Shyamalan upbeat about 'Happening'

M. Night Shyamalan laughs a lot for a guy whose career trajectory hasn't exactly been on an upward slope lately.

While "The Sixth Sense" made his career, his last two films — "The Village" and "Lady in the Water" — have yielded diminishing (commercial and, in most cases, critical) returns.

The filmmaker's latest, "The Happening," resists any sleight of hand for a straightforward horror romp in the tradition of "The Birds" and "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers." In it, Mark Wahlberg plays a high-school science teacher leading a band on the run from some kind of airborne neurotoxin that short-circuits humans' survival instinct.

A paranoid thriller featuring wave upon wave of people killing themselves seems like an odd vehicle for a career comeback. But Shyamalan, 37, doesn't believe he ever went away. He's just "trying new things to nudge the box a bit."

"The man has an amazing confidence," says "Happening" co-star John Leguizamo. "And that laugh ... it cuts through every conversation."

Here, in an interview that includes what some might consider spoiler information, Shyamalan lets his cackle fly while discussing the finer points of suicide, Applebee's and the end of the world as we know it.

Question: When Mark Wahlberg wants to prove he's normal, he sings the Doobie Brothers' "Black Water." Wouldn't that just rile them up more?

Shyamalan: (Laughs) What can I say? I'm a Doobie Brothers freak. I haven't been able to get that song out of my head since I was a kid.

Question: When you brought this movie to Fox, you assumed it'd be PG-13 like your other films. They encouraged you to push limits to an R. Any instances where you pushed too hard?

Shyamalan: Just a handful of things. You'll see them on the DVD. There's the scene with the guy in the lion habitat at the zoo. We shot him just getting mauled. But it was gratuitous. Other things were just too traumatic.

Question: How did you choose the suicide scenarios?

Shyamalan: I wanted to keep them very theatrical. Nothing mundane. I had a notebook full of: "Oh (shoot), we can do this." They had to be creative.

Question: There's the scene in the city with the cop and the gun and a resulting domino effect.