What? No!

Rating: 2/10 (21 October 2018)

... As stated by Mark Wahlberg in the 'The Happening'. This absolutely phenomenal and in depth dialogue really describes this film perfectly. It is obvious Wahlberg was breaking the fourth wall at this particular moment while referring to the film.
In all honesty though, i can and will never understand how this film is directed by the same director as the masterpiece 'The Sixth Sense'. M. Night Shyamalan isn't know for his consistency, but the difference in quality between these two films is just enormous. There is probably not a single other director out there that has a greater gap in the quality of two of his films. There is just no explanation how Shyamalan turns from The Sixth Sense to this bunch of nonsense. With the knowledge that Shyamalan is in fact actually capable of producing something amazing, the fact that this film is such utter trash really supports the suggestion that this was done on purpose.
Now for the substantial part... The Happening is horribly acted, lazily and poorly written & terribly framed and photographed. Now, Mark Wahlberg is an actor that in the past has proven himself to be an adequate factor in most of his films ( See his performances in either Boogie Nights or The Departed ), so his absolutely atrocious performance in this film is for the most part also thanks to Shyamalan, who also wrote the screenplay. Shyamalan's screenplay is full of illogicalities and unintentionally funny moments. There are so many scenes in The Happening where something bad happens, and never do any of the character seem to react to it. They just stand there, not moving, like a bunch of 'uninvolved observers!' as Zooey Deschanel states. This is a recurring theme throughout the film. There is for example a scene in which some people hear a gunshot from behind a hill, and they do absolutely nothing. They do not run away or run towards it. They just do nothing except stare in front of themselves. There is also a scene where two characters are blown away by shotguns from inside a house on a porch, after which two other characters sit in front of said porch for another two minutes while the shotgun guys are still in there. Wahlberg also talks to a tree, which is saying enough. There is also a lot of irrelevant newspaper exposition, which is ofcourse one of the most annoying forms of exposition because it involves characters nobody knows who talk about circumstantial things which do not tell the audience anything we did not already know. But hey, Shyamalan thinks his viewers are idiots, so why not? In short, all of these nonsensical character moments make this one of the worst screenplays ever made.
As for the acting, everyone is complete garbage. Mark Wahlberg, who as stated before is definitely not a bad actor, obviously doesn't look like he wants to be in this film, perhaps due to some feeling of shame as he must have already felt how terrible this was going to be. Unfortunately for him, this performance does really make him seem like a bad joke, although Shyamalan's dialogue doesn't help either. His immortal sarcastic utterly unconvincing line delivery of 'What? No!' really emphasizes his will of being in this film. Although once again there is a lot of dialogue that no actor could have pulled off convincingly. Zooey Deschanel is nearly as bad as Wahlberg, but i think if the screentime of both characters were reversed that these roles would also be reversed, since she is too absolutely terrible. 'Just when you thought there couldn't be any more evil that can be invented' is ofcourse a terrible line of dialogue by Shyamalan, but Deschanel's delivery is something else entirely.
The cinematography is plain bloated and ugly, with absolutely terrible framing. There are many weird choices of close ups instead of widescreen ( Especially in a sequence that is supposed to be intense when another group is being executed behind a near hill ) which really create an awkward and unintentionally hilarious situation. This is not like a Leone film where the close ups are so immersive and involving due to it being an emotional and visual responder to when something is going to happen, but just an awkward piece of framing that becomes an unintentional hilarity. These are dumb characters with dumb dialogue standing still like a bunch of idiots while people are getting slaughtered. Close ups here do not emphasize the intensity, but only emphasize the ridiculousness of the situation. Not to mention there are many shots where certain people are simply not in frame. The rule of thirds is almost never used and it results in many unremarkable and ugly shots.
The only positive about 'The Happening' is James Newton Howard's score, which was a superb emotional piece. Too bad for him it is wasted on such a terrible and forgettable film, although the unintentional hilariousness of it will still linger in a lot of minds.
The Happening is a terrible film. Yet it is still a very likeable terrible film, because of its laughably unconvincing line deliveries and horrendous dialogue. Unfortunately Shyamalan was really going for the psychological terror approach here in the context of Hitchcock's The Birds and thus this does not really work out since the framing and the deliveries of these horrendous line make this more like a comedy than something that is supposed to be disturbing or scary, because both are nonexistent in this film.