Review – M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village (1 out of 4 stars)

M. Night Shyalaman’s claim to fame (or mediocrity, depending on how you see it) is the “big twist movie”. He tries to string you along for most of the film, then drops a twist in, trying to alter your view of what you saw for the last hour or so. It might work once, but since most of us have seen The Sixth Sense, isn’t it time to move on?



I honestly thought that Night was trying something new with Signs. That film didn’t have the huge twist, and was a decent atmospheric creeping doom kind of deal. It sure was an improvement over the weak Unbreakable. The Village is a huge step back, as it’s arguably the worst of Night’s four big films.

Joaquin Phoenix, Adrian Brody, Sigourney Weaver (with around ten minutes of screen time) and William Hurt headline a big name do-nothing cast that inhabits “the Village”. This village seems to be a quaint, rustic town in the middle of a valley surrounded by deep foreboding woods. The town has a legend of “The Ones We Do Not Speak Of”, which is a fancy name for some feral lupine-ish porcupine monsters that like the color red, aka “The Bad Color”. Is that silly enough yet?

Phoenix is Lucius Hunt, a quiet, inquisitive young man (honestly, Joaquin is too old for these young man roles) to dares to enter the woods out of curiosity. He also keeps asking the village elders for permission to visit “the towns”, which seems to stand for any civilization outside of the village. Unfortunately, a tragedy befalls Lucius, and his ends up at death’s door, driving his fiancé, the blind girl Ivy (Judy Greer, I think) to take up his quest to brave the woods to get some life-saving drug for Lucius.

This whole thing munches up 75 to 80% of the film. Then, Night drops his big twist in, and brings the whole thing to a close before you lynch him for such a stupid conclusion.

If you figure out the whole thing (as I did halfway through because the villagers drop hints here and there) or even have a vague sense of what’s going on, the whole film ends up being a tepid anticlimax. Even if you don’t have an inkling, what is to be gained by the exercise? It’s like the director and writer trying for a “ha ha we fooled you” moment at the expense of 90+ minutes of your life.

It might be tolerable if Night did a better job with the front end of the film. Unfortunately, he didn’t. The cast looks like they’re going through the paces. Brody is a huge waste, playing a simpleton part that could be excised with no great loss to the film. The shots throughout the film are either wide angle shots of two characters in conversation (we don’t get to see their expressions) or really dark night shots. The dialogue tries to prove a point (this is a rustic town) but ends up stilted and unconvincing. It’s around Michael Bay quality.

This all ends up as a pretty crappy waste of 90 minutes of your life. Sorry, Night, time to give up the twists and try to be a real filmmaker.

Bottom line: Pass on it. If you’ve never seen an M. Night film, see The Sixth Sense, then Signs. Don’t bother with this or Unbreakable, or any more Night films that you hear end with a “twist”.