As M Night Shyamalan's contemporary paranoia thriller enters its overwrought final act, Mark Wahlberg stares dumbfounded at the camera and gasps, "Can this really be happening?"

The leading man whimpers for us all because this apocalyptic tale of survival is laughable and preposterous.

A series of chilling and bizarre episodes in major American cities leads to mass suicide. Panic sweeps the nation as terrified residents clamour for answers.

Philadelphia high school teacher Elliot Moore (Wahlberg) learns of the crisis via the news and heads into the Pennsylvanian farmlands with his therapist wife Alma (Deschanel) to outrun the impending danger. The couple takes mathematics teacher Julian (Leguizamo) and his eight-year-old daughter Jess (Sanchez) with them.

The travellers meet more survivors, all desperate for news. They quickly realise that nothing can stop the invisible killer. The white-knuckle tension, which Shyamalan generates in a superb opening 10 minutes, evaporates the instant the characters open their mouths. And unthinkably, the writer-director shoots most scenes uncomfortably close-up.

Opening scenes in Central Park and surrounding areas of New York are truly unsettling, and as long as the film clings to delicious ambiguities (are the deaths the result of a terrorist attack, radiation from a nuclear accident, a botched government experiment?) we're willing to grant Shyamalan the benefit of the doubt.

However, as soon as he declares what forces are really at work bringing about mankind's day of reckoning, we lose all interest.

Shyamalan has always liked to spring a surprise, and The Happening will certainly shock audiences who enjoyed his earlier films including The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and The Village, though not in a good way.

It's rather apt that the film should be released on Friday the 13th - unlucky for anyone who buys a ticket.

Catastrophe quickly strikes, leading to some comical death scenes like a man lying down in front of a lawn mower, and a final standoff at a farmhouse owned by an old lady who is even more cuckoo than the plot.

Thriller. Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo, Ashlyn Sanchez, Betty Buckley, Alan Ruck. Director: M Night Shyamalan