I can say without a doubt that I am a M. Night Shyamalan fan.

Sixth Sense, Signs, Unbreakable, The Village...

All good movies to me, enjoyed every one with Unbreakable probably being my favorite.

But The Happening has got to be the lamest freaking movie he's done. And it has to be in the top ten of lamest movies ever.

First off, the R rating means nothing as the wife and I could only guess one scene is what caused the R rating in the first place. It was two teenagers getting shot at point blank range. Every other somewhat gruesome scene in the movie is tame compared to most movies with a PG-13 rating. It just appears to be some marketing gimmick of "what can I do to get an R rating so this movie is different" type of thing.

So, we get Mark Wahlberg as the most boring science teacher on Earth. Now I like Mark, even when he went by Markie Mark, and I've liked several of his movies. He's a decent actor and I've definitely seen worse. But in this movie it was as if he were asked to rent some low budget horror flicks. Then take all the worst actors to see how they portrayed their characters so Mark could combine them all into one horrible character portrayal. The guy had this slow way of talking and reacting to things that was just annoying.

In fact, almost everyone in the movie was like this. Come to think of it, the entire movie was slow in nature. Must have been some kind of art house thing M. Night was going for.

It didn't work.

So, Mark is in his class room trying to get his students to think in terms of science. He uses the recent oddities of bees disappearing as an example. He pushes the slacker of the class to give an answer by insulting his genes with telling him he would be ugly in the future. The slacker, thinking he'll be clever, answers that it's a natural event that we may never understand, which Mark informs him is a good answer.

I can't tell you how many famous scientists I read about in school that decided to not pursue a research topic because they felt it was a natural event that they more than likely would never fully understand. It's as if Einstein would abandon his work on relativity to research the mating habits of dung beetles because it was easier.

Mark tries to act cool in front of his students by pretending to hide from an administrator that has come to request his presence at a teacher's meeting. He fails horribly and comes off as more of a loser. So he goes off to his boring meeting to find "something" is happening.

An event had happened at Central Park where people just started to kill themselves for no reason. Everyone thinks it's a terrorist plot so suddenly everyone has a desire to leave civilized locations. Things get worse so that Mark and his wife decide to leave with his friend and his friend's daughter. His friend, played by John Leguizamo, doesn't like his wife for reasons that are hard to grasp and isn't easily understood. I still have no real idea what his problem was with her.

They take the train to leave town while John's wife is taking a bus to a different location. Eventually the train stops in the middle of nowhere for no apparent reason. Everyone gets off the train and only Mark thinks to ask the train people what the problem is.

He is told in a creepy and spooky manner that they have lost contact. Mark asks the proper question of who did they lose contact with. The guy responds with "everyone".

This is where the movie goes stupid.

They enter a nearby diner that is probably grateful for the sudden surge in business since it appears they are in a town of fifty people. They are watching the news and they learn that the attacks seem to be happening in urban areas with large groups of people near parks. Mark comments that it is odd the attacks are happening near parks. Then we learn that the attacks so far seem to be centered around the Northeast of the United States.

This is the first really stupid thing in the movie. I've ignored the smaller ones previous to this but this one cannot pass without some sort of comment. If the attacks are only happening around the Northeast of the country then how can the train guys lose contact with "everyone"? There is no explanation for this so we are apparently left to assume that all people working for the train system are now dead, run off or have dead batteries in their radio gear. No explanation of why they lost contact and how that is even feasible in this modern age. If this movie took place in the 1800s I could understand. But since everyone is carrying cell phones with them then that can't be. So the statement about losing contact with "everyone" is, I guess, supposed to make you feel dread in what's coming because obviously the world is coming to an end and these fifty people or so are among the survivors. Then you find out so far only about five states have been affected and the next state over that's less than a hundred miles away isn't being affected.

But they lost contact with...

"Everyone."

That's just stupid.

Once everyone in the diner realizes that salvation is just a short drive down the road everybody ups and leaves. But no one wants to give our heroes a ride even though there is plenty of room in multiple cars. Keep in mind that more than fifty people got off the train and all of them managed to get rides except for the four people we're following. All of them get rides from about seven cars with seats to spare. Finally someone stops to offer a ride but John has decided to go after his wife. So he abandons his daughter with his friend and the woman he hates for reasons we don't understand. He goes off with other people in the direction that they know for a fact people have been dying for unknown reasons. Don't worry, John's character is not the only stupid one.

Now, our three heroes are riding with people who can only be described as hippies. They drive to their farm where they grow, plants. Hippie guy claims he knows what's happening. The plants are doing it.

Normally, M. Night doesn't just come right out and tell you what the big surprise of his movie is. He may leave clues that often he reveals at the end to make you feel silly you didn't see them. But in this movie he comes out and tells you what's going on. Kind of ruins it for me I guess. Especially since it made absolutely no sense whatsoever.

After the hippie guy admits to loving hot dogs a little too much they are back on the road. They eventually come to a road where they can see dead people in the distance. They decide maybe that's not such a good route to take. As they consider their options lots of people start driving up to their spot claiming dead people in all directions. They decide maybe the smart choice would be to go on foot in a direction that doesn't have dead people in the path.

So they start walking across a grass covered field surrounded by trees. Even the hippie who thinks that the plants are killing them in some revenge plot is happy to trod on grass.

Unfortunately, John's group ignores the dead people in the road being a bad indication and continue forth. They try to block out incoming air to prevent going crazy which is stupid. If they succeeded they would have died from suffocation! But there's a tear in the Jeep's roof so of course air gets in. Never mind the fact that a soft top Jeep is not known for being air tight in the first place. Soon they are dead which does not come as a surprise. I knew John was slated to be dead as soon it was known his wife was somewhere else. He's the tragic character or something.

Back to Mark and his group of people trying to avoid the killer plants by walking on them. As large groups tend to do as they walk, they start breaking up into smaller groups. Marks and his two ladies find themselves with two teenagers. They are talking and chatting when another group just out of sight over a hill start talking turns shooting themselves. At first everyone but Mark wants to run but he has to decide why those people are killing themselves and not them. He then decides it's because that group was bigger than his group and the plants viewed them as the bigger threat. That's why it started in the cities and started spreading to smaller towns. Big cities have big groups of people. When they are dead the small cities then become the big groups which must be eliminated. So apparently plants over thousands of miles are comparing their local population levels to decide who gets to kill people next.

As Mark is now realizing this stuff he notices the true terror of the film. I mean this is something that makes people tremble in fear and pee their pants. It is...

THE WIND!

Oh no! The wind is blowing their way! It's going to blow the toxins from the plants onto them. Even though they are currently crushing plants where they are now and are surrounded by them. But the wind! Run away from the wind!

Oddly enough, somehow beyond all odds the wind catches them. It blows the grass around their feet, blows their hair, ruffles their clothing and...

Nothing happens.

Mark concludes their group was not large enough to constitute a threat. But the reason they were running from the wind is because of the fear of the toxins that killed the other group being blown onto them. But the toxins didn't kill them. So I guess the toxins are smart now and can choose how large a group needs to be for them to be killed.

They come to a house that was a model home for a new community. There's a scene where Mark talks to a fake plant that I guess was supposed to be funny. Something to relieve the tension maybe? Wasn't needed since there's no real tension to begin with. So they leave and witness two groups of people coming together at the house and are promptly wiped out supporting Mark's theory about group sizes.

Now John's little girl is hungry so they stop at a house that appears to be abandoned. The two teenagers just want to break in to take food but Mark is concerned over that. Maybe they could leave money? End of world stuff and he's worried about paying people who are more than likely dead for stolen food. They notice people inside the home and try to explain they need food for the little girl. The two teenagers start acting tough claiming they'll kick the door down and take what they want. After all, it's for a little girl. Suddenly, the two teenagers get a harsh lesson in property rights and the Second Amendment.

The three of them leave to come to yet another house in the woods. Not learning the lesson from the last house they approach this one in hopes for food. A crazy old lady lives there by herself with no connection to civilization and has no idea what's been going on and doesn't want to know. Based on her behavior that night you wonder why a sane person would stay there for the night, but our heroes have already proven they aren't quite right in the head so they stay. The next morning Mark witnesses the old lady kill herself after standing in the field by herself. Apparently one person is enough to trigger the toxins from the plants now.

Mark blocks the toxins from getting him by cleverly closing the door. Houses built a hundred years ago were built rather well to still be airtight today. Mark looks for his two ladies but discovers that they are in a small shed out back separated from the house by a good distance of grassy field. He's able to talk to them because of a pipe between the two buildings that was mentioned by the old lady the night before. She told them a story of the house being used for escaped slaves and the pipe was placed for communication purposes. Since she mentioned this for absolutely no reason it was obvious it would come into play later.

So Mark and the girl profess their true love by pipe. They still love each other even though she admitted the day before that she had lunch with a guy at work. She had a huge guilt complex because of that lunch with a guy from work.

Lunch. That's it.

Mark decides he'd rather die than be separated from his one true love so he ventures out to certain death. His lady decides he shouldn't die alone so she ventures out to certain death. The little girl follows for some unknown reason. Maybe if the older lady died she could have Markie Mark for herself when she grew up, if they survived.

But the plants have shifted tactics so that they kill people only when they are alone and no longer view groups as a threat. Well, it seems that way since they don't die. My first thought is that would mean a lot of geeks had targets on their backs now.

Apparently, Mark and his lady had just missed some deadline that was apparently 24 hours from the first event. They live and go back home taking in the little girl as their own. Everyone is happy and people are trying to make sense of what happened. One theory is that it was a warning to stop doing something to plants. I guess chopping down trees and destroying the environment or something like that. Since the event happened in such a small area it is thought if it happens elsewhere then the theory must be true. Of course, we get a scene in Paris similar to our opening scene in New York. The dreaded thought being the plants will kill us all eventually.

Needless to say, I didn't care much for this movie. M. Night's last movie was a stinker but that one was far better than this one. Which is not an overwhelming endorsement. It was slow, the characters seemed slow and the premise is just absolutely stupid. The plants are intelligent, they create human killing toxins and they communicate with each other. Trees conspring with bushes who conspire with grass. They decide to kill all humans but only in groups of diminishing sizes. Plus they somehow learn to control the wind to chase people down to do nothing to them. Moments that are supposed to build tension fail to do so or just come off as silly. You care little or nothing for the characters and wonder why we're following along anyway. The problems these people have in attempt to make them human are just shallow and a waste of time. Do I really care that the lady had LUNCH with a guy from work? Big deal.

All of M. Night's friends tried to tell him that Lady in the Water was a stinker before he filmed it. They were proven right. These days it appears that M. Night's friends don't even bother with that bit of constructive critisicism. I wonder if M. Night has a clause in his contracts that stipulate no one can read his scripts before a deal is struck.

How else can you explain the green light on a film whose script has got to be the most boring and silly thing written to be filmed?