Will someone please confiscate Shyamalan's typewriter?!

Rating: 4/10 (1 August 2008)

"The Happening" opens with poetic images of regular folks jumping from buildings and some off-kilter gun suicides. These gave me hope. As suicides in rural areas of the US increase, stupid people start speculating that these deaths are the work of "the terrorists". In a thick- headed way, director M. Night Shyamalan plugs into the way George Bush Jnr. and his war- loving cronies have turned low and average IQ Americans into shaking balls of paranoia; Rod Serling plumbed similar territory in "...Twilight Zone" episodes such as 'The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street'. In many instances, Shyamalan films feel like episodes of that classic TV series -- bad episodes, unfortunately. As usual, Shyamalan has written another creative check that can't be cashed. Good set-up. Reasonable confrontations. Tawdry resolution. Childish, actually. Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel play a couple who, like so many others, feel the sudden need to hit the road once the suicide statistics start rising. They have no destination; they're just getting as far away as possible from the city. Which turns out to be a complete mistake, of course. There's been a lot of criticism of Wahlberg's performance. My opinion is that he took a paycheck to play a badly written character and didn't get much help from Shyamalan. He's a regular guy type who doesn't quite meet hero requirements. Deschanel, who plays his wife, looks and acts more like his moody daughter. She makes nothing but idiotic contributions to the betterment of the situation. The story hops along and there are some arresting images of bodies hanging from trees. The cinematography is surprisingly plain and the score by James Newton Howard overemphasizes key shifts in the narrative. The explanation for why people suddenly start suiciding is silly. If this had been written by a ten year old, I'd give the kid a B+ for effort. If it had been written by an adult with a bunch of cinematic notches on his belt, I'd send him to his room without supper and confiscate his typewriter.