M lost his 6th sense for movie-making

Rating: 2/10 (23 December 2008)

Giving this a "2" was being kind since I really enjoyed 6th Sense and Unbreakable. I hope "The Happening" is M's bottom of the barrel and he begins his ascent to film making once again. Hopefully he will have shaken off his creative ghosts and gotten over his over-inflated ego before his next project debuts.
I agree with the other reviews insofar as this film was badly mis-cast. Wahlberg and Deschanel looked terribly uncomfortable in their roles. They seemed to struggle to really develop their characters. As others have pointed out they seem to have forced their performances the same way Shyamalan forced the tension in an attempt to get some sort of audience reaction. The story's mis-timed suspense and the forced performances by the cast created an out-of-synch nightmare.
With all due respect to the cast, they seemed to have been left out of Shyamalan's inner intent and seemed to struggle with filling in the gaps left by the story's shortcomings.
An event of catastrophic proportions was "happening" all around the characters but they didn't seem to react appropriately. Shyamalan should have reviewed footage of 9/11, terrorist attacks in Israel and other "happenings" around the globe and applied those human reactions to his characters and not create some caricature of human nature.