Fool me once...

Rating: 5/10 (10 January 2009)

Ah, good ol' M. Night Shyamalan. Those who have read my other reviews know that I am a fan of Shyamalan's earlier films. The Six Sense leveled me, Signs was brilliantly conceived and very well played, The Village was a work of genius. Then came Lady in the Water, a bizarre and uninteresting work of self-indulgent fluff. Fool me once.
Then, I watched the Happening. Did he actually fool me twice? Well, sort of. The Happening had more interesting concept than Lady: Nature enacts its revenge on Man. And, it started out and actually ended better than Lady. While its not nearly in the same league as Signs and Six Sense,it is clearly more bearable to watch the Happening than Lady in the Water. But the similarity in regards to muddled dialog and misguided performance makes me nervous for the fate of Shyamalan's films.
I actually do think the lead was miscast. I don't think Mark Wahlberg understood the role of a flawed everyman. Zooey Deschanel didn't make it easy for us viewers to sympathize for her. John Leguizamo was the only actor who brought a sense of paranoia that was absent in the other actor's performances.
This won't make me very popular, but I do disagree with many of the comments on this site. This movie actually made me think. I didn't really think about how we are destroying the environment or that the trees and bushes would actually make us suicidal. But, like Signs and The Village, I thought about the point that Shyamalan pieced together. If you put aside the below-average script and poor acting, Shyamalan did cleverly tell a story that nobody else is capable of telling. The movie was undeniably flawed at times, but it was also quite intriguing at times. Not enough for a come back, but perhaps not enough to proclaim "shame on me."