Two years ago, I found myself among the few defenders of M. Night Shyamalan's under-appreciated, misunderstood Lady in the Water (you can read an essay I wrote about it here). Now with The Happening, I'm finding that audiences are still going into the theater hoping for the twists and surprises of his earlier work and walking away disappointed.

I feel sorry for filmmakers like Shyamalan or George Lucas, who exploded early in their careers with a rare crowd-pleaser and despite showing great creativity, artistry, and diversity in later works, have always found their audiences begging for more of the same. I for one enjoy seeing these talented minds experimenting and exploring the limits of cinema and its storytelling possibilities. If I want to re-experience The Sixth Sense or Star Wars I have those DVDs easily accessible.

So is The Happening a laudable effort from Shyamalan? My initial impression was that the film was little more than Shyamalan's effort to replicate the eerie suspense of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, replacing the titular villains in order to make a contrived point about environmentalism. Just like that classic Hitchcock film, Shyamalan turns something ordinary and omni-present into a vicious killer. But after forty years, the suspense in The Birds doesn't hold up so well and I think modern audiences will react to some of the contrived moments in The Happening with similar amusement. When our heroes are chased by the wind at one point in the film, it just didn't seem all that scary...because, you know, it's just wind.

Nevertheless, Shyamalan's precision and restraint show a level of workmanship that far exceeds the talents of most of today's suspense and horror directors. For a film marketed as his first R-rated thriller, Shyamalan never lets the level of blood and gore get anywhere close to modern slasher films. Instead, he carefully gives you just a taste of the macabre to properly cement in our minds the tragedy of the film's events. If Hitchcock were alive today, I imagine he would approach those scenes similarly. Throughout the whole film, you can feel Shyamalan's meticulousness. If you're a music lover, you've likely listened to a piece of music that was so intricate and carefully constructed that you found yourself no longer carried away by the melody, but just caught up trying to simply comprehend the complexity of the piece. For careful film viewers, Shyamalan's films have always offered this kind of pleasure—even if they at times fail to provide the most enjoyable melodies.

To explain, I'll have to go through some key parts of the story. While this film offers no great twists like The Sixth Sense, what follows would definitely be considered spoilers for the film, so if you haven't seen it yet, consider this your fair warning.

After reflecting on The Happening for some time, I'm struck by the basic wisdom hidden beneath the surface of the film. In our "post-9/11" world, we've seen many films that serve as reactions to, or interpretations of, that tragic event and the tumultuous years since. In most cases, these films either fictionally recreate that experience without offering any new insight (War of the Worlds, Cloverfield come to mind), or they become preachy, using real world events to make political points (pick any one of the war films made in the last five years). Shyamalan takes a slightly more layered-approach to make his point and I think rather cleverly succeeds where these other films failed, shedding at least a little new light on the whole subject.

Shyamalan takes our present, maddening global concerns (terrorism, global warming, overpopulation, etc) and rolls them all into his mysterious, unseen angel of death. All we know is that a toxin in the air confuses people's speech, renders them motionless for a time, and then compels them to kill themselves. There may be nothing more chilling than seeing crowds of individuals calmly and willingly ending their own lives. And what an ingenious weapon, if it existed. At first, the world assumes that this toxin is man-made and the work of terrorists, but as it spreads new theories abound and soon the prevailing thought is that plants themselves have attacked us. The environmentalists in the audience no doubt cheer this revelation, as it seems the film is saying that after all we've done to mess up the planet, it's going to strike back.

And maybe that's all the film is saying—be kind to the environment or else. It might just be a tract for global warming, using the picture of us collectively, calmly committing suicide as a horrific illustration. It certainly is more effective than The Day After Tomorrow. But something kept bugging me throughout the film and I think it holds the key to a slightly deeper idea...as silly as it may be.

You see, Shyamalan gives the otherwise studly Mark Wahlberg a girlie mood ring to carry around for the whole film. You know, one of those rings that changes color depending on how you feel? It really looks rather absurd on Wahlberg and seemed like the strangest prop to call attention to in this carefully constructed story. But at one point, Wahlberg—playing a science teacher in the film—explains to a young kid that our bodies gives off energy based on how we're feeling and that the rock in the ring can sense that energy and changes color accordingly. That may be the worst scientific explanation for a mood ring ever—but I think Shyamalan wants us to connect this point with the other clues in the film. Over and over again, the characters talk about how the plants can hear them, sense them, feel them. What if plants could feel our moods?

It so happens—although no one in the film seems to notice—that the attacks always start when people start to get angry at each other: when trust is broken, voices are raised, or strife is in the air. If this is the case, our central characters—a husband and wife—start off as dangerous targets. With their marriage on the rocks, they spend much of the film trying to rekindle a lost love.

In an ending that is not subtle but not obvious either, Shyamalan shows us the power of love. If it's true that the mysterious killer can sense our emotions like the mood ring can, then it might just be the overwhelming love of a family that ends the storm for a time.

This is a point that may seem obvious or trite, but tied with the rest of the film I think it's undeniably true. Are we afraid of terrorism? If the terrorists are motivated by hate, what are we motivated by? Are we afraid of global warming? Shyamalan says let's stop fighting and start listening—something that seems important regardless of where you land on the issue. I can hear my liberal friends applauding while my conservative friends shake their heads, if only because of the issues represented. Which seems to kind of miss the point. I wonder if Shyamalan is only using these current issues that plague us as the backdrop for something else. I think his point may be much larger, and yet much more practical, than any of these partisan issues. What if the film is simply saying, in order to save the world, we need to stop killing ourselves and start loving each other?

When the plague starts, the first sign is confused speech. I couldn't help but think of the Tower of Babel—the biblical story that resulted in different languages and the scattering of people across the Earth—the beginnings of global strife as it were. By the film's end, Shyamalan acknowledges that this plague will likely never end, but even as it threatens to be the cause of our own demise, an answer exists that can save us all. A truth as simple and as true as "love one another."