The Happening

M. Night had it hard after "Sixth Sense," because his breakthrough film felt like any director's fifth film. It was a masterful exercise in genre reinvention, using color, sound design, rich themes and inventive scares to weave an unshakable spell of wonder and fright. How could any great director possibly top such anear-perfect work?

It's not easy, but the young director did follow it up with a string of beautifully crafted thrillers, arguably ending at "The Village." "Lady in the Water" wasn't a terrible film, but a very uninvolving and boring one. His effectiveness of tone couldn't save a simply dull story, and the movie was critically maligned on all fronts.

You'd think he learned a thing or two. "The Happening" isn't a disaster movie, it's a disaster. It is a collection of short, poorly-controlled scenes, almost progressively descending into a deeper level of badness and self-parody. His usual control of nuance and classical, sophisticated plotting is curiously gone and the film seems completely unaware of how bad it truly is.

The evil presence lurking in "The Happening" is a neurotoxin that interacts with the environment in unpredictable ways. When humans come in contact with it, they are driven to either apathetic, murderous or self-destructive impulses. The premise could have been used in a kind of neo-zombie way, like the "28 Days Later" movies, but is instead used only to show bizarre acts of random violence. With a darker tone, the idea could have been pretty scary, but in a blandly executed thriller like this, it is just boring.

The film has an eerie opening, but when the real story kicks in, things start crumbling down. Hopeless dialogue results in unfortunately bad performances from a talented cast. Mark Wahlberg is miscast and sadly laughable in most scenes and not much better can be said for John Lequizamo and Zoe Deschannel - who's cutesy presence in most movies is annoying in this one. It doesn't help that the failed marriage of the two main characters really feels more like a failed middle school romance. In this film, M. Night shows no greater insight into human relationships that an unintuitive, inexperienced student filmmaker - which is usually an area he is brilliantly astute with.

There were a few short moments that I remembered the promising auteur M. Night Shamylan once was. There is a scene that takes place in an unsold real estate property, complete with fake TV's, computers and dishes. Needless to say, the irony was clever and almost effective. Within the same scene, Mark Wahlberg's character starts having a conversation with a plant, exemplifying how most scenes in the film are ruined, no matter how promising.

With "Avatar: The Last Airbender" Shamylan will enter commercial territory that could be interesting. Why he fought to make such an uninspired thriller instead is beyond me.