I know I’m setting myself up for disappointment by getting excited about M. Night Shyamalan’s next movie, but I can’t help it. Called The Happening, it’s a thriller-- surprise, surprise-- taking place during a sort of apocalypse that comes about as a result of global warming. Yes, I know it sounds like Signs meets The Day After Tomorrow. Yes, I know Shyamalan’s movies have been getting weirder and weirder. And yes, I know that the fact Mark Wahlberg is in it doesn’t mean it’s going to be good, even if his performance in The Departed is still the best thing ever.

The new poster for The Happening isn’t doing me any favors either, because it’s really pretty great. The imagery is really striking, with all the cars abandoned on the highway, and it immediately evokes the disaster movies of the past, from Armageddon to, yes, The Day After Tomorrow. And the copy gets the idea of the movie across very well, with a sly double-entendre up its sleeve that I didn’t catch until the second time I read it. We’ve sensed it. We’ve seen the signs. Har har, M. Night. Also, way to ignore the existence of The Village and Lady in the Water and only refer to your successful movies. And finally, the movie comes out on Friday the 13th, which probably has no bearing on its plot, but it’s neat to point that out on the poster.

OK, feel free to call me a sucker. I won’t necessarily see this if it gets the same reviews Shyamalan’s most recent movies have gotten, but for now I continue to be excited, even in the face of adversity. See the poster in high-res where it originated, over at CS.