ain't much happening here

Rating: 5/10 (16 February 2009)

End-of-the-world scenarios have become such a cottage industry in recent years that M. Night Shyamalan's "The Happening" can't help but feel like a straggler to a party that's already begun winding down. In this case, the apocalyptic horseman comes in the form of a strange natural phenomenon which causes people to engage in mass suicides. The usually reliable - but here way too over-earnest - Mark Wahlberg plays a high school science teacher who flees with his wife and the daughter of a friend from their home in New York City (where the plague begins) to a remote area of western Pennsylvania.
As always, Shyamalan relies on subtlety and indirection rather than explicit violence and over-the-top special effects to achieve his thrills. Yet, while there is a certain undeniable creepiness to some of the film, "The Happening" ultimately comes a cropper through annoying performances, lackluster storytelling, dopey dialogue and more laugh-out-loud moments than any ostensibly serious horror film should ever have to put up with. It also doesn't help that "The Happening" feels like so many other recent movies that have come before it ("War of the Worlds," "I Am Legend," "Cloverfield," the "28 Day" series etc.) or that it pales in comparison to the much livelier, intentionally funny "The Signal" (albeit, in that film, the afflicted individuals were killing other people rather than themselves, making them a bit more of an actual threat).
As seems to be the case with Shyamalan's most recent output, one winds up admiring "The Happening" much more than one likes it.