The Happening/The Cell

I have a not- so- secret obsession with reading people.com and other celebrity dish sites. It's a truly terrible addiction, and I kind of hate that I like reading about other people so much.. but oh well! This morning I was reading dlisted (another fave) and noticed an item about M. Night Shyamalan's new movie The Happening. From an interview with him/reading the comments on the imdb page, I figured out that the film is about some type of airborne toxin that does something (?) to most of the population. A married couple, played by Zooey Deschanel & Mark Wahlberg, then spend the rest of the film trying to survive or escape.
I'm not sure exactly what the toxin does to people, but some of the comments on imdb likened the plot to Stephen King's Cell. As I happen to like both Zooey and Mark, I hope that this movie is not like the book, because I thought it was a tired, not very good re-worked version of some of King's older books. In the interview quotedon dlisted Shyamalan says that this movie is going to be really scary, and that the opening scene features a woman watching her infected friend doing something "so disturbing" he didn't want to give it away in the interview. I can't figure out what else could be so disturbing to watch, so I'm assuming the infected woman is doing something not just yucky but also really bloody/gross. Based upon the possible connections to Cell and the director's comments I'm a little afraid to see this movie. I hated Cell, and am not a huge fan of gore but I LOVE disaster movies. Guess I'll have to wait and see....