M. Night Shymalan has a microcosm structure to his movies where the phenomena occurring in the movie has a direct parallel to the events in the lives of the characters. When the characters reach a resolution, everything else falls into place. From a broad perspective, the movie then serves to illustrate a fundamental principle in a way that sets it apart from the ordinary, traditional stories we learn such virtues from. M. Night Shymalan does not deviate from this structure, so loyal M. Night Shymalan fans will not be disappointed, but they will not be surprised either.

I am simply perplexed as to why I don’t find his most recent movies, including this one, particularly moving—whether or not it is because we have already mastered the extraordinary way that M. Night Shymalan makes his movies or if it is because the movies themselves have little substance to them. I understand the fundamental principle of this movie—we cause our own destruction in many ways, including the emotional and environmental ways. I just could not find anything deep or captivating about the way the story was told.

Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel have terrible chemistry. Even when their relationship found its resolution, they were still so utterly detached that nothing about their relationship could remotely be anything believable. There wasn’t anything interesting about their performances either. Mark Wahlberg did not have much to do in this movie acting as a slightly eccentric high school Science Teacher and Zooey Deschanel is as devoid of talent as her character is of emotion. The best written character—devoted father and intuitive friend—was given to the only strong actor, John Leguizamo, and even then, the character was lacking substance. The characters were severely underdeveloped and the plot was less than thrilling.

Promos killed the movie. Watch that trailer—there’s nothing more to the movie than that.Update to What’s Happening with The Happening…?

UPDATE

I really couldn’t leave this blog post as it is because it leaves the impression that I hated this movie. While it did take me a few hours (and a good night’s sleep) to move from indifference to an actual like-dislike opinion of the movie, I have to say that I root in favor of this movie and M. Night Shymalan for several reasons:

There are a few simple, yet critical moments in the movie that reveal deep insight about the characters. This is typical in all of M. Night Shymalan’s movies and this “Show me, don’t tell me” imagery is what—in my opinion—makes a good movie. A touching moment in the interaction between Julian (John Leguizamo), Alma Moore (Zooey Deschanel), and Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez) nearly made me teary-eyed as the undertones of the dialogue explain the importance of commitment and initiate the turning point of the film. In this moment, we find out which characters are devoted and which characters are questionable.

Though mankind is faced with an epidemic that could mean the apocalypse, there are only few moments that show mass hysteria. I praise the fact that this film flies gracefully inside the clearance zone between not enough and overdoing the panic. The human side to the phenomena is shown when panicked citizens rush to get away from the affected zone, leaving those without transportation to fend for themselves. This natural reaction also makes an important and positive contribution to adequately illustrating the underlying principle of the movie by showing how our own selfishness causes our demise.

Again, Shymalan shows his strength for conjuring up eerie scenes. One scene depicts bodies falling to the pavement as workers throw themselves to their deaths from the top of a building. Another well-constructed scene shows several people shooting themselves with the same gun. The gore in these scenes increases as two adolescents are shot in the head and an elderly woman lacerates her face on broken glass before propelling herself through her own windowpane. Images like these are what give the film its R-rating.

Though the film had an excellent setup, but failed to provide a strong payoff, I still remain a fan.