Wow. I'm M Night's undying supporter and fan. When the script for THE HAPPENING leaked everywhere - the online world hated it, but I read it and dreamt of the best version of the tale. A movie about the environment shrugging off the nasty parasites known as man. Nature conspiring to reduce our numbers to such a degree that we no longer posed a threat.

It reminded me of classic films like NO BLADE OF GRASS - a film of atmosphere, sadness and a degree of melancholy. The scenes in the script of death were brutal. He even had children killing themselves - and it was horrifying. The weight of seeing that felt earnest and real.

He cast the film with actors I like... scratch that, I love Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel. It was looking to me like another case of bitter M Night haters pissing on another wonderful film...

Until I saw the movie.

Jesus, God... What went wrong?

Just about everything - and on an M Night film - Everything is upon his shoulders.

M Night is one of my favorite modern directors, and I really don't understand what happened here. This isn't merely an off film - but an incompetently shot and directed film. In a film where death could be on every change in the wind... How is it that he created no tension. No fear. No sense of doom. No atmosphere. This is the day where mankind is dying.

First - he limits the horror. Scaling it to just the East Coast. He allows communication to continue - via Radio, Television, iPhones, etc. This should have been a Global happening - where the characters have no place to run to. No chill zone. No rescue centers. No attempt to find an army supply store for Gas Masks. No attempt to hit a scuba shop for Oxygen equipment - to cut one's self off from the natural air. There's just endless exposition with little sense of how to survive.

But let's leave that behind. I feel the script and this cast could have made a great film called THE HAPPENING - just not with this particular version of this director.

There are scenes, so clumsily directed - that you can imagine that the characters are walking to marks, where they were instructed to turn and look at one another and cleanly deliver the immaculate dialogue that was prepared for them. There's no life. No realism or naturalness to the scenes. It really is amateur hour for these professionals - and it's kinda grotesque to watch. Seriously.

Then there's James Newton Howard's score - there's no menace, nothing to ramp up the sensations one should be feeling throughout the film. With an unseen terror, SCORE is incredibly important. Whatever was HAPPENING - should have been HAPPENING musically.

The film is terrible. That said - there is an entertainment value in its awfulness. This may become a film that folks MST3K.... no, no may about it, it will happen. The film as is, is ridiculously incompetent. So much so, that poor Wahlberg and Zooey - they're left humiliated by how they were directed. And the actors they're matched with... like that Nursery couple - with the guy that loves Hot Dogs. MY GOD - I couldn't help but snicker at everything that character did. He was beyond awful. And his epiphanies... ya know, I wonder - was he the M Night character for the film? Cuz he apparently had a direct line to what was HAPPENING - even though it certainly wasn't Happening for us.

This is a film that would be best served by a remake in 15 years by somebody that understands the Hitchcockian rules of suspense. Something I thought M Night might have understood - but if he does - he exhibited none of that knowledge here.

Even the big DEATH scenes are robbed of all weight - as they're just images - it isn't happening to anyone that has been built as characters.

If you want to see a truly great film about a mass incident happening to society. If you want to see a brilliant version of a one day, the world went insane. Watch THE SIGNAL, which just recently hit Blu Ray and DVD. It is stunningly brilliant. With all the acting and poignancy that seems to have been out of reach for everyone involved in THE HAPPENING.