Zooey Deschanel kind of pisses me off. She’s just to good at acting. Honestly, I’ve never seen her not stand out in anything. She’s incredibly enchanting in Elf, underrated in Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, and more than holds her own with Ed Harris in the vastly underrated, must rent Winter Passing. So why the hell is she doing a future M. Night Shyamalan flop?

You’re probably wondering why I’m already calling this movie a flop; so, I’ll go ahead and give you the background on The Happening. A few months ago, the Signs director began shopping a project called The Green Effect to studios. He quickly got rejected by all of the larger movie makers and was forced to do massive rewrites. Eventually, he was able to get 20th Century Fox to buy the script, and entice Wahlberg and Deschanel to sign on.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the general plotline follows a man who takes his family on the run after an epidemic begins infecting the population forcing people to brutally murder themselves. I don’t claim to be the world’s biggest horror fan, so I’m certainly not the intended audience here, but seriously, what the hell backwoods kind of story is this? Honestly! A deadly infection strikes making people commit suicide in interesting ways! I’ve heard more well thought out tales from my eight year old cousin.

I probably should withhold all my scorn until I at least see a trailer, but I’m having a real hard time not prematurely filing it into the waste-of-time file. No release date has been announced for this, but I would probably expect it to fail sometime around next summer.