The Happening
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan (R)
A mysterious natural phenomenon causes mass suicide.
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If filmgoers weren’t “already so familiar” with director M. Night Shyamalan, The Happening would be just another “crappy studio flick,” said Mary Elizabeth Williams in Salon.com. Instead, it’s a reminder of how far this writer-director of eerily existential tales has fallen. Nearly a decade after his thrilling The Sixth Sense, Shyamalan has yet to give audiences another good scare. In The Happening, much-abused Mother Nature finally turns on mankind in the form of a mysterious affliction that prompts mass suicide. The film boasts Shyamalan’s first R rating, but doesn’t “recapture that compelling blend of horror and humanity” that marked The Sixth Sense and Signs. He still knows how to craft a smart horror film with topical subtext, said Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. Shyamalan’s subtle approach is “more effective than smash-and-grab plot-mongering,” and here he finds creative, “quietly realistic” ways for characters to off themselves. The Happening is “clearly supposed to be a thought-provoker,” said Peter Bradshaw in the London Guardian. But rather than contemplate what humanity is doing to the planet, we’re left wondering what Shyamalan has done to his career.
