10 Films That Took Themselves Way Too Seriously

Attention fans of Signs and The Village: you’re the ones who equipped M Night Shyamalan with a bulletproof ego and allowed him to keep making humorless, po-faced movies. The Happening is all your fault.

Another in a string of anti-masterpieces that make The Sixth Sense look like a fluke, The Happening is bad enough to convince you that Shyamalan must be sending himself up. An early sequence where an entire construction crew leaps to their collective doom is funny enough, but it’s nothing compared to a scene where Mark Wahlberg attempts to brainstorm a solution but can’t concentrate because his colleagues keep shooting themselves.

Trapped in the midst of this, and looking like Bambi in headlights, is poor Zooey Deschanel. Hopelessly miscast, and called upon to deliver lines like “Just when you thought there wasn’t any more evil that could be invented!” her ‘stoned goldfish’ acting is the icing on the cake.

To Shyamalan’s credit, though, The Happening isn’t his worst film – The Last Airbender was still in his future.