"The Happening" -- Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo

Not a terrible film, and one with a harrowing message. It exceeded my expectations, but my expectations were through the floor, so that isn't saying much. I left the theater feeling genuinely freaked out (the friend I saw it with sucks at comfort hugs). The message here is that we cannot abuse the planet forever; Mother Nature is going to fight back. However, the film definitely had its flaws, in plot, casting, and shooting. One of M. Night Shyamalan's strengths is in twisting shadows and silence and what you know is there but you're not seeing. He doesn't use this skill much here, and it's a detriment.

The science is sound in a few areas and ridiculous in one. Suspension of disbelief is required when the science is explained, and this film doesn't have the crutch of supernatural events -- or at least, it's trying not to. This is one of the films biggest flaws. Those with logical or scientific minds may find the entire film ruined when the mechanics of the toxin within the brain are explained. Without going into detail, it shuts off the human preservation instinct, causing people, somehow, to kill themselves. One would think that this would do something more like cause people to drink and drive, have unsafe sex, or, to stretch it a little, stop restraining their emotions, particularly anger with others. But apparently, it makes people with guns shoot themselves, and the people around them to, one by one, pick up the dead person's gun and shoot themselves as well. That sound you heard a few minutes ago, while I was still writing this? That was the sound of my eyeroll -- so powerful it generated a sonic boom.

There are some powerful images in this film, no doubt. The image of construction workers raining off the side of a building is haunting and evocative of 9/11. The gore and violence is understated, and you can see Shyamalan's fingerprints in how we rarely see more than maybe a teaspoon's worth of blood, but we know that, were the shot just a little wider, we would have seen something much more terrible. Sound and space, where Shyamalan chose to use them, were used to great effect. The sound of a distant scream is chilling, and the bustle of a city manages to have the same feeling as silence. The wind is imbued with, for lack of a better word, the emotion of the film, and seems to carry shrieks of anger. The problem, however, is that the movie around them just doesn't support the images enough. A few lines of the dialogue are flatly ridiculous, along with the glaringly incorrect science and the performances.

Zooey Deschanel's performance is bad, in a few cases distractingly so. One must wonder what Shyamalan was thinking casting the quirky, bubbly, brilliantly sarcastic Deschanel as a dissatisfied housewife, and whether he intended the audience to laugh out loud at some of her emotional displays. Mark Wahlberg also doesn't do nearly as well here as he does with the badass cop/criminal or the tortured sniper/rock star/astronaut/whatever, although he gives it his level best and certainly does better than Deschanel. John Leguizamo is very good, if not perfect, with no major flaws or weaknesses in his performance. Ashlyn Sanchez has a few wooden moments, but is perfectly good for a child actor. The bit players and smaller roles, however, are all brilliant. Betty Buckley manages a truly disturbing level of intensity as Mrs. Jones, and the various brief traveling companions we see are all excellently done. M. Night Shyamalan manages not to give himself a cameo, except in the credits as a character never seen on screen -- a show of restraint we're all grateful for.

I wouldn't take small children. The gore is mostly understated, but what we do see is deeply disturbing, and the plot is definitely too much for children or maybe even teenagers to handle. See it in the theater if you tend to like Shyamalan's work. Otherwise, rent the DVD.

Best line: "Plastic. I'm talking to a plastic plant. ...I'm still doing it."
Best performance: Betty Buckley
Best moment: Elliot has convinced a kid to take an interest in class by telling him that he looks perfect now, but the ears and nose grow a fraction of an inch every year. A minute later the kid, looking panicked, asks how much and Elliot reassures him that it's miniscule and he'll be a heartthrob all his life.