10 Awesome Horror Villains Trapped In TERRIBLE Movies
9. The Plants - The Happening
M. Night Shyamalan's 2008 sci-fi horror film The Happening touts one hell of an attention-grabbing premise - an unexplained plague is causing a spate of mass suicides around the world.
We eventually learn that the epidemic isn't the result of a terrorist attack but rather Earth's plant life.
As a response to humanity's impact on the planet, plants have developed a defense mechanism, releasing a neurotoxin which forces those afflicted to kill themselves.
It's honestly a fascinatingly horrifying - if thinly-veiled - indictment of our collective misuse of the planet, yet once again, Shyamalan's clunky writing just can't get out of its own way.
Despite the legitimately ominous nature of making inanimate plants the movie's antagonists, Shyamalan struggles to strike a consistent tone, too often lurching into unintentional comedy and, if you believe Shyamalan himself, some intentional goofiness serving as an homage to classic sci-fi B-movies.
Either way, Mark Wahlberg clearly doesn't know what the hell to do with the material, his romantic chemistry with Zooey Deschanel is non-existent, and the dialogue is frequently atrocious. But the killer plants were great, at least conceptually.