The Happening

(Above: the cast contemplates the end of their film careers after foolishly completing this movie)

I just returned from seeing one of the worst movies I can remember, M. Night Shyamalan's "The Happening." The fact that Betty Buckley steals the show with only about 5 minutes of over the top on-screen time should be revealing enough. Shyamalan has found his nadir in this flick, which is being promoted with the declasse marketing message of being his "first R-rated movie." Let's hope this piece of crap is his last movie of any rating! John Leguizamo should fire his agent for landing him in this movie, considering how particularly unflattering the camera work is to him. The repeated and pointless suicides, depiction of a grotesque lion attack, and the highly offensive on-camera killings of two children are degrading to the audience and play like a grindhouse B-movie from the 1960s, only without the campiness. Shyamalan also falls down on many small details in his shots, such as the grass and weeds growing up between the ties of a supposedly busy commuter rail line in Pennsylvania. From the constant close-ups of the E.T.-like Zooey Deschanel, to the improbable casting of Mark Wahlberg as a high school biology teacher, to the offensively gratuitous and unnecessary violence throughout the film, this dreck deserves to be thrown on the dung heap and forgotten forever.

BHS's ratings:
Acting: 1/5
Script: 0/5 (example: "We can't just stand here as ininvolved bystanders!" Huh?)
Casting: 1/5 (only because Betty Buckley is in the movie, and Wahlberg is sort of cute)