Review: The Village

It's hard to know where to start with all that goes wrong in this bloated, self-important film. It's shallow, uninspiring, and by far the worst movie Shyamalan has released.



The cast is one of the few saving graces. They fill their roles with more depth that Night seems to have written into the characters. They are working against a massive uphill walk though and some suffering some pretty painful falls along the way. To call the dialogue stilted would be kind to stilted dialogue. However, once the twist is revealed, I believe that this issue can be justified rather Shyamalan planned it that way or not. The cast is also apparently not told what to do through most of the film since they spend it wandering the town at night, bickering among the elders, and sitting on porches.



The main trouble comes with the twist. Some reviewers claim to have guessed the twist. I find this unlikely since the twist is so stupid. Anti-climatic isn't even strong enough to express how this movie fizzles in the scenes leading up to and directly after the twist is revealed. And this is the real shame. The movie was actually good up to a point. I don't want to reveal anything major, but halfway through the movie, someone is hurt badly and they need medicine which can only be found in "the towns" surrounding the village. So, someone is chosen to journey into the woods, where "Those we do not speak of" live, to get the medicine. The first, and less surprising twist, is revealed at this point and the second follows after some absurd Blair-Witch-like moments. Up until this incident occurs, the movie is interesting and a good snapshot of characters. After this set up, Shyamalan seems far too interested in gloating about how great his twist is. If it were half as good in reality as it was in his mind, then the twist probably would have blown us all away. Sadly, it's just dumb. It's not that believable and it leaves blaring plot holes in the story. Sadly, I can't go into these plot holes without revealing the twist.



One other point of interest is that several critics have come away from this movie with the impression that it is an allegory about American in the post 9/11 world. The idea of good and bad colors (the alert system) and the fear that grips us and makes us do what we do (America the fearful) are two examples pointed to. Also, the patriarch's last name is Walker, and we know what current President happens to have Walker as a middle name. Is Shyamalan trying to make an anti-Bush allegory? I can't say that I know. Having seen the movie, I can certainly see the parallels that the critics have been talking about. It might also explain why Shyamalan seems to have not cared about much in this movie. Perhaps he was on a quest to make a point and forget to make a good movie in the process. For whatever the reasons, this movie was a big letdown. Let me close with a quote from Ebert, who sums up my feelings rather well,

Eventually the secret of Those, etc., is revealed. To call it an anticlimax would be an insult not only to climaxes but to prefixes. It's a crummy secret, about one step up the ladder of narrative originality from It Was All a Dream. It's so witless, in fact, that when we do discover the secret, we want to rewind the film so we don't know the secret anymore.



And then keep on rewinding, and rewinding, until we're back at the beginning, and can get up from our seats and walk backward out of the theater and go down the up escalator and watch the money spring from the cash register into our pockets.

I couldn't agree more.