What happened?

A while ago, I watched The Happening, the latest offering from Indian-born director M. Night Shyamalan. M. Night Shyamalan was the same director that brought us Signs, Unbreakable, The Village, Sixth Sense and the less-memorable Lady In The Water.

The movie tells the story of the outbreak of a pandemic where humans would commit suicide upon contact with a mysterious substance. The pandemic first broke out in New York City and it slowly spread across the North East Coast of the US of America. The main character, played by Mark Wahlberg, led a group that consisted of his estranged wife, a best friend and his daughter to escape New York City. And what's next.... go see the movie yourself....

So what did I think of the movie? It, being a product of M Night Shyamalan, was enough to make me want to see the movie. It was quite rather disappointed with the movie. I thought the story was weak at some points. The momentum, which was slow to gather at the start of the movie, was suddenly lost towards the end. There were no nail-biting moments, no sitting on the seat's edge moments. I thought the end did not tell the story completely. Towards the end of the movie I kept hoping that the movie would not end there without any twist that M Night Shyamalan was famous for. Unfortunately, it ended quite abruptly.

After the dismal display of his last film, Lady In The Water, one could not fail to think that probably M Night Shyamalan might have lost his touch. His golden touch that synonymous with compelling storylines and high quality direction.

Will I watch his future films? I don't know. I would probably check film critics' reviews before watching them. The reviews for The Happening are mostly negative. The following paragraph was extracted from the Wikipedia page of The Happening.

"Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter said the film lacked "cinematic intrigue and nail-biting tension" and that "the central menace ... does not pan out as any kind of Friday night entertainment. Variety's Justin Chang thought the story "... covers territory already over-tilled by countless disaster epics and zombie movies, offering little in the way of suspense, visceral kicks or narrative vitality to warrant the retread." Mick LaSelle at San Francisco Chronicle felt the film was entertaining but not scary. He commented on Shyamalan's writing, saying "... instead of letting his idea breathe and develop and see where it might go, he jumps all over it and prematurely shapes it into a story." Time's Richard Corliss saw the film as "dispiriting indication that writer-director M. Night Shyamalan has lost the touch" Chicago Tribune's Michael Phillips thought the film had workable premise, but found the characters "gasbags or forgetful" Joe Morgenstern of Wall Street Journal said the film was "woeful clunker of a paranoid thriller" and described it as "befuddling infelicities, insistent banalities, shambling pace and pervasive ineptitude".

M. Night Shyamalan has this habit of appearing in his own film. If you watched this already, in which scene did he appear? I did not see him anywhere, but my guess was probably when the train got stopped in the small town.