“The Happening” may be the strangest and most detached studio horror film to come out since Paul Schrader’s version of “Exorcist: The Beginning.” It manages to touch upon genre films like “The Signal” and “The Day After Tomorrow” while down right stealing plot elements from the superlative Steven King novel “Cell.” Yet unlike those busy films, here is a vision where nothing happens-which is totally strange considering the title. Actions scenes go as such: People stop. People die. The wind blows. Mark Whalberg winces and looks constipated. scene

M. Night Shyamalan, as we all know, got lucky, er, I mean found success with “Six Sense.” Since then he has reverted deeper and deeper into a self absorbed realm of pseudospiritual dementia. Post “Unbreakable” (a film I love and the last time things worked out for the director), every “a film by…” title has suffered from Night’s myopia (here is a director that takes zero input from the industry… and fans) and his off-putting insistence that he’s brilliant and destined for greatness. This is storytelling, here. Except the stories suck. Be it straining too hard to throw in heady plot twists that everybody seems to expect of this one hit wonder plagued by his ghostly twist to end all twists (“The Village,” “Signs”), trying too hard to be profound (see also: every film he has ever made!), or trying too hard to be timeless, mythical and Jesus incarnate (“Lady in the Water”). A narrative throughline is that the antagonist in each and every picture is not the spooky supernatural happenings that linger, loiter (narratively speaking) and seem to manifest themselves through fate, but Night himself. The writer/director has become such an amateurish storyteller that he makes George Lucas look like a team player. Theses days, pen strokes hit Night’s pages like a knife strokes. And this knife has a nasty habit of hacking (emph. on hack) into the heart and integrity of whatever shit story he may be telling–pardon, crafting.

I’m getting off track. Oh well, no hurry, right? “The Happening” takes end-of-the-world tropes and mixes them with subtle elements of paranoid horror and environmental revenge. Is this wave of mutilation that befalls the east coast a result of Government experiments? Global warming? God punishing us for popularity of “The Hillz?” Either way, the “monster” or, more accurately speaking, force is as invisible as Night’s plot structure; this makes “The Happening” the first in the silent fart horror genre. I wont spoil the cause of this soon-to-be pandemic demise except to say that it’s NOT the monster from “Cloverfield.” I will however say that at one point in the film, the pervasively passive voiced protagonist stops and begs a house plant not to kill him. If ever there was an anti-twist in a movie, “The Happening” is it. Night does everything he can to resist expectations except, in the process, he also resists making anything interesting. Actually, I’m wrong, the most interesting thing about “The Happening” is how uninteresting and un-engaging it is (I’m 100% serious, too). Speaking of passive, I’m not sure if it’s interestingly atypical or deadening that no character in this film is in a rush. The supposedly ominous killer drifts through New York like a John Carpenter “Fog” or Frank Darabont “Mist” and causes a wide-scale evacuation in the first act. A subsequent scene takes place at train station and the vibe is as leisurely as the Apple Store on a slow day. It’s like Werner Hertzog got his hands on the actors and extras and told them to react to such events as if comatose.

Feeling the bad vibrations (get it?), high school science teacher Marl Whalaberg is introduced talking to a class about the phenomenon of missing bees. He says there is no known causes for such a cataclysmic bio-anomaly , except, uh dummy, there is and it’s cell phones. But if Night posited that theory then he would surely bee sued by Mr. Steven King’s estate. Instead, the film deviates from King’s cellphone-made-zombie premise and enters into a plot that’s far more standoffish and lackadaisical. As a protagonist, Whalberg is at his most infantile and whiny. And this is coming from a Marky Mark fan! When accused of thuggery by a crazy old lady he reacts in a stoner’s whisper, saying “heeeeey nooooo” like the old bag just stole his Flaming Hot Cheetos. Along for the countryside journey to nowhere is his self-described emotionally stunted wife (Zooey Deschanel, because, yeah, the one thing this film needs is less personality) and a mute little girl whose father (John Leguizamo) just abandoned her. A potential argument on behalf of the film is that this isn’t about the end of the world but, rather, the creation or birth of a new family bond. Except… no, the family in question here is so shallowly drawn that going with this argument would do more harm than good to the film in terms of intentionality and quality. So, where does the family go and what do they end up doing? Nothing and nothing. Okay, then how do they react to the constant sight of death? Well, let me just say that this is the first apocalyptic film in which the lead characters are more annoyed and put off by the turn of (non)events than horrified. That makes two of us.

grade: C

Note: it’s really more like a hard-D in terms of quality but I’m going kinda easy on the film because it stridently and stubbornly rejects any SIGNs of plot conflict and genre expectations. Also, the kid from The Kid makes a cameo. And finally, Mark Whalberg is so blitzed out that his performance is a (I Am Not) legend; watch for the jaw droppingly (more like droopingly) strange big emotional climax where he tries to make his wife jealous by describing an even in which he “almost” bought, like, a six dollar bottle of cough syrup from a pharmacist because she was hot.