Having earned his place in cinema history with the milestone thriller The Sixth Sense, writer-director M Night Shyamalan has gone on to prove the law of diminishing returns with increasingly underwhelming movies like Unbreakable, Signs and the Titanic-scale aquatic disaster Lady in the Water. 

His latest venture continues the trend. A cast of minor stars led by Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel and John Leguizamo flee whatever malign influence freezes people in their tracks before turning them into murderers and suicides.

It is not clear what is causing this behaviour — terrorists? Killer plants? Shyamalan’s all-too-appropriate vistas of fields of corn may be the key clue — but it is even less clear why anyone should care.

Unless the prospect of watching Wahlberg talk tritely to a fake plant is irresistible, use your sixth sense, and any others you possess, to avoid this landmark drivel.