The Happening

So I was unfortunate enough to finally catch this piece of dross. How could this disaster have been scripted by the same man who wrote the brilliant and tightly plotted sixth sense and the truly original Unbreakable? Actually, quite easily given the downhill slide he has taken since The Village. However while that film and The Lady in the Water were disappointments, this is an unmitigated failure. It starts in an intriguing and disturbing manner but soon deteriorates into a series of random encounters with cardboard cutout characters. Mark Whalberg puts his best 'confused' face on and puts in an appallingly wooden performance - although, to be fair, he has no real script to work with. Example lines are "Oh, it's the army, we're safe" and "Central Park? That's kinda odd". Whalberg can put in good performances, such as in The Departed, but he is not capable of pulling off the everyman role. Zooey Deschanel is rather better and pulls off an interesting, kooky character that never really gets developed.

"Is that my acting career fading away in the distance?"

So surely, M. Night Shayamalan pulls off an audacious twist or interesting explanation of the strange happenings? Well, not at all. Instead we get some ham-fisted environmental bandwagon drivel. Does the man once touted as the next Spielberg still have a career left? It would be unfair to write him off - even Spielberg has made some bad films - but this certainly boils down to a 'must try harder'.
Rating: 3/10 for some spooky scenes, Zooey Deschanel and a decent score.