unclear what's happening in this movie

Rating: Null/10 (14 June 2008)

Elliot Moore is an innovative Philadelphia science teacher whose marriage is on the rocks. That's the least of his worries however when a mysterious endemic strikes the northeast region of the United States, causing erratic behavior, violence, and even death among the general population. Along with a group of survivors, it's a race against time to try and make it to safety before their fates are quickly sealed. M. Night Shyamalan's latest showing is interesting, startling, unusual, but also frustratingly uneven; from one point of view it's a supernatural tale of human survival, from another it's a domestic exploration of love and reconciliation, and from yet another it's a deliberately distant, ambiguous story thread designed to pull viewers along before they realize there's really no point. A miscast Wahlberg tries gallantly to pull it off with a straight face, while some of his co-stars seem to be reading off of cue cards. At times serious, at times unintentionally silly (?) it plays mostly as a mixed bag. "Different" would probably be the most accurate description. **