Shyamalan has an off-Night in ‘The Happening’

Two out of four stars (Rated R for violent and disturbing images) Running time: 91 minutes. Reviewed at The Woodlands Tinseltown 17 on June 13.

Question: When was the last time M. Night Shyamalan made a really good movie? Try “The Sixth Sense,” followed by distant runner-up “Signs.” Since then the writer-director of spooky fare has been running a losing streak that rivals the Houston Astros this season.

And the streak continues with “The Happening.”

In the mysterious, twisting “Sixth Sense,” Shyamalan developed a “less is more” technique. There was a lingering mood that something bad was about to happen to the characters.

“The Happening,” which opened to a packed house on Friday, is filled with gory, in-your-face violence. The plot, which years ago would have been a good one-hour “Outer Limits ” episode, involves an apocalyptic event that decimates the population in the northeast part of the country.

Early one morning in Central Park, one lady sits on a bench chatting away with another when she notices that people have either stopped walking or are clawing at themselves until they bleed. It must have been a real attention grabber when her companion pulls out a sharp hair stick and stabs herself in the neck.

In Manhattan, construction workers start jumping off rooftops. I had visions of 9/11; the mothers in attendance who brought their eight year-old children should have heeded the R rating. I can’t imagine my mom taking me to see Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” in 1960 when I was eight. Ah, but we live in different times, don’t we?

In Philadelphia, high school science teacher Elliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg) leads a class discussion on the disappearing bee syndrome. The causes? “Disease.” “Pollution.” “Global warming?” One kid spills the beans for the rest of the movie: “An act of nature and we’ll never fully understand it.”

The school evacuates when news of the calamity hits. Elliot and his wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel) board a train with fellow teacher Julian (John Leguizamo) and shy daughter Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez). Things get creepy when the train stops at a small town and all passengers are ordered off. “We’ve lost contact with everyone,” the conductor says.

Thanks to cell phones, passengers see horrific images taking place back in the City of Brotherly Love. A cop shoots himself, followed by a cabbie that does likewise with the same weapon. One guy makes like Doctor Dolittle by walking into the lion exhibit of the zoo. His new nickname: “Lefty.”

Later another chap fires up a riding lawnmower and lies in front of it. Hopefully the producers of “Jackass Number Three” won’t try that stunt.

The more you start thinking about the cause of the outbreak and how Elliot and Alma try to escape it, the goofier the movie becomes. A wackadoodle husband and wife who run a nursery suggest plants are putting up a defense mechanism against herbicides and pesticides—yeah, hello. Then there’s a hermit woman (Betty Buckley) living in an isolated farmhouse who might be the long missing Blair Witch.

Unlike “War of the Worlds,” we never see an invading alien, or whatever it is that causes people to take the final exit. The wind blows the grass in the fields, so is it carrying a toxic substance? Or is it those nuk-u-ler power plants? In the end, none of it makes any sense—nor is it very scary.

On a brighter note, the Wayans brothers have new material to make “Scary Movie 5.”

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Gary Brown is co-host of the Lone Star College-Montgomery Film Series. For information call (936) 273-7324 or email garyb@lonestar.edu Visit the “Brown on Film” blog at http://gbrown.wordpress.com.