Shyamalan has no ill will towards Mark Wahlberg’s jabs against The Happening

After a string of excellent movies, M. Night Shyamalan hit a bit of a rough patch with movies like THE VILLAGE and LADY IN THE WATER, with his most mocked movie seeming to be THE HAPPENING. The 2008 thriller starring Mark Wahlberg was advertised as an ominous, shocking thriller about an environmental disaster, but upon release was torn apart by critics who claimed Shyamalan had fallen far from his SIXTH SENSE glory. Even Wahlberg called it out as a bad movie years ago, and though that’s a hard hit, Shyamalan said in a new interview he harbors no ill will against the star for not liking the movie.

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Back in 2010 while doing press for THE FIGHTER, Wahlberg brought up how he was speaking with co-star Amy Adams about a “really bad movie” he did. While at first, he didn’t want to reveal what movie it was, he went 100 percent in and said, “The Happening. F— it. It is what it is. F—ing trees, man. The plants. F— it. You can’t blame me for not wanting to try to play a science teacher. At least I wasn’t playing a cop or a crook.”

Those were harsh words indeed, and as correct as his opinions are they had to be some kind of blow to Shyamalan. However, when asked if the actor's words bothered him, Shyamalan seems to be taking the high road.

Since that would be the only case of that happening — no. But really, no. It’s totally his call. However he wants to interpret it.

Shyamalan continued talking about the project, saying how intended it to have a campy, B-movie feel with “farce humor,” comparing it to the classic horror flick, THE BLOB. In the end, he feels the humor came across as “inconsistent,” which he thinks is a reason people didn’t quite understand it. Still, he looks at failure in a favorable light.

You need to be in a good place. Unbreakable didn’t necessarily work out exactly the way I wanted it to. But now I would go back and tell my younger self, “That column is not your concern. Keep going.” Failure is very cleansing, and success is very confusing.

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He related that to his newest movie GLASS, which he said no matter if it succeeds or fails (reviews are currently not great), he’s just looking forward to getting “back to the blank piece of paper again and feel a connection to whatever the next idea is.” As long as it's not THE HAPPENING 2, I'm anxious to hear what it is. 

GLASS is in theaters January 18.