It didn't Happen for me

Rating: 4/10 (17 August 2008)

First some background. Loved Sixth Sense. Unbreakable is one of my favourite movies ever! Signs was a disappointment. Hated Village and Lady in the Water was only just OK. I stopped seeing MNS movies in theatres after Village. And after Happening, I will still be waiting for video.
The movie fails in so many ways; let me address them one at a time. The first most glaring reason is its main star, Mark Wahlberg. While I have liked him in some roles in the past, he completely fails to bring to life this goofy science teacher. I don't know why MNS chose him, because I never would have. While Walhberg is good sometimes, he has a very small range, and this was just not the right role for him.
Secondly the gore. Completely unnecessary, especially as I feel as though MNS is just not comfortable with it, which is why all his movies in the past have been very PG-13. All the gory and non-gory scenes happened in the same way as MNS treats all his scary scenes. It cuts away at the last moment, or the view is obstructed somehow, etc. Which I have always loved, as MNS is very good at crafting a scary scene. But here it was as though the producers were like "Ok MNS, your movies are failing and we need to tap into a different market, so just add in a couple gory scenes and we'll see if we can get the horror crowd." So in the end, we get a patchwork effort were only some of the death scenes were gory, and they were usually very poorly done, and still, honestly, kinda tame (nothing like Grindhouse).
Lastly the story. All I can say is that it just wasn't executed properly. There was too much emphasis on trying to explain everything, while trying to maintain a theme that you can't explain everything. And the explanation was not satisfying at all. And the scary/death scenes were...well...just not that scary.
Unfortunately MNS is slowly becoming a two-hit wonder.