The Village

my rating:

For his next movie, I think M. Night Shyamalan should do another kiddie flick.* Not because I think he's run out of ideas for his trademark suspense dramas, but because I spent much of the time I spent watching The Village simply wondering what "the twist" was going to be this time.

The big twist in The Sixth Sense was so effective in part because most people (at least opening weekend) didn't know to look for it. The twist in Unbreakable worked because he gave so few clues outside of the conventions of the genre subtext he was playing with. And the twist of Signs was less about defying expectations as it was about how everything actually and suddenly fit into place. For The Village Shyamalan had to do a triple reverse twist with a backflip.

The setup of the film demands some kind of explanation: an Amish-like community lives isolated from the outside world by "those we do not speak of", monsters with whom the villagers live in an uneasy truce: the people don't venture into the woods, and TWDNSO don't enter the village.

So are they real? If so, what are they? Having seen his earlier movies, thoughts of dead people, of super villains, and of aliens cross through the viewer's mind. Knowing that we're guessing, Shyamalan withholds vital information from us. He even postpones a key revelation scene from us, to be shown later as a flashback. He hints at answers, but they can be misleading. And even when we think we know, he starts making us doubt that we're right... or maybe we were, after all.

This is why I think Shyamalan's painting himself into a corner. We're so prepared for subtrefuge from him, that he has to resort to multiple misdirections.

But anyway, it still works very well. Nearly-30-year-old Joaquin Phoenix is a bit old for the role he's playing here. I don't care how sheltered and innocent your society is; someone his age is not going to be regarded as "not yet a man" like his character is here. He'd also have to be 2/3 his actual age to avoid a plot hole (about which I won't elaborate). But that's nit-picking.

Some people are going to be disappointed that the final explanation doesn't necessarily require a complete re-interpretation or re-examination of the events of the film; it merely answers the questions. So the ending isn't quite as dramatic in that sense. But the movie is suspenseful and it's thoughtful... two characteristics usually missing from "horror" films. (Nathan didn't want to see this one, because it's "scary". But he's looking forward to Alien Vs. Predator. Go figure.)

* Yes: "another". Just before he became famous for spooky twisters, MNS wrote and directed a light-hearted coming-of-age movie called Wide Awake, and he also wrote the screenplay for Stuart Little.