Collegiate Times

M. Night Shyamalan's newest movie "The Happening," his first R-rated feature, just so happens to be terrible.

 The story follows high-school science teacher Elliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg) and his wife Alma Moore (Zooey Deschanel) struggling to survive as the American northeast coast comes under attack. The attack takes the form of a "neurotoxin" that causes people to commit suicide in increasingly (and needlessly) gruesome ways. The suicides begin in the first scene of the movie with a woman stabbing herself in the neck with a hair accessory (you read that right), and reach a peak with a man lying down in front of lawnmower.

 We find out pretty early on (through dialogue that bludgeons you over the head with its own sense of importance) that the culprits for these attacks are plants. Yes, plants. Shyamalan tries to give this premise some scientific underpinnings, but all that results is that the main characters often run from the wind. I have an easier time believing in the plot of "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes," and that is an animated kid's show.

 The dialogue has so many laughably bad moments that I have to conclude that this movie is either a psychological experiment or a joke. Normally a very quiet movie watcher, I couldn't help bursting out in laughter during several exchanges: when Elliot panics in the middle of a field, turning to the scientific method to outthink the nefarious plants; any time the characters stated the obvious such as, when there was a big house in the background, Elliot said, "There's a big house"; and I nearly died with laughter during one particularly uproarious exchange that went something like,

A creak in the wooden floor.

Crazy Old Woman: "You're trying to steal something from me!"

Elliot: "No ..."

Crazy Old Woman: "You're trying to kill me in my sleep!"

Elliot, as if denying he took the last cookie from the cookie jar: "What? No!"

The characters all seem bizarrely unreal. Elliot and Alma have an unconvincing subplot of marital strife because Alma had tiramisu once with some never-seen "Joey." And while I might add that I found some comfort in the stunning blue eyes of Zooey Deschanel (Trillian from "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"), she could only do so much with the absurd scenes and dialogue. The girl Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez) is more like a doll than a real character, only there because a helpless child is a requisite in movies of this type.

 And then there's the sub-characters. A plant grower who seems to have an obsession with hot dogs, a military private whose goofiness reminded me of Buster from the TV show "Arrested Development," and a crazy old lady in the middle of nowhere whose unexplained aggression existed purely to force tension on the watcher.

 Forced is the key word of this movie. The dialogue feels forced from the beginning with such spectacular lines as "What is happening?!" the gruesome suicides feel unearned, and the apparent message of "Don't mess with earth, clean up our act" comes across as trite and silly. 

 The surprise twist, a trademark of Shyamalan since "The Sixth Sense," is surprisingly absent. There isn't one. 

 The movie goes and then it ends (thankfully). Perhaps, as I've read in some online forums, the movie itself is the twist. That is, the twist is that its seriousness is a joke. I've never seen Wahlberg, a fine actor in my book, perform so poorly. And can any movie featuring so many shots of wind ruffling through trees really be anything more than a joke?

 Regardless of whether that's true, "The Happening" is an awful movie.

 "What is happening?!" Elliot says in the movie.  And my answer: a neurotoxin that makes you wish it would all just end.

 Avoid.

 Grade: D