The plot in a nutshell
On a sunny day in North East America, people start getting the crazy, stopping in mid-sentence and mid-task to off themselves in the most creative way possible.  Sound interesting?  I thought so too.

Before I get to the discussion of his latest work, The Happening, let me put his previous work in order of preference so you can understand my bias.  Sixth Sense was a fantastic movie, and deserves the many accolades it gets.  I personally love Unbreakable for it's unique take on the superhero genre, but it's certainly not a perfect movie.  And then came Signs, a film I found terribly disappointing.  But not as disappointing as The Village, a film that's not much more than an over wrought and over long Night Gallery episode, and Lady in the Water, a film I have yet to be able to make it all the way through.

But The Happening has some damn good trailers - it looks very creepy.  I was a little worried since the trailers seem intent on making a huge deal out of the R rating, but doesn't everyone deserve another chance?  And so I figured it was worth it to give him is second...third...fourth...oh Hell, whatever number chance this one is.

Unfortunately, this movie is terrible.  Really terrible.  There's a good movie in there someplace, trying to find it's way out, but over the course of 90 minutes we only get glimpses of it, peeking out quite literally from behind the trees.

If you don't know what's Happening, don't worry - they'll tell you fairly early in the movie.  And then, just in case you haven't figured it out from the obvious clues and drawn out dialog, they'll tell you again.  And again.  And again.  And just to be really sure, they'll wrap it up for you at the end too.

In fact, one of the major flaws of this film is that it appears that M. Night has decided movie viewers are truly stupid.  Perhaps he has decided that this stupidity is why his last three movies have had problems - it can't be that his ability to both write and direct a movie might be the issue, but rather that the viewers are just too stupid to understand what he's trying to say.

And so this time around, he's making sure there's no confusion.  Man bad - nature good.  Whether it's an extended view of huge nuclear stacks in the background of a farm, or prolonged views of a swing attached to a poor tree limb, or repeated dialog on the subject, he makes sure we know just what this film is all about.  He goes out of his way to explain it...by never really explaining it.

In that same vein, if he wants to use a film device at some point, he makes sure he sets it up just a few minutes in advance, just to make sure the less than intelligent film viewer won't forget Shyamalan's cleverness.  And just to be sure that you can't question any of the plot holes, ridiculous dialog, or terrible acting, he sets himself up with the ultimate get out of jail free card within the first five minutes of the film with one simple line of dialog - "It's just an act of nature - we may never understand it".  Yea, cuz us cave men have such a hard time figuring out that wily old mother nature.

Mark Wahlberg does his best with some truly horrible dialog, but weaker actors like Zooey Deschanel don't have the chops yet to handle a wildly erratic director like M. Night.  Instead, it appears that she's trying to do what he's asking of her - but there's just no way she can find to do it without sounding completely fake.  The best work in the film comes from Lequizamo, but he's woefully under utilized.

There are some wonderfully creepy moments in this film, scattered through out like leaves on the wind.  There are others that had tremendous potential - like the falling construction workers seen in the previews - that are ruined by bad acting and dialog.  And there are others that are just bad, missing the mark entirely.  My audience laughed out loud at the lion scene, and at one point when there's supposed to be a moment of comic relief, they were groaning at how silly it was.

By the time we get to the predictable end of this film (again telegraphed just moments previous, just to be sure you wouldn't miss it), it's clear that M. Night needs to never be allowed to have the words "Written, directed and produced by" in front of his name again.  This is a man that needs to learn humility again, and find himself some other good people to work with, who have the courage and the intelligence to occasionally turn to him and say "M, that's a really dumb ass idea".  Once he does that, we might just see another great movie from him.

Rating - Whatever you do, don't pay to see this in the theater.
If this movie had hit in January, it might have managed to survive at the box office for a couple weeks or so, bringing in reasonable if not great numbers.  That's what happens when there's no real competition.  But the Incredible Hulk is going to destroy this movie....the critics are going to destroy this movie...and this movie might just destroy M. Night's career.

Spoiler Laden Thoughts
You've been warned...
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When dealing with a truly outlandish situation, it's often best not to try to explain it.  Perhaps Shyamalan believes he didn't explain them enough in his past films, and decided to make sure not to make that mistake again.  Unfortunately, that wasn't the mistake of his past films.  And hammering home that the plants are pissed off at us just drags the film down.

As I said, there are some great, creepy moments in the movie.  I loved the scene with the workers hung from the branches over the road like some twisted version of a Christmas tree.  The first gun scene in the streets of Philly is great, showing it going from one person to the next...although it was a one trick concept, and shouldn't have been reused again later.  Perhaps my favorite scene is the car crash in Princeton, and the death of Lequizamo. But some of the scenes that were supposed to be creepy were either poorly edited, like the opening sequence with the girl on the park bench, or damaged with ridiculous dialog, like the construction workers falling to their death.

I mentioned the set up of plot devices, and there are several examples.  But the most glaring is the silly "talking tube" between the house and the small shack.  You can almost see him writing backwards...he wants to separate the heroes at the end, to set up a gripping scene where the walk to each other even though they think they'll die.  But how to separate them?  Ah, he remembers this concept of 'talking tubes' from his days as a good student studying the Underground Railroad.  But how do you insert such a completely irrelevant and minor Macguffin into the film so that the audiences aren't completely baffled by it?  Why, let's just have the old crazy lady bring it up out of the blue for no apparent reason, and if someone questions it, we'll just say she's crazy!  And just to make sure the audience doesn't get confused, let's bring it up just moments before using it!

I have no problem with the idea that the plants make a neurotoxin that messes us up.  Sure, it's a bit more of a stretch that they come up with something that causes us to kill ourselves in rather bizarre and seemingly more and more creative ways, rather than just kill us outright, but I understand that the former makes for more interesting viewing than the latter.  But at the point you start having your characters tell us that "the trees talk to the bushes, the bushes talk to the grass", you've reached the edge of my ability to suspend my disbelief.

I think I'll go rent Day of the Triffids.