My defense of M. Night Shyamalan comes to an end. Aimless, undisciplined and rough around every edge, this thriller has a first-take feel, as if the filmmaker and his cast had knocked the movie off in a harried weekend. The story follows high-school teacher Elliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg) and his wife (Zooey Deschanel) as they flee Philadelphia in the wake of mysterious, mass deaths across the Northeast. The explanation is a terrifying one – and makes for one truly shocking sequence at a construction site – yet Shyamalan never really explores the psychological trauma such a “happening” might have upon his characters (and that’s a particular insult to people whose lives have been touched by similar events in real life). Deschanel and Wahlberg, meanwhile, deliver flat, poorly timed line readings that suggest they were given the script two minutes before filming began. That sort of slipshod craftsmanship can be seen throughout The Happening, which is actually the most startling thing about the movie.
