Every M. Night Shyamalan Movie Ranked From Worst To Best

Unlike After Earth, The Happening is such a poorly executed piece of work that it often produces fitful laughs.

Mark Wahlberg stars as - don't laugh - a Philadelphia high school science teacher when the globe becomes rocked by an epidemic of mass suicides.

As interesting an idea as it is, The Happening feels less like a knowing homage to '50s B-movies than it does a genuinely brainless psychological thriller.

Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel both give shambolically awful performances, but with a script this limp and programmatic, can you really blame them?

It's agonisingly clear that Shyamalan came up with a neat logline but had nowhere interesting to take it, though he once again survived the negative reviews because the film still tripled its modest $48 million budget at the box office.

Wahlberg himself admits it was a "really bad" movie, and offered up probably the best review of anyone:

"F**k it. It is what it is. F**king trees, man. The plants. F**k it. You can't blame me for wanting to try to play a science teacher. At least I wasn't playing a cop or a crook."