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I was reminded of another Pennsylvanian filmmaker while watching M. Night Shyamalan’s latest film — George A. Romero. The apocalyptic storyline where an unknown event makes humans act strange reminded me of Romero’s zombie films or THE CRAZIES. Being that THE HAPPENING is Shyamalan’s first R-rated film, the gory bits and “big kill” moments felt like the touch of Romero as well. However, the weak acting, which never truly undermines Romero’s work, does undermine Shyamalan’s attempt at the supernatural paranoid thriller. Additionally, Romero knows how to set up a scare to make it frightening and when he adds in humor we know we’re supposed to laugh with Shyamalan the two become interchangeable.

As the story begins, some phenomenon has begun in New York City, which causes humans to become disoriented, freeze and then kill themselves. Over in Philadelphia, Science teacher Elliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg, THE DEPARTED) is discussing the recent decline in bees on the planet when they receive word of a terrorist attack in NYC. As they evacuate the school, Elliot’s fellow teacher and best friend Julian (John Leguizamo, SUMMER OF SAM) plans to leave the city with his wife and young daughter Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez, CRASH), inviting Elliot and his wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel, ALMOST FAMOUS) to come along with them to his parents house. But the “event” follows them and Elliot begins to wonder if plants have something to do with the strange happening.

While Shyamalan intends to bring us a new INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS or THE BIRDS, his film lacks all the menace that those films had. While at first, it’s interesting to keep the culprit of the event a mystery, Shyamalan never builds a sound foundation for his threat by continuing to debate “who is doing this” for too long. It gets to a point where either terrorists or the environment seem silly. Moreover, he never establishes solid enough guidelines for the threat, such as, if a character does this, he could be killed like that. There are no moments where pod people fill the streets or birds siege a house. The airborne threat is too arbitrary and Shyamalan attempts to make it filmic play ridiculously. Rustling trees and wind swept fields of grass are not scary unless the filmmaker makes them scary.

This brings us to the R-rated bits. For imagery, Shyamalan crafts a collection of wonderful creepy shots. But the problem is that they are injected into the film as a collection of creepy shots and never integrated into the story. Outside of a Jeep crashing into a tree, no emotion or tension is created by the gory kills, which is something Romero does masterfully. One particularly gruesome bit viewed on a cell phone is laughable do to its awkward execution and cheesy greenscreen effects. Over and over again, Shyamalan sloppily draws up a “terrifying” moment where we see all the poorly erased pencil sketches underneath. Never have characters act against normal human reaction to make a gag work, because it ultimately never works.

While Romero’s B-horror films have a charm in a low-budget way, Shyamalan’s has made a mess with a $50 million budget. Romero’s observational eye about current social issues always raises his material to another level, but Shyamalan tanks his environmental warning sign with a sixth sense for terrible dialogue leaving his actors stuck in a village in the middle of Pennsylvania drowning like a lady in shallow water. With two failures in a row, Shyamalan, who I have never been a hater of, shows that his claim as the next Spielberg is far less than unbreakable.