The Happening: What a Bunch of Nonsense   What a bunch of
nonsense—effective nonsense, chilling nonsense, occasionally
wrenching nonsense, but nonsense nonetheless. This is what
happens when M. Night Shyamalan tries to play both John
Carpenter (bloody) and Stanley Kubrick (cold-blooded) while
writing and directing what the literalist will either dismiss or
embrace as the horror-film extension of An Inconvenient Truth,
depending upon who the literalist thinks is responsible for, ya
know, killing the planet. No spoilers here, because there’s
nothing to give away—not even the alleged cause of the toxin
that causes folks in the Northeast to go loopy before killing
themselves with whatever’s handy (a cop’s gun, a shard of glass,
a sidewalk 40 stories down … a rotor tiller, ick). One minute
folks are enjoying themselves in Central Park, the next they’re
stabbing and shooting themselves for the following, oh, 90
minutes give or take. (The film’s first 10 minutes are, down to
the last second, unrelentingly horrific.)