Damnit Mark Wahlberg, I Know You Can Act, I've Seen You Do It Before.

It seems everybody hated The Happening and I think that's Shyamalan's fault.  Not because he made a bad movie, but because he made an iconic movie back in '99.  He has achieved the directorial equivalent of being type cast.

Everybody loved the Sixth Sense, everybody, and the only reason anybody says differently is that they don't want to admit to liking something that everybody else likes.  It's been a long time since I saw Sixth Sense, but I don't remember the story being that great.  A troubled kid goes to see a troubled therapist, right?  

But you know why everybody likes it, it's that trademark M. Night Shyamalan twist at the end.  And, then if you go back and watch it again, there's all these clues that you never noticed before.  That's Shyamalan's greatest downfall, with the Sixth Sense he invited people to scrutinize his movies, to try and find clues to the twist ending.  

So you have people watching the movie not for entertainment, but instead examining every line, every action by every character the way you would a security camera.  But here's the problem with that.  I don't think there's really been a twist ending since Unbreakable.  So what happens is, that all these people closely examine the movie and when there turns out to be no surprise twist they are left with nothing more than a long list of plot holes.  That's it, look up any Shyamalan movie on the internets and that's all you find, long lists of "mistakes."

It's not that Shyamalan makes anymore mistakes than any other writer/director, it's just that no one else is stupid enough to purposely invite people to search for them.

So anyway, I found The Happening to be entertaining.  The only reason it wasn't a "good" movie in my mind is Mark Wahlberg's terrible acting.  You learn enough about his character to know that he's good and honest, but everything he says sounds like a lie, in several cases a malicious lie.  The best description I can come up with is, in this movie Wahlberg can't tell the truth with a straight face, every line he says sounds like he's trying to be obviously sarcastic.  Honestly he sounds exactly like he did in The Big Hit.

One thing that I've failed to mention is how brutal the movie is.  It's essentially a disaster movie about something that is causing crowds of people to simultaneously commit suicide.  And, they show the majority of the suicides in full graphic detail.  I've seen Irreversible, and I was still taken aback by some of the scenes.

So, to sum things up here.  Marky Mark forgot how to act, suicide is not painless to watch, and if you forget that M. Night Shyamalan did this movie and just watch the damn thing then you just might enjoy it.