by Ginger Voight

Created on: June 20, 2008   Last Updated: April 27, 2010

Ever since 1999, filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan has repeatedly attempted to recapture lightning in a bottle as he had with the iconic "The Sixth Sense". He fueled numerous vehicles, mostly with his own hype, to go bigger and more global. In a sense it has been his downfall. One could argue that the only film that even belongs in the same league as "Sense" would be "Signs".

But... knowing M. Night was capable of producing in those movies the suspenseful trailer for his 2008 film "The Happening" made his "Lady in the Water"/"The Village" weary fans hopeful.

In "The Happening", M. Night certainly brings the suspense. He is the master of building the moment, orchestrating the beats and weaving the terror. We open directly to the odd phenomenon hinted to in the previews. There's an airborne threat causing people to die. And as the movie marches on, he leaves enough crumbs to keep us guessing what exactly that threat is, and why it is targeting humans. We are trained and prepared to catch any "twist" that would make sense of it all and tie it together in a neat little bow.

That is the purpose of any movie, but especially an M. Night Shyamalan production. The "what" and the "why".

"The Happening" is probably M. Night's most Hitchcockian movie to date. Much like "The Birds", you have an inexplicable act of nature wreaking havoc on unsuspecting and terrified humans. Each subsequent attack confines the victims more and more, and makes one more and more claustrophobic until we reach what should be the climatic conclusion.

In M. Night's case, however, one senses he wrote himself into a corner. In making the threat so big, he virtually tied his hands on how he could resolve it; except maybe for an "out" he planted way in the beginning of the film. Only by the time we've journeyed all that way with our protagonists in peril, it felt like a "cheat"... a virtual "get out of jail free" card that simply hinted he himself had grown tired of the plot and abandoned it.

The one thing that could be said of M. Night is that he has trained his audience well. Perhaps, especially in this case, too well. The problem with all the clues planted along the way in "The Happening" is that they are too obviously clues. Unlike the "red doors" planted in the "The Sixth Sense", or the water glasses planted in "Signs", Shyamalan repeatedly spoon-feeds his tidbits of information in such a way that it loses its believability... what little it had of it to begin with.

And, unlike "The Sixth Sense", too

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