20th Century Fox has released the first trailer for M. Night Shyamalan’s next movie The Happening. The movie is about “an event” that begins to cause people to just sort of spontaneously off themselves with hair accessories, jump off of buildings or whatever other means appear to be handy.

The trailer is appropriately creepy and sets a decent tone for the movie, namely one of paranoia about what this unseen phenomenon might be. It’s certainly well put together and fits into the director’s brand well. The majority of the footage in the spot seems to be pulled from the first 15 minutes or so of the movie, with not much mention of or allusion to the eventual twist at the end that will (hopefully) turn viewer’s heads upside down.

But let’s face it. Brand Shymalan isn’t quite what it used to be. He’s not got a lot of baggage after a couple poor outings that failed to live up to the hype and to the standard set by his early efforts and it’s going to take something extraordinary to pull that out. If indeed the movie winds up not being screened for critics that’s not a good omen.

Defamer is speculating that Fox’s decision to debut the trailer now instead of during the Super Bowl is motivated primarily by the feeling that it’s not worth wasting $2.7 million to advertise a movie that no one has any faith in and that won’t perform well at the box-office. Can’t say as I disagree with their reasoning much. It might find an audience but I’m not holding out much hope.

Cinematical says the trailer will debut in theaters in front of Fox’s Jumper, which makes sense so I would look for it on the big-screen there.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVfBr1RTJ5U[/youtube]

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