What the hell is The Happening, really? M. Night Shyamalan shuffles into an executive's office and throws down the script for this dumb sh*t of a movie, which ultimately reveals a global disaster to be the work of... plants. And the studio bites? They offer to pay him millions of dollars to write and direct? Mark Wahlberg reads the script and decides that he can should totally play an English teacher? Zooey Deschanel realises that an M. Night Shyamalan travesty is what her career needs? There's a shot in The Happening in which Shyamalan attempts to make "nature" scary by just letting his camera shoot some trees with the wind blowing through them. Ominous music plays over the shot, which is so unconvincing in its horror that it genuinely causes you to laugh. The Happening racks up an endless array of annoying scenes and further annoying scenes explaining what happened in those annoying scenes. It's maddening.
Sam Hill is an ardent cinephile and has been writing about film professionally since 2008. He harbours a particular fondness for western and sci-fi movies.