The best types of horror films are the ones that play on your paranoia and uncertainty. Oh, sure, blood and guts and slashing this and axing that are scary, but it's really scary when you least expect it. Of course, it doesn't hurt if the movie tosses out a cliffhanger of an ending to wow your emotions in the process.

One need only remember the late, great director Alfred Hitchcock, the master of the psychological thriller, to know what I'm talking about. Are there any like him or remotely like him today? Oh, yeah, but they are few and far between.

One writer, director and actor who comes close is M. Night Shyamalan. He, like Hitchcock, also casts himself in all his films but, unlike Hitchcock, gives himself a more prominent role in his movies. How does one ever top the mind-bending twist, though, of "The Sixth Sense" when it comes to setting the bar that high? Had Shyamalan started with, say, "Unbreakable" or even "Signs," then gave us the "I see dead people" flick, he probably wouldn't be as much under the microscope with both critics and the movie-loving audience as he has been in the past few years. Don't even get me started with "Lady in the Water."

With "The Happening," Shyamalan has taken a different path, if you will - not one so much about the supernatural or spiritual, but one that plays off the things that seem to be scaring us the most on a daily basis (and I am not referring to the neverending increase at the gas pumps). It's also his first R-rated endeavor, so he gets to take more risks when it comes to frightening us with some graphic mind-benders.

Mark Wahlberg plays science teacher Elliot Moore and Zooey Deschanel is his wife. They find themselves caught in the middle of a mysterious wave of terror that at first can't be identified but affects the living in ways unimaginable.

As with most of his movies, Shyamalan does give us a reason, and often times a message, but you won't get the reason here because his movies are best viewed without talking to anybody beforehand. And, as in his other movies, Shyamalan uses his home state of Pennsylvania as one of the characters and not just a backdrop.

We're so good at labeling everything in our society, including our filmmakers, which sometimes makes it difficult for the director when telling his or her story. How many times, after seeing "The Sixth Sense" and "Unbreakable," did we try to seek clues early on in his movies and guess what the ending would be (and then feel frustrated, thinking that he came up short, when in reality not all his movies were designed that way)? Blame the marketing machine or the studios for trying to push down our throats that every one of his movies just had to have something more to its ending than originally intended.

Having said that, I liked the movie for its journey and, yes, was a little disappointed with the conclusion, if only because the ride of terror throughout kept me on the edge of my seat and then, finding out what the menace was at the end, I went, "Oh, that's the killing machine after all?"

When the terror is invisible, it's that much more frightening, and I didn't want to know what it was that was killing off the population. There is an element of what goes around comes around in life here, but don't try to read too much into the message, or else you will feel let down.

I bet that snooty movie critics everywhere will be calling this Shyamalan's "comeback" picture, thereby cutting it down even more again when comparing it with his brilliant "Sixth Sense" movie. Just enjoy the movie for the brain tease, then see if you can decipher what it is we did wrong as a species and how it can be fixed after you see the ending.

- Howie Nave is host/manager of The Improv comedy club inside Harveys and reviews films for seven radio stations throughout Northern California and Nevada, including Sirius Radio. He hosts "Howie's Morning Rush" on Tahoe's KRLT radio, and you can see his film reviews on RSN. For past reviews, blogs and audio clips, visit www.HowieNave.com.