The Happening

While it may be a tad ironic that there are scenes in M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening showing a hapless populace committing spontaneous suicide in droves, and one moment in which an agitated old woman screams, "Get out, now!!!" — none of these are set in a movie theater.

In this The Ruins-meets-Dr. Kevorkian movie-mash produced, written and directed by Shyamalan, people are inexplicably dying by their own hands, by any means necessary — tall buildings, lion's dens, glass shards, pistols; anything will do. This mass madness spreads suddenly, the culmination clustered in the auteur's own hometown (Philly, dubbed "Killedelphia" in one clever newspaper headline insert).

The Happening definitely has its moments of true suspense and there is a real cringe-factor at times, but they're undermined by dialogue that's battier than a teeming belfry and acting that runs the gamut from catatonic to histrionic. Some of the things the so-called sane characters do and say are so laugh-out-loud funny that if The Happening opens big this weekend, it'll definitely be the #1 Comedy in America.

Oh, and did I mention there's mood rings? (While on the subject of junk jewelry: Yes, there's the obligatory, er, cameo from Shyamalan.)

Yes. I said mood rings. My color, when it comes to The Happening, is definitely amber (mixed emotions). I want to like Shyamalan; I really do. The fact that he's quite intelligent, warm and well-spoken in person aside, and only taking his cinematic oeuvres into consideration, I think the dude has a lifetime pass for making The Sixth Sense. That's a genuine landmark film, so I am always willing to give him a chance, even after the sodden mess that was Lady in the Water (while The Happening is not as vomit-inducing as the aforementioned, it's no Sixth Sense — or even Unbreakable).

The self-induced plague premise is definitely an attention-getter. The movie begins in a pastoral park, where paranoid pedestrians start going postal on themselves and nobody can figure out why. It becomes a media feeding frenzy as the speculation — and the body count — mounts. A logical science teacher, Elliot (Mark Wahlberg), and his weepy wife, Alma (Zooey Deschanel), become the ultimate fractured nuclear family after they wind up with their dead friends' nearly-wordless young daughter Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez) and go on the run with her across the countryside, trying to elude whatever's "happening".

Along the way our terrified trio encounter an oddball assortment hot-dog hoarders, wrist-slappers and gun-slinging survivalists (but these folks are never nothing more than random wingnut stepping stones — the quirk of their raison d'entre is that there is none). As I stated, there are some satisfactory chills and decent jump scares (not to mention some welcome gushing gore), but sadly these horror moments are emasculated by the script's inherent silliness (the logic's loopier than a pretzel rollercoaster) and the actors' delivery (in one scene, Deschanel does an exaggerated eye-roll that begs for a "wah-wah" sitcom music moment).

Without resolution, and just when it's about to die on the vine, The Happening mercifully stops happening.

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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson