The Happening is in most respects what you would expect from a film by M. Night Shyamalan, which can mean something entirely different depending on your perspective and attitude toward Shyamalan. All things considered, I take this to mean that it is a good film that is better than the usual Hollywood fare because —in the end— it is intelligent cinematically. Shyamalan doesn’t stretch himself here and we can see a Shyamalan formula beginning to emerge: begin with a cataclysmic event which is unexplainable and then play it out with characters trying to survive the event, understand it, learn something about themselves from the experience, and come out better for it. As part of the formula, add in a couple in relationship distress, in this case a kind, level-headed science teacher Elliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg), and his withdrawn wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel).

　　One thing is certain, the film begins with a bang, starting from the opening credits which foreshadow the theme of nature ‘turning dark’: happy, blue clouds slowly darken during the credit roll until they become ominously black. Cut to New York Central Park, where a normal day starts to turn surreally abnormal. People suddenly stop in their tracks and seem to freeze up, echoing a composition from Antonioni’s Red Desert. Others begin to walk backward. A lady sitting on a park bench reading takes her hairpin out and thrusts it into her neck. The scene cuts to a building construction site, introducing a group of workers standing around chatting, joking. The levity is broken by the sound of a heavy thud, caused by a worker falling to the ground. As they rush to his side another corpse falls a few feet away. Then another, then another. The tension is raked higher with a cut to a low angle POV of a slow motion shot of other workers jumping off the top of the half-built building, an eerie replay of the 9/11 suicidal jumps off the burning twin towers

　　The powerful yet enigmatic opening se