M. Night Shymalan - or M Night Shitalan as he's more commonly known - is currently being defined by his meteoric descent into uber lame. He impressed with Sixth Sense but to say it was downhill from there would be like saying the centre of the Sun was a little bit warm. Naturally, as the man works in Hollywood - and people are stupid enough to go and see how much his films suck - the one trick wonder still has a job.

So, to surmise this holocaust of bland boritude so you need not suffer the torture... After a bunch of construction workers jump off their building, cut to Billy Wholesome, the Maths teacher is asking kids about the bees - where did they go. It's not important to pay attention to this. Bees are completely irrelevant. Actually, everything is.

Anyway, after this utterly irrelevant parcel of bland we cut to Billy Wholesome and the other teachers getting told there has been some terrorist attack and it's time for school to be out. Billy talks to his mate who gives us pointless information about Billy's marriage - this will also prove irrelevant! - and then they're off home and then meeting at the train station. The train stops in the middle of nowhere because apparently no one is talking. FOREBODING!

So Billy Wholesome, his weird wife and the extraneous child - that belongs to Billy Wholesome's friend - are hanging out at a local dinner, trying to figure out what to do. Billy Wholesome's friend is there too. He's actually a more interesting character than everyone else put together - but given the number of people dying, you know someone interesting is going to die real soon... and yeah, there isn't anyone else. Sorry, chief. The news in the dinner suggests that the pattern of attacks is spreading across the Eastern seaboard and is affecting smaller population centres. Everyone in the dinner clocks that they're smack bang in the centre of the affected area and people decide to get the hell out of dodge rather than going the wrong way or staying where they are.

Billy Wholesome's friend is intent on meeting up with his wife - oh, you just KNOW that'll end well. Anyway, there are some not very tearful farewells and extraneous child is given to Billy to look after. Billy et al get a lift from some hippies, one of whom suggests that plants have suddenly magically started making the neurotoxin that makes people kill themselves and waffles on in the kind of way you expect of someone in an M. Night film to do.

We have a group of people meet up at the road and they decide to head out into the fields, away from everything... if this was just about any other film ever, these people would live because this is the film equivalent of genius level IQ these days... not running toward the problem, avoiding population centres... of course, they're allowed to do this because it gets them killed. WHAT A TWIST!

Billy Wholesome is pondering this whole conundrum. Why smaller and smaller population centres? Oh, did his friend died. Yeah. No real relevance to anything but presumably they felt they needed to give some closure rather than just have him disappear. Anyway, Billy thinks that ol' hippy was right and somehow plants are responsible... then when the larger group ahead of them end up shooting themselves he decides that the plants reaction is being triggered by smaller and smaller groups of people - you can tell people are going to die when the wind starts blowing... and yes, it really IS that idiotic. This is confirmed when Billy sees two groups converge and get to dying. Ah, poor hapless characters... if this were a monster movie or a zombie movie you may have lived...

Billy's picked up some smart talking kids from the previous group. Thankfully, when Billy tries to stop by a hick house for help they get shot to death... They keep going and get to your bog standard crazy old woman's house. She's one up on the hicks though, what with not want to blow their heads off. The crazy old woman really lives up to her name. She invites in three strangers - she's a shut-in and hence oblivious to "The Happening". Apparently it's just good manners to invite strangers into your house, feed them and put them up for the night because damn she hates them! This isn't exactly helped when Billy is found going through her stuff.

Eventually, she goes outside and then ends up killing herself by smashing the windows in. Billy runs to lock himself in a room. For reasons of dramatic suspense, his wife and extraneous kid are in an outhouse that's connected to the main house with a speaking tube - mentioned earlier for no reason than to set this scene up. It's supposed to be touching but much like the rest of the film, falls flat because the characters are dull and struggle to be two dimensional. Eventually Billy decides he doesn't need no stickin' tree spawned neurotoxin to have a death wish and runs outside into the gale that symbolises the deadly death thing... and he's OK! WHAT A TWIST!

Yup, probably tens of millions of people are dead but it's ok because these jokers survived... It also goes to show just about anyone could have survived this ordeal by staying inside and closing the windows and doors... Anyway, no need to worry about that because cut to a few months later, the trio of two dimenisons are living happily together and Billy got his boring wife knocked up...

Cut to France, a gale starts to blow and... EVERYONE STOPS MOVING! SACRE BLEU! WHAT A TWIST!

This film clocks in at under the regulation summer fare of ninety minutes but it'll feel like longer. There's no easy way to describe this film's genre... possibly suspense? It's not horror and it's a million miles away from action... but it's hard to call this film a suspense because it... well, it lacks suspense. There's a lot of Billy puzzling through events but despite the people dying, there's relatively emotional involvement. The only person who shows anything beyond bland ends up sitting in the middle of the road, slitting his wrists. After having watched this film - you may well know that feeling.