Forget the deadly toxin in the air supply and people suddenly killing themselves on the spot. I want to know what happened to M. Night Shyamalan's career?!

The man is capable of terrific films. ("Sixth Sense." "Unbreakable." Heck, even "Signs" was okay!)

But lately, he's turned in awful messes. ("The Village," "Lady In The Water"). So I had my doubts that his first "R-rated movie, "The Happening," would be able to deliver the goods.

Unfortunately, it decided to throw itself off a skyscraper and land on the sidewalk.

I'll give Shyamalan credit: The first ten minutes of this film are outstanding.

We open in Central Park, on a beautiful day, with people jogging and enjoying life. Suddenly there are cries off in the distance, and people start stabbing themselves with hairpins and tossing their bodies off the sides of construction sites. What's happening?!

Then we meet Marky Mark, I mean, Elliot, (Mark Wahlberg) who is a science teacher in Philly. All of the teachers in the high school get called into the auditorium and are told that there might be a possible terrorist attack in New York and that classes will be canceled for the rest of the day.

A fellow teacher, Julian, (John Leguizamo) asks Elliot if he'd like to catch a train ride out of the city until things calm down. Elliot's wife, Alma, (Zooey Deschanel) and Julian's daughter, Jess, join them.

This is where the movie comes to a grinding halt. Not too long after they depart on the train, they're informed that the conductors have lost contact with everyone and are basically left to fend for themselves out in the middle of nowhere.

Oh, and whatever is suddenly turning people suicidal is happening all over the East coast. No place is safe, not even back roads off in the countryside. Soon it becomes a "run for your life" picture.

The biggest problem with "The Happening" is that Wahlberg's Elliot seems to be brain dead throughout the entire film. No one will deliver lines from the script...as well...as him...this year.

You have to see his performance in action to truly believe how awful it is. (Just wait, it should be on DVD soon.)

The other problem is what's actually causing people to kill themselves, and that's a pretty big problem. If you can't believe the source of the outbreak, how can you accept the danger that these characters are facing? I can almost guarantee that you'll turn to the person next to you and ask, "That's not really it, is it?" more than once.

This is M. Night Shyamalan after all. Perhaps he has a twist ending in store for us?

No.

Once it's revealed what is causing the toxin in the air, that's it.

Which brings me to my final gripe with this movie. It's just so absurd! Words cannot do justice how many times I either laughed at something I shouldn't have laughed at or threw my hands in the air in disbelief.

There is a scene with Julian, who is a math teacher by the way, where he's desperately trying to calm down a woman who has just witnessed people killing themselves. She is hyperventilating, crying uncontrollably and is in full panic mode.

To calm her down, he gives her a math problem. I shit you not, A MATH PROBLEM. Sort of like "Two trains are leaving Chicago..." It is moments such as these, when there should be tension and a sense of fear and dread, where you laugh instead and ruin the entire experience.

You'd be better off renting "The Birds" and accepting that Hitchcock, Shyamalan ain't - no matter how many different ways he can find a way to cameo in his own films.

Thanks for saving me the money. I had heard it was awful. BTW, whats his cameo? (Is he a tree?)

Posted 16 weeks ago by Rezn8

I was kind of hoping there'd a be a cool snake-eating-its-own tail twist. That, what was causing people to jump off buildings and kill themselves was that they'd seen the movie. How cool would that have been? There'd be a whole vibe throughout that you will die after watching this horrible movie... Damn, the end would've been awesome. You could've convinced the theater to kill the power as the credits ran...

Posted 16 weeks ago by Charles Gooch

M. Night's cameo is playing "Joey" the co-worker that we never see who constantly calls and text-messages Zooey's character. So at least he was somewhat clever in that he decided to not show himself on screen for once, (but still be listed in the credits)

Posted 16 weeks ago by Travis Fox