The Village (2004)

Stars: Joaquin Phoenix and William Hurt

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Plugs: None

Review posted Mon Aug 2 14:58:17 2004

The Village is the latest thriller from acclaimed (some would say overhyped) writer/director M. Night Shyamalan. Shyamalan hit it big in 1999 with his twisty ghost story breakout film The Sixth Sense, and followed it up with two modest but lackluster efforts, Unbreakable and Signs.

In The Village, a rural Pennsylvania community believes that the surrounding forest harbors strange, unseen creatures. Village leaders have struck a truce with the monsters, essentially this: don’t attack us and we’ll stay in our village. The village is incredibly (I use the word advisedly) insular; the villagers use neither electricity nor speech contractions. Everyone leads a quasi-idealized, rustic lifestyle until one of the village’s young men is in desperate need of medicine. The man’s beloved, a young blind girl, asks permission to enter the forbidden forest to save him, risking not only herself but an attack on the peaceable hamlet.

The film has two plot twists, neither of which will likely come as a total surprise to anyone familiar with Shyamalan’s other films. Unfortunately, that pretty much covers most of The Village’s intended audience. Writing a review of a film such as this is tricky business, and as much as I’d like to comment on the plot’s inconsistencies, such a discussion would inevitably give away too much. I will therefore leave the surprises intact for those who wish to see the film.

Shyamalan paid strict attention to detail, down to constructing an actual village in a Pennsylvania countryside. He required that the cast actually live in the village and learn rudimentary farm skills for a week or two to lend authenticity to the roles. Though screenwriting is Shyamalan’s bread and butter, I think he is a better director than he is a scripter. While his characters tend to be one-note and undifferentiated, Shyamalan brings interesting visuals and fluid camerawork to the screen.

The stakes are high for both the director and the film studio. Shyamalan could use a Sixth Sense-style hit, and Disney is tanking at the box office so far this year, laden with high profile duds such as The Alamo. The Village has been tarred with rumors of production problems and reshoots. (When directors have to re-film scenes and endings, it is often a sign of trouble, either because the film was poorly edited, doesn’t make sense, or the studio decided it was so godawful that it would be released straight to video. This is what happened with Exorcist: The Beginning, due out in a week or two; a film was completed, done by director Paul Schrader. Renny Harlin —of Cliffhanger and Cutthroat Island—was brought in and shot the film from scratch.)

Though reactions to the film will be likely be polarized, The Village is neither a tour de force nor a disaster. It has some interesting ideas but Shyamalan doesn’t always know how to execute them effectively, and the final “answers” leave much to be desired (and explained). Instead of clever plot twists that grow organically from the story’s internal logic, Shyamalan veers toward cheap but pretentious gimmicks. If Shyamalan wishes to remain on Hollywood’s short list of hot new writer/directors, he should show more respect for his audience in his scripts.