Is Wahlberg delivering what looks like the worst performance of anyone's career, or is he playing a character who's losing his grip on reality? Everyone's behavior is detached and weird to the point of being ridiculous. Kind of in the same way that cult members' behavior looks ridiculous right up until they all put on matching outfits and calmly commit suicide.

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Or maybe it's just bad acting. Hey, I said I was going to try to be charitable here.

Regardless, rewatch with this in mind, and you get a much smarter film. From the initial public incident -- mass suicides, on camera, in the world's most famous city -- you see one terrifying explanation spread through the populace: terrorists. Deadly gas. Tapping into all of our post-9/11 anxieties.

Then, as word spreads, so does the irrational behavior. When the reality slowly makes the initial theory implausible (how and why would the terrorists get gas out in the middle of rural Pennsylvania?), the victims simply seize on a new one. It is again patently ridiculous, but again taps into their underlying anxieties, the fear that we're destroying our own planet.

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Who first relays the bizarre "THE LEAVES ARE GETTING REVENGE!" theory? Just some guy who works with plants, certainly not an expert in ... whatever this is. But he sounds just smart enough that the group can latch onto the theory that justifies their fear. There are plants everywhere! No one is safe! Just as in real life, they believe the most inflammatory, implausible version of the truth on the thinnest evidence. Because at some level, they -- and we -- want to be afraid.

Even the title becomes meaningful. The Happening is such a weird, vague title for a movie (or, well, anything), but that's the joke. Nothing actually happened.

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It's baffling to watch one character after another take their own life for what on the outside is no reason at all. Just as it's impossible to understand why more than 900 people spontaneously did the same at a compound in Guyana. We chuckle at the plot because nothing the characters do makes sense, and damn it, that's not how it's supposed to work in a movie. But in real life, in real crowds? Logic is as fragile as a soap bubble.