An open letter to M. NIght Shyamalan

Rating: 5/10 (23 July 2008)

Dear Mr. Shyamalan,
First, let me preface by saying that I am no basher of yours. I saw and enjoyed your first film, The Sixth Sense, and even managed to avoid learning the twist despite the fact that I didn't see it until it was on home video. I thought your Unbreakable was wildly underrated, being the first "realistic" comic book movie that many have forgotten. Signs is, to date, your strongest work, in my opinion, featuring a palpable sense of dread and unease to keep you on the edge of your seat. I didn't hate The Village, although it was hardly your shining moment. However, when you made Lady in the Water, it did seem to be an exercise in self-indulgence more than anything else. Sorry, I call them as I see them.
I state all that to let you know where I am coming from, when I say that The Happening just isn't cutting it. It is not terrible. I have seen terrible, and The Happening ain't it. However, The Happening does come up wanting quite significantly, in many respects, some that are just impossible to overlook.
I will give you points for an interesting premise, in which people in major cities in the US Northeast suddenly begin killing themselves without much warning. Then you introduce us to Elliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg), a schoolteacher in Philadelphia, who flees the city with wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel) and fellow teacher Julian (John Leguizamo), with his daughter in tow. We see them escape the city and end up getting stranded in the countryside, where theories about the incidents, originally blamed on terrorists, start to multiply, and the search for a culprit focuses on a more, shall we say, natural cause.
You know, I will say, your setup had a great deal of potential. Several scenes in which individuals take their own lives without warning are effective. There is a scene late in the film, which I will not repeat here because we both know what scene we are talking about, that is disturbing. You had a good starting point, I will give you that.
However, what really kills The Happening is the performances of the actors. It seems reasonable to assume that, since most of the actors perform in a similar manner, that a lot of the problems are attributable to your direction, I am sorry to report. Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, most of the supporting cast, are all wooden, monotone, lifeless. All the actors seems as if they are reciting something from rote that they needed to regurgitate for a school project. There is little passion, energy, or life to the performances. Some rather cheesy dialogue compounds the problem, so that many scenes are almost laughable. What this does is drain all the energy out of the scenes, not to mention the tension. What should be a riveting, claustrophobic thriller, ends up with almost no atmosphere or suspense at all. It doesn't help that your film gets a bit preachy at the end, which is a somewhat similar issue that befell your Lady in the Water. I don't mind that your films have a "message", but could you tone them down a little, it makes for a more pleasant viewing experience.
All in all, I am certainly not going to give up on you, Mr. Shyamalan. You showed enough power and promise in your early days to remind me that you have plenty of ability. You just need to work a little harder on the execution. I say this with only your best intentions at heart believe me.
Your humble viewer, Gerald