Missed opportunity!

Rating: 2/10 (10 July 2008)

Where to begin with this sorry saga! The Happening is without doubt a missed opportunity snatched from the jaws of victory by our good friend Mark Wahlberg. Wahlberg who, when given excellent direction and material can turn in a mediocre performance at best, finds that given no direction and bad material, well; I'm afraid you only get what you deserve.
Acting lesson 101:- An actor should be that good that you don't notice them acting! Wahlberg is so wooden I half expected to see a carpenter use him as an instrument to bludgeon one of the victims with.
The story in the Happening is a good premise badly realised. The film lacked a cohesive direction which left you without any empathy for the main characters or what was happening to them. There are many good scenes in this film, what is lacking is a strong enough thread by our main characters to mesh everything together.
There are some quite shocking scenes of construction workers jumping off high rise buildings that left me puzzled, would airborne spores really have reached that altitude in sufficient quantity when there didn't seem to be very much vegetation in the surrounding area?
In previous films by Shyamalan you had big name actors like Bruce Willis, Mel Gibson & Samuel L Jackson. The only link I can see here is Joaquin Phoenix who had been in the film "We Own The Night" which also starred Wahlberg. Perhaps Phoenix tipped Shyamalan that Wahlberg was good!
When all is said and done about this film, it is the actor who should be able to carry a film, be the star attraction,the film merely being a vehicle, you only have to see this from the likes of Will Smith who has had a couple of turkeys, yet is forgiven by his box office returns. Wahlberg is not in a position to carry the lead in a movie, he should stick to being a co-star in films with actors with more charisma like "The Departed" We can only hope that Wahlberg is not given the opportunity to ruin yet another film.