Writing’s on the wall

Words trip up ‘The Happening,’ which threatens Shyamalan’s relevance

‘The Happening’
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo
Rating: R
Grade: 2 Globes

Harrison Ford once said to George Lucas, “George, you can type this sh-t, but you can’t say it.” That must be how actors feel after working with M. Night Shyamalan. The writer-director of “The Sixth Sense” and “Signs,” like Lucas, can map out a story like a pro, and is a gifted visual aesthete (though of a more Hitchcockian breed). Also like Lucas, he couldn’t write a decent line of dialogue even if possessed by the ghost of Billy Wilder.

And that’s what troubles “The Happening” — the same problem that plagued “The Village” and “Lady in the Water,” giving Shyamalan a three-deep list of consecutive disappointments. But the new film is in many ways like his last well-received work, “Signs.” Both movies share a rural Pennsylvania setting. More importantly, in both, Shyamalan creates a pan-geographic disaster and removes his players from the epicenter. In “Signs,” this was a clever stroke, making the movie feel like a sort of anti-“Independence Day.”

It works too in “The Happening” — or it would if not for that whole “badly written” thing. Mark Wahlberg plays Elliot, an affable school teacher (in movies, there are only two kinds of teachers: affable and evil) who hits the road with his wife (Zooey Deschanel) and best friend’s daughter as an airborne toxin spreads from New York across the Northeast. The toxin, which causes people to do stuff that in the old days would have been chalked up to “witchcraft,” is clumsily tied to an environmental message.

But the real, deadlier clumsiness comes from Shyamalan’s script. Characters don’t just speak to each other in stilted ways — their actions are ridiculous and narratively expedient in a shameless way. Just as a mother whose daughter is overtaken by psychosis mid-phone conversation would never put the phone on speaker so a panicked mob can listen in, a character who doesn’t like to show her emotions would never repeat the words, “I don’t like to show my emotions,” ad nauseum. In “The Happening” they do these things, making clear that they’re not people, but pieces trapped in a very bloody game of Candyland.

It has been said for a while but bears repeating: Shyamalan needs screenwriting help. Before he surrounded himself with yes-men, Lucas partnered with Lawrence Kasdan to refine what ended up being his two best stories: “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Shyamalan (happily reunited in “The Happening” with cinematographer Tak Fujimoto) is a more gifted director than Lucas ever was, but he needs his own Kasdan. Otherwise, he threatens to fade from relevancy — if he hasn’t already.