![]() ![]() While The Happening features a wide ensemble cast that Shyamalan is known for, the performances and character development don't quite mesh, headed by the lack of chemistry between the two leads Elliot and Alma, played by Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel. As the deaths spread like a contagion, we eventually discover that nature has turned on humans, with plants themselves emitting a neurotoxin that attempts to rid the planet of people. Like an extended (and lesser) episode of The Twilight Zone, a mysterious rash of suicides begins on the east coast of the United States, starting in New York City. Would that have helped initial box office numbers? Very possibly, given Shyamalan's previous reputation for out-of-the-box storytelling and finding humanity in the most supernatural or extraterrestrial of events.īefore Shyamalan's downward slope of adapting other people's story ideas, he hit a rough patch with his own original movie in 2008's The Happening, his first R-rated entry. ![]() For some reason, the studio decided to market the film as a Will and Jaden Smith joint, leaving out mentioning Shyamalan as the director. Featuring a host of gnarly battles between Kitai and the mutated flora and fauna of a post-apocalyptic Earth, the action sequences are the only parts of this film that stand on their own as a convoluted plot unfolds around them.īut it wasn't just the story and unconvincing performances from both Smiths that helped tank this movie. But, once an alien species attacks the human race to seize the planet as their own, Cypher and Kitai accidentally end up back on Earth as they fight for survival to return home. ![]() Starring Smith as Cypher Raige and his real-life son Jaden Smith as his on-screen child Kitai, After Earth takes place on the faraway planet of Nova Prime, now populated by humans after a cataclysm on Earth made it uninhabitable. Shyamalan's second foray into co-writing a screenplay was After Earth with Gary Whitta, based on a story idea by Will Smith himself - and it went about as well as The Last Airbender for the director. ![]()
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