Nine years ago, when M. Night Shyamalan's "The Sixth Sense" blew minds and created a new template for intelligent thrillers, the "Shyamalan twist" became shorthand for a shocker in the late third act — the plot shift that sent viewers home to scratch and soak their heads.
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The writer-director's latest film, "The Happening," is missing the twist along with most of the wit, suspense and style expected from a Shyamalan project. In "The Happening," nothing really happens.
As high school teacher Elliot Moore leads his science class through a discussion on the dwindling bee population, people start acting strangely in nearby New York, falling into fugue states before suddenly and violently killing themselves. As Elliot and his estranged wife, Alma (Zooey Deschanel), flee, the cause of the mass suicide starts to appear to be an ecological overthrowing of human dominion.
Shyamalan's film never builds any real tension and takes a frustratingly linear track, and then just when "The Happening" should slam audiences against their seats, the story fades away, as if Shyamalan became exhausted from all the exposition and unusually stilted dialogue.
Even Shyamalan's previous missteps were bold failures — "Lady in the Water" might have been a muddle, but it spoke to his imagination and ambition. In frustrating contrast, "The Happening" plays like an afterthought, a doodle from a smart storyteller who lost interest in his tale. "The Happening" simply isn't happening.
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