by Noleen Wyatt-Jones

Created on: June 26, 2008

We have come expect a lot from any film by acclaimed director M Night Shyamalan and in the past we have not been disappointed, but that was before The Village and The Lady in the Water, and now with The Happening he seems to be continuing his run of bad luck. With a tagline of We've Sensed It. We've Seen The Signs. Now... It's Happening.' we have high hopes but somehow the film just fails to deliver.

The film opens in New York's Central Park with a sense of confusion as people begin to act strangely out of character, and one woman stabs herself in the neck with her silver hairpin, whilst others start to walk backwards or talk gibberish. In different parts of the country the chaos is replicated with people killing themselves or others en masse with a look of calm serenity on their faces.

The films central characters are science teacher Elliot Moore played by the ever lovely Mark Wahlberg, his wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel), as well as friend Julian (John Leguizamao) and eight year old daughter Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez) and the action centres on their attempts to escape the chaos. It is inevitable that one of them will die and ultimately it is Julian who falls victim to the madness and slashes his wrists. Eventually the madness stops and life begins to return to normal though scientists say this is only the start, as nature starts to reject its human inhabitants in the same way we would rid ourselves of unwanted pests. In the final scene we are in the gardens of the Palace of Versailles in France where we see two men become confused and as one screams mon dieu' we know that the horror is about to begin again.

On its opening day of Friday 13th June it grossed $13m but fell foul of the critics who felt that there was nothing new in the story line and that it lacked any sense of nail biting tension in fact Shyamalan himself likened the film to the Hitchcock classic The Birds where all birds turned against humans. and the 60s cult horror, Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Shyamalan is renowned for his device of using an unexpected twist at the end of his films which have previously marked them out as quite different and as such have been far more successful. In this film he appears to be relying on a greater degree of blood and gore in order to achieve the desired effect, but unfortunately it just seems unnecessary and detracts from what could have been a good story.

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