Utterly disappointed

Rating: 5/10 (13 June 2008)

After seeing this movie, I left the movie theater thinking "What happened?". That's it, just so utterly confused. I mean, seriously. What happened?! I wanna start off by saying: this is not a bad movie. That is, by conventional means. If you have no idea who Shyamalan is, if you don't care, or you just like over-the-top gory movies and you go into it expecting nothing you could watch this movie. You might even enjoy it. It was a very good idea that was just not executed to its potential. If you're a loyal Shyamalan fan expecting his comeback, don't even bother. You'll be greatly disappointed.
The movie starts out very promising. The opening scene is gorgeous, appropriately and unsuspectingly haunting, and most importantly, shocking at the last minute. Graphic enough to shake you but not too gory so as to disgust you, which is very much Shyamalan's style. Which is exactly what leads to confusion later on. As early as the second scene, they're at it again. Another shock, except this one lingers far too long and is way too intrusive. Wait, this is a Shyamalan movie right? Okay, no biggie, a fumble, that's all, I figured. They give us a break in the third scene, and the fourth scene, guess what? There it is again! Blood! Gore! Graphic violence! Okay, now I'm getting suspicious. And it really just goes downhill from there. While I do applaud the grotesquely creative ways in which he imagines people killing themselves, by the time the scene with the lions came, it was just enough. I don't need to see this. No one does. It's offensive and condescending to his fans. The best Shyamalan movies show you only what you absolutely need to see, they trust their audience to be smart enough to surmise the outcome on their own. The movie itself is smart. But not here. We get every single detail of every gory death, hints thrown in our faces every 5 seconds (the writing on the blackboard takes the cake, they just told you the whole damn story!), but no discernible plot, characters, or story to speak of. I was scared throughout the movie, but for all the wrong reasons. I was scared what I was gonna see next!
The acting is beyond unbelievable. Wahlberg just doesn't seem to care, Deschanel looks and acts like she's stoned half the movie, and Leguizamo stumbles through his words like he just got around to reading the script the night before. No one delivers a good or even decent performance. The characters are shallow; the romance subplot is laughable at best, and the synergy of collaboration is completely nonexistent. Where's Bruce Willis or Joaquin Phoenix? Why couldn't he get one of them?
Lastly, there's the environmentalist pitch. I never would have pegged Shyamalan for an environmentalist, if that even is his doing, but while the message is indeed a good one, the whole delivery of it is blatantly on the nose. "If you don't stop destroying the planet, this is what's gonna happen to you *shaking finger*". Again, offensive and condescending! Enough of this!
All in all, this is really not a bad movie- if you expect nothing. And I do mean NOTHING. As in, not good acting, not good screen writing, and not good storytelling. Nothing at all. Just a lot of pointless violent deaths. If you're a die-hard Shyamalan fan like myself, this is absolutely unacceptable. The Sixth Sense was excellent, and Unbreakable was absolutely superb. Signs and The Village were good. Lady in the Water was just tolerable. With The Happening, it may be time for us to finally accept that our revered god of directing has peaked. This just never feels quite like a Shyamalan movie. I can't believe that it is. What happened?