In depicting the suicides themselves, Shyamalan shows his genuine gift for staging and directing horrific scenes for primal effect. Just looking at the trailer, I thought the ground-level POV shot of seeing various construction workers jumping off a building was haunting and the scene in full is even scarier. He is even careful and methodical enough to show the goriest scene of a man purposely standing in the middle of a lion’s den through a cell phone camera. Another sequence of a gun being dropped and transferred as a suicidal weapon of choice is effectively and creepily reminiscent of the passing of an evil spirit in the vastly underrated 1998 Denzel Washington thriller, Fallen.

Of course, where the film would potentially get the worst flack is in the ultimate rationale for “the happening,” which, despite that it is really explained early on and not left to the end, I will try to discuss while tiptoeing around the details. Again, I don’t reject it in concept since, if one actually thinks about it, the ultimate force of nature presented in this story is no more plausible than Hitchcock’s birds suddenly attacking humans without warning. The weakness in his storytelling is not necessarily in concept, which is daring and staged properly as a threat (particularly in a scene where sounds of various suicidal gunshots go off in the distance). It is really in how he has a farmer character conveniently just spout it off as simplistic exposition just to propel the plot forward. The story would have been more engaging if Shyamalan had Elliot somehow use his science teacher’s imagination to figure out the cause for himself. That would have also allowed a scene where Wahlberg talks to a certain inanimate object to be more fully intentionally funny than somewhat laughable and the ultimate resolution more mysteriously moving.

So the film overall is a bit of a mess but it is unfair for so many to compare every other Shyamalan movie again and again to his first smash hit, The Sixth Sense. He is certainly no longer trying to replicate that shocking big “twist” that audiences were so enthralled by in that film so we shouldn’t judge him as such either. The Happening may indicate that it is time for Shyamalan to streamline his story ideas better next time to match his innate filmmaking craft but, in the meantime, people should make amends for grossly overlooking the real movie where his story masterfully came alive, Unbreakable.

Bottom line: Close, but no cigar.