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Dancing_P [ 2.5 ]
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He's finally gone and done it. M. Night Shymalan's finally made a truly bad movie... but he's not content at simply making it bad. This is awful; this is cataclysmically bad. We'd all thought that we'd found a true successor to Hitchcock with his first two movies. When Signs turned out to be pretty blah, we forgave him the slip-up. But nothing can forgive The Village. It's an ill-concieved, silly, stuffy, unengaging and inept piece of crap; it is everything we never wished from Shymalan. The titular Village is a 19th century community deep in the woods, populated by a bunch of great actors who all look like they've got a rod up their ass. Their village is in a clearing surrounded by woods; the woods contain Those We Do Not Speak Of, creatures who have apparently made a pact with villagers to never enter the village if the villagers never enter their woods. Then something happens and someone is injured, forcing Ivy Walker (Bryce Dallas Howard) to venture out into the forest to get medicine. The film once again revolves around twists that are not so much original and more ridiculous. They're twists for the sake of a twist and they're made with so little care for the rest of the film that you find gaping plot holes everywhere. Even without the twists, the film is dull and lifeless. The dialogue is stilted and uninteresting and the actors (save for Howard, who's actually pretty good, and Adrien Brody, who's not very good but at the very least looks alive) wooden. The Village is a colossal waste of talent, time and 60 million dollars. It's the film we never thought Shymalan would stoop down to. At the very least, it gives us hope that he has nowhere to go but up.
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chapter11 [ 2.0 ]
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It was just so painfully disappointing .. here's my full review, reprinted from Epinions.com:
M. Night Shyamalan's the Village is a disturbing film. It disturbs, not by flagrantly displaying the mauled bodies of murder victims or by steering us directly into the unsettling eyes of a vile but all-too-knowing madman, but by documenting the descent of a terrifically promising young filmmaker. When 1999's the Sixth Sense made Shyamalan the auteur-du-joir of mainstream suspense hounds, i snorted skeptically; here, essentially, was a well-acted bore, redeemed by visual atmosphere and an ending that cleverly wrapped-up the tale. But with subsequent features Unbreakable and Signs, Shyamalan was established - in my mind, at least - a maker of films that reminded me of why I loved going to the theater in the first place. Signs, particularly, is one of my fonder recent theater-going memories - something about a few hundred people cramming into that theater on opening weekend, collectively jumping and gasping and nervously laughing and clawing at their dates' arms at all the right spots, made me feel a sort of kinship with the prissy old lady on my date's left and the large sweaty bald man on my direct right: they were not people that ruined the experience for me, but people that I shared the experience with, and while there were intervals in which I contemplated suggesting the wonders of Speed Stick to my neighbor, I was more enraptured in the film. Others predated this review by citing Signs as Shyamalan's first misstep, but I absolutely loved it. It was my conversion point, and caused me to actively anticipate Night's next picture.
And then previews began to run, and the Village seemed to me something that could actually best Signs as Night's best work. The atmosphere conjured through the trailers was wonderful, and Judy Greer's frantic whisper of "don't let them in" that served as a prelude to that delightfully dramatic title-card-smash could, in my mind, replace Haley Joel Osment's hushed, pop-eyed "I see dead people" as Shyamalan's most-quoted line. In fact, it seemed to conjure Signs - it looked to me as if the villagers would spend much of the film hiding in some vast, dank Victorian house, thinking of a way to fend off their unseen, woodsy terrorists. Which seems awfully derivative of Signs, I know, but it was set in a foggy, atmospheric, Sleepy Hollow-esque village in the 1800s, which is much more exciting than contemporary Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
Naturally, then, the Village became an opening-weekend priority for me. I even chose it over a Manchurian Candidate remake starring Denzel (which ended up being just as dire, but that's another review) as my weekend movie. And, hunkered in a corner of a crowded theater with a economy-sized barrel of popcorn and my friends Stephanie and Roxann, i was prepared for another Signs-ly experience. And it's like everyone else says: not only is it one of the most disappointing films of the year, but it's one of the most disappointing in recent memory. And at the end of the film, as I groaned loudly enough to prompt a wiry man who looked like Ren from "Ren & Stimpy" to shush me, I felt kinda cheated, and kinda used, and kinda piissed off that Night made Signs and set the bar so bloody high. Perhaps those of y'all who didn't like Signs could have expected this, or even had the good foresight to avoid the Village. But man, you don't understand how _crushed_ I am.
**
Here's the thing: the Village is _not_ a horror film. It's not even a suspense film. Instead, it's a suspenseful film that unveils itself to be (shock of shocks) a big fat lie. If someone hasn't gone and spoilt it for you already, don't let me be the first - let me just say that the surprise ending isn't the sort of cleverly set-up, delightfully-unveiled twist that'll leave you jabbering enigmatically to all your friends for days after. Rather, it's a left-field sledgehammer smash that blows the film's cover - the film was not setting up for the surprise all along; instead, it was leading in a different direction entirely.
The Village is about an isolated town, hunkered away in some remote stretch of Pennsylvania woodland. The village is self-contained, self-servicing, mainly because the citizens of the village are frightened of traveling beyond their town's borders. This is, naturally, because venturing into the woods will stir up the ire of several large, angry porcupines, and that would just throw a wrench into the mechanism of their existence.
The village is populated with an a-list roster of actors occupying c-list roles. Recognizable faces like Joaquin Phoenix, Adrien Brody, Sigourney Weaver, and Brendan Gleeson crop up, and the most observant of film fans will even recognize people like Judy Greer (of 13 Going on 30), Michael Pitt (of Bully), and Cherry Jones (of Signs). Everyone involved, though, is either very heavy-handed or terribly wooden - only Brody and Greer deviate from this norm, Greer playing the self-absorbed town beauty with humor and pathos (and delivering that scary "don't let them in!" line from all the trailers), Brody realizing that his character is mentally challenged and then going on a sort of retarded autopilot. The meatiest role, of course, is handed to Ron Howard's daughter Bryce Dallas, cited in every review of The Village as the cast's lone spark of impeccable casting. She plays a young blind woman who "sees people's colors" (and who, as my friend Neesha astutely pointed out, "didn't figure out she was blind until halfway through" - despite this obvious oversight, though, Howard plays her character with wit and verve, and half as much can't be said for anyone else).
For such a formidable ensemble, though, I can't recall a single time that I cared about any of the characters. I gasped when Joaquin Phoenix's stoic Lucius got callously shanked by Brody halfway through the film - not because it horrified me to see Phoenix's character gutted like a pig, but because I thought it was ballsy of Shyamalan to kill him off that early. Now, whether he _actually_ dies or not I won't say (given the nature of this film, though, let me say that either answer is quite possible); but the bigger, more chaotic twist that ends the film is _not_ ballsy. It is insulting, and quite uncalled for. Let me try to explain why.
There were scenes in the Village's first hour or so that i found genuinely suspenseful. For all M. Night's arrogance and newfound pretentiousness (note that his previous three films were populated with easily relatable, likeable protagonists), he _is_ a master of mood and atmosphere, and knows how to ratchet up both like few people since Hitchcock. And, so, there's a scene near the beginning where those big angry porcupines (who the characters refer to using the more flowery moniker "those of which we do not speak") descend upon the frightened village in the middle of the night. And nothing happens, of course, but the interim is _scary_! Everyone dashes inside and bolts their doors - and, of course, the blind girl is left outside, waiting for Joaquin Phoenix to sweep her away, and it's idiotic, of course, but there's a moment where she waits on her porch, trembling, arm outstretched - and in the distance, there's an out-of-focus monster creeping her way. It is when I think about scenes like that that the final twist of the Village truly piisses me off - because it tells me that everything that left me in giddy, blissful suspense - the only scenes that redeemed the movie from being a horrible bore - was a big fat hairy lie. I was duped. Hoodwinked. Swindled. Bamboozled. I feel disgruntled. Disenfranchised. Disrespected. Curse you, M. Night Shyamalan, for making me feel these things.
The Village is a film that, by standards of sheer filmmaking, allows Night's talent to shine - and, in certain scenes, parades it around like a banner. His remarkable gift for atmosphere and suspense manifests itself in a few selective but genuinely suspenseful scenes. The problem with the film is that in-between it's boring, and once the end rolls around, you realize you weren't alternately excited and bored for a purpose - the Village is simply a piiss-poor stab at social commentary that takes its audience for fools.
I wish M. Night Shyamalan better luck on his next venture - if not for his sake, then for ours.
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kcremer [ 7.0 ]
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What I liked: The premise of the movie - seemingly original and interesting; Bryce Dallas Howard - great performance from Ron's daughter, who has very captivating eyes; The signature M. Night Shyamalan plot twist in the final third of the movie.
What I didn't like: Minimal character development - aside from Howard, I didn't feel enough of a connection with or understand enough about the characters to care much what was going on with them; Weak script, which makes the good premise obsolete - and once you find out the twist you'll be surprised on one hand and unimpressed on the other, considering the work Shyamalan has done before.
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gamer27 [ 5.0 ]
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What a misfire! I was looking forward to this movie for awhile. The reason it doesn't work is because of the weak premise and poorly executed plot twist. Everything else is pretty well done.
** out of ****
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DokBrowne [ 6.0 ]
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I think I've talked more about this movie to other people than any other I can readily recall during the rest of my life, which may be ironic considering I don't really like it that much (the reasons being far too complex and the hour too late at this moment for me to elaborate)
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jeff_v [ 5.0 ]
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Spoilers!
Each of Shyamalan's films concern a bereaved man who willfully walls himself from reality. In the first three films, circumstances intervene which result in the man rejoining the world. Not so in The Village, which ends more or less where it started, and makes you wonder what the point was. I didn't have a problem with the so-called "twists," which were easily guessed and probably play better when you're aware of their existence anyway. But there could have been some greater attention to character development, particularly in the neuroses driving the William Hurt character.
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| Weighted Rating | : 5.1 |
| No. Ratings | : 13 | |
| No. Reviews | : 6 | |
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