A great set-up sadly wasted

Rating: 5/10 (4 October 2015)

Something strange is happening in the city of New York; suddenly people I Central Park started acting strangely then a woman suddenly kills herself with a large hairpin. It isn't long before people across the city are killing themselves; workers jump from a tall building, a policeman shoots himself then others pick up his sidearm and do the same. It is assumed that it must be some strange terrorist attack and an evacuation is ordered. The film follows three people caught up in the event; science teacher Elliot Moore, his wife Alma and Jess, the young daughter of one of Elliot's friends. They manage to get a train heading to Philadelphia but it stops in a small town when what happened in New York starts happening in Philadelphia. Soon reports come suggesting that there have been outbreaks of suicides in smaller and smaller communities. Somebody suggests that far from being a terrorist attack it is actually caused by a chemical being deliberately released by plants!
The opening scenes of this film led me to believe that perhaps the negative reports I'd heard were a little unfair; the outbreak of mass suicide was a little disturbing and very bizarre unfortunately what followed didn't live up to this opening. It felt like M. Night Shyamalan was trying to make a film like 'The Birds' with trees as the threat unfortunately rustling trees aren't as scary as the sight of large birds attacking people. Some of the later suicides were more comic than disturbing; a woman shows everybody a video clip her mother forwarded depicting a man feeding himself to the lions in a zoo; after they rip off one arm he offers them the other I was half expecting him to carry on like the Black Knight in 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail'! Later another man lies down in front of his lawnmower. Stars Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel do a decent enough job but they have both been better in other films. The ending is fairly sudden and a bit of a let-down. Overall I'd say this isn't a terrible film but one can't help feeling it could have been so much better; it is worth watching once if only for the unintended laughs.