The Happening (*)

Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan (The Village, Signs, Unbreakable, The Sixth Sense, Lady in the Water)
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo
Seen: June 18th 2008

* Out of ****

A normal day. People walking around in parks, working at the office, busy in traffic. And then the unthinkable starts happening as they simply start killing themselves, a young girl impales herself on her own hairpin, workers come raining down from the building they are consructing, a police officer shoots himself, drops the gun, with more people picking it up and offing themselves.

What could be going on? The news channels start reporting it as a bioterrorist attack, but this theory is discounted after a while when it becomes clear that the events occur in increasingly smaller societies. People are desperately fleeing the cities, and a young couple, Elliot and Alma Moore (Wahlberg and Deschanel) decide to flee the city by train with a friend, Julian (Leguizamo) and his daughter, Jess.

At the following train station, Julian leaves his daughter with Elliot and Alma to go searching for his wife in another small town, and he and the people he hitches a ride with fall victim to the happening and promptly, and quite brutally, commit suicide. This continues with the actors looking increasingly confused as to what this film is supposed to mean, is it a warning or simply a piece of awful fiction?

Mark Wahlberg looks like a confused children's show character for most of the rather lengthy feeling 90 minutes of this film – as if he wanted kids to laugh at how clueless he seems. Deschanel delivers her stock-standard void-of-emotion character study with even less emotion than ever before. Every director is allowed his dud film, and I sincerely hope that this is it for Shyamalan, as he has made some of the best films I’ve ever seen, Lady in the Water included.

This one on the other hand – is one I would like to forget about as soon as possible, it was rather stupid.