This review of The Happening will be in two parts. The first part will be a spoiler-free version in case you can’t bear to learn the big reveal before you see it. The second will provide spoilers galore. Don’t worry, I’ll let you know when the switch happens.

With that out of the way, M. Night Shyamalan (hereafter known as MNS) has crafted an unsettling, uneven, and ultimately unfulfilling horror/suspense/family drama (well, he tries that last one, anyway) in The Happening. Starring Mark Wahlberg as a high school science teacher who quite literally lives and dies by the scientific method, and Zooey Deschanel as his wife, the movie starts out quite strong, but loses nearly all of its emotional weight in its second half, thanks to the gimmicky TWIST (it gets all caps for an MNS film) being revealed at the midpoint.

Of course, the question that will probably get people in the theaters is, “What is the Happening?” I don’t think it’s spoiling too much to say that the Happening consists of large groups of people spontaneously killing themselves for no reason. The opening scene of the film depicts a girl reading in the park, and then stabbing herself in the neck with a knitting needle (and there’s your R rating, folks). The death is dealt early and often, and those scenes are a bit disturbing, so good job there, MNS.

These sorts of scenes comprise the first half of the film. People kill themselves in increasingly imaginative ways while Marky Mark tries to find safe ground with his wife and best friend’s daughter. MNS tries to inject some humanity in a domestic squabble between our lead couple, and it might have been a good idea, but it is underdeveloped, hokey, feels completely out of place within the context of the film, it screws up the otherwise fantastic pacing, and it’s just a ridiculous argument.

Once the TWIST is revealed, the action dies off. Now we know what’s causing the Happening, and the suspense is mostly sucked out. Maybe if the TWIST weren’t so mind-bendingly stupid the rest of the movie could be taken seriously. Instead, we are treated to an insane, rambling old farm lady who was apparently in the film just to be creepy. Sure, she eventually fulfills her destiny as a plot device, but that’s all she was.

As it is, though, this is a classic MNS movie – well directed, well paced, understated performances, a TWIST that you will either love or hate, and once it’s revealed, the film steadily loses steam until the credits roll. Perhaps if we had learned the cause of the Happening later, the last part of the movie would have at least kept some kind of weight. But we don’t, and it doesn’t. MNS shows us once again that he can craft a good suspense flick, and he can milk a gimmick for everything it’s got, but in the end a one-trick pony is a one-trick pony, no matter how well the trick works.

This concludes the spoiler-free section of this review. If you don’t want to learn the TWIST, turn away.

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Are they all gone?

Good.

IT’S THE FREAKING TREES. The Happening is not a terrorist attack as first proposed in the film, the Happening is a neurotoxin being secreted by plants that shut down the human brain’s self-preservation instinct, causing people to off themselves. So there’s the how, here’s the why. Plants can’t get up and run away from their attackers, the only thing they can do is evolve a defense mechanism quickly enough to save themselves from extinction. Humans have been deemed a threat to plant life on this planet, and thus the plants release a complex neurotoxin to teach us a lesson and serve as a warning for us to get our act together.

Not only is it ridiculous, MNS points it out in classic suspense-movie fashion that simply does not work with this subject matter. Once it is established (by way of an aging hippy greenhouse owner) that plants are responsible, every time a tree or a patch of grass is shown blowing in the breeze, the ominous music swells a bit and we’re supposed to be scared. That would have worked, had the scary stimulus not been a freaking maple tree.

At first glance, one might think that the movie is promoting some kind of tree-hugging-but-not-too-hard-because-you’ll-hurt-its-feelings hippy mentality. After all, MNS goes out of his way to show how cruel people can be. Nearly everybody is content to leave our little makeshift family to die, even though they have open spaces in their cars. Two gigantic smokestacks can be seen in the background outside the aforementioned greenhouse, chugging away. Two teenagers are shot dead while asking for food at a stranger’s house. I get it, people suck and we should all kill ourselves.

Then again, these killer plants are also targeting innocent people such as our lead funky bunch — you didn’t think I was going to get through this entire review without a Funky Bunch joke, did you? They aren’t loggers or strip miners, the only sin committed by either of them is having dessert with someone from work and not telling her husband (yes, that’s the big domestic problem…she eats tiramisu with some guy and hubby is mad that she lied to him…..seriously). They’re people we’re apparently supposed to care about, people we’re meant to connect with, and they’re being ruthlessly hunted by crabgrass. So, are the trees the good guys, or the bad guys? Yes and no, I guess. MNS, you have confused me.

Once the TWIST is revealed, all seriousness drops out of the movie. The wind rippling through the grass is funny in a melodramatic way more than it is suspenseful. The crazy farm lady, which probably should have been left on the cutting room floor, effectively kills the suspense with her pointlessness, but thankfully, by that time the movie is nearly over.