Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez), Alma (Zooey Deschanel) and Elliot (Mark Wahlberg) flee from a growing biological threat in The Happening.

Twentieth Century Fox / Zade Rosenthal

In The Happening, Mother Nature decides that humanity is a dangerous virus — and gets to work eliminating the threat.

The latest from writer/director M. Night Shyamalan (Sixth Sense, Signs) is an exercise in paranoia with ecological underpinnings. It starts out strong, but as has so often become the case with this filmmaker’s idiosyncratic work, it gets lost along the way.

Basically, it’s a half-hour Twilight Zone episode blown up to feature length.

In New York’s Central Park one fine morning, walkers and joggers suddenly begin babbling and become disoriented, paralyzed and, finally, suicidal.

Shyamalan is at his best when depicting the mysterious affliction that spreads across the city, causing traffic cops to blow out their own brains and sending a shower of high-rise construction workers thudding into the pavement.

Meanwhile in Philadelphia, science teacher Elliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg) is trying to interest his bored students in the theories behind bee colony collapse. “There are forces at work here beyond our understanding,” he concludes.

No kidding.

The Happening follows Elliot and his wife, Alma (Zooey Deschanel), as they flee Philly, which also has been infected by the mysterious plague. They try to find a safe haven along with Elliot’s colleague Julian (John Leguizamo) and his young daughter, Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez).

There are echoes of 9/11 as news outlets report new cases of the mysterious affliction. Is it terrorists’ biological attack? A natural phenomenon? Something else entirely?

Whatever, it’s a case of just deserts in Shyamalan’s view. At one point, the fugitives pass a billboard for a housing development featuring the image of a McMansion and the words, “You deserve this.”

The Happening has an interesting premise, but it fails as drama largely because the characters are underdeveloped. Wahlberg and Leguizamo play unremarkable Every Men. Deschanel’s Alma is a bit more colorful — she’s a flake who thinks that because she had coffee with a male co-worker she’s guilty of infidelity — but she’s also irritating.

And late in the film, Shyamalan has his protagonists take refuge with a hermit lady (Betty Buckley) who is so over-the-top crazy that the movie comes to a crashing halt.

Toss in a few stabs at humor that don’t really work and you’ve got a cautionary tale that, once you get past the creepiness of the setup, never develops any emotional or intellectual depth.

**The Happening

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo

Rated: R, contains violent and disturbing images; some dialogue in French with subtitles