The Happening: Woefully Acted, Barely Written and Just Absurd

Rating: 1/10 (8 February 2010)

I suggested that my friends and I go to see this film in the cinema when it was released. As a result, I have never since been allowed to choose the film.
The Happening concerns a mysterious phenomenon which is leading to mass death and causing wide-spread panic around the world. Mark Wahlberg plays a high-school teacher thrust into the middle of this emergency situation with his girlfriend, played by Zooey Deschanel. They are journeying across the country to escape "the happening".
The premise is interesting to begin with, a message lying at the heart of the film. It is, however, taken beyond the point of redemption by Shyamalan. The script is simple, generic, unimaginative, boorish rubbish. Stupid, emotionless, and inhuman lines spoken by characters which might, with a degree of kindness, be described as two-dimensional. The relationships between them are entirely unbelievable and insincere. And the acting? Oh the acting... Wahlberg deserves a slap as the blandly irritating and vapid "hero" who appears to have only a single tone of mundanity available to him as a voice, and Zooey Deschanel is... well, simply, Zooey Deschanel isn't. Having Wahlberg speak to himself would have been less painful (oh wait, he does try that). The "expressions" of joy, fear, shock, and sadness upon Deschanel's face are entirely indistinguishable from each other, and indeed from emotion at all. Possibly the single worst "performance" I have ever seen. To make matters worse, both characters seem more attached to turning their heads to the side than they are to each other. You'll think they're trying to get something out of their ears. Perhaps its the sound of the dialogue, clunky and tacky as it comes.
Woefully acted, barely written, and just absurd, the only thing happening with The Happening is the steady flow of people leaving. Shyamalan continues his recent trend of awfulness, digging ever deeper his cinematic grave.