there was absolutely no chemistry between any of the actors. Then, just as quickly and inexplicably as it began, the threat against the human race just stops without warning or justification.

Thankfully the entire movie lasts only 91 minutes and therefore you don’t have to endure it for very long, but just that hour and a half is enough to anger and annoy any viewer. A movie that previews described as a paranoid thriller and suspenseful mystery turned out to be a pretty lame attempt at dramatic horror (at least I think that’s what he was trying for). M. Night Shyamalan is always trying to stretch the limits of his creative and artistic abilities. Unfortunately with “The Happening” he may have stretched them a little too thin... to completely invisible / non-existent. But I’m not giving up on him yet. Better luck next time.