M. Night Shymalan Disappoints Again

Rating: 2/10 (1 December 2010)

"The Sixth Sense" established M. Night Shymalan as a director with great potential. The unfortunate thing is that "The Sixth Sense" was made more than ten years ago. Since then, the quality of Shymalan's work seems to have been in steady decline - a trend that is powerfully in evidence with "The Happening" - probably the weakest movie Shymalan has been responsible for (at least of those I've seen.)
"The Happening" revolves around some sort of plague that begins to afflict the northeastern United States. The plague seems to drive people mad, eventually causing them to commit suicide. Believed at first to be a terrorist attack on New York City, as it spreads it clearly becomes a natural disaster. Shymalan does a reasonably effective job here of creating a mystery. The plague is certainly frightening and there's no real sense of how it can be avoided. There's no sound explanation of its origins given, except that it has something to do with trees and other plants. Mystery aside, though, this is very disappointing. It begins with what I felt was a sense of unreality - I just didn't buy any of it from the start. It ends with a ridiculous account of the time frame - "the event" says a TV news reporter "began at 8:33 am and ended at 9:27 am the next day." What? How can you pinpoint to the exact minute the beginning and ending of a plague!
None of the characters portrayed in this were especially well developed, and none were especially interesting in all honesty. The already uninteresting characters were made even less interesting by lifeless performances from leads Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel, who seemed to put little effort into this and showed little passion for their work right from the start.
Shymalan's sad downward spiral definitely continues with this one!