Yeah, more like "The Nothing's Happening"

Rating: 3/10 (10 November 2008)

So the tagline for The Happening is "We've Sensed It. We've Seen The Signs. NowIt's Happening."
We've sensed it? Sensed what? Seen what signs? Yeah, we've seen "Signs," but THE signs of some mysterious coming disaster? Maybe this "we" in the tagline is referring to the people that live in the parallel world takes place?
At any rate, the first half of the movie is a wonderful exercise in Shyamalan's ability to create an eerie atmosphere and to insert the unusual and otherworldly in an everyday situation. There are weird events taking place that are at first assumed to be the work of some kind of biological terrorist attack. There appears to be some kind of toxin that causes people to become lethargic and then suicidal, leading to some morbidly fascinating scenes such as one in which one construction worker after another silently walks off the scaffolding of a building, falling to their deaths on the ground below.
But it is in the reality of the situation that Shyamalan is completely lost. He doesn't have the first clue about how to direct groups of people, which takes away any sense of realism that the movie might have had. There is a scene in a café early in the movie where a large group of people are huddled trying to figure out what to do. One person mentions that the incident doesn't appear to be affecting anyone in an area 90 miles away, so everyone immediately stands up silently and marches out of the café without a word. It is impossible to see these as real, frightened people and not the underpaid film extras that they clearly are.
John Leguizamo turns in an outstanding performance but it overshadows his role, which doesn't command such a powerful actor. Mark Wahlberg is very watchable, as always, but it is sad to see so much character and plot development that literally goes nowhere.
It's difficult not to think of Village of the Damned when watching this movie, but the movie really falls on its face when one guy starts talking about, get this, a mysterious ability that plants have to target and kill specific predators.
I won't reveal the intricate details of what "the happening" is, but when it is revealed, the movie instantly turns irretrievably dumb and makes me pine for the time of the giant bug movies of the 1950s. All I will say is that there is a point in the movie where Wahlberg talks to a plant, asking it permission to be in a house. The goofiness is through the roof in this thing.
I also love the use of dialogue in the movie. There is one scene near the end of the film where Wahlberg and his wife have reached a state of hopelessness, believing that their deaths are imminent, and they start talking about the mood rings they tried out on their first date, joking about how the color that turned up indicated that she was horny. Great conversation to have in front of your 9-year-old just before you all suffer a quick and mysterious death!
The "climax" of the movie is the perfect description of the reason for my summary line, and the film ends with an indication that it's not over, and with me sleeping soundly and indifferently on my sofa