The Village Year: 2004 Director: M. Night Shyamalan Written by: M. Night Shyamalan Threat: TBA Weapon of Choice: TBA Based upon: nothing IMDb page:

Other movies in this series:
None

The tyranist's thoughts
I caught this one during a projectionists screening the night before it opened. Only about six people in the whole building (a 12-screen complex) and all of us sitting right next to each other for some reason.
I'm as big a fan of Shyamalan as anyone I know, with the big exception of Rish, who's way into Shyamalan's movies, and so I was really looking forward to this one. The trailers were at least creepy if not downright scary. For once in my life, the prospect of a period piece didn't make me groan.
So there's this village that has been settled in a valley surrounded by a forest. No one from the village goes into the forest. That's where the creatures live. Nobody wears the colour red. That's the bad colour. And sometimes, the creatures decide they don't want to stay in the forest. That's when the people in the village hide in their cellars.
The atmosphere of this one was pretty much perfect. The writing, while not always the sharpest, was very good. The acting complemented both of those elements well. I've heard Shyamalan called a modern Hitchcock, and that may not be far from the truth. Even once you know his secrets he retains the capacity to keep you on the edge of the seat and even startle.
There are those who may tire of Shyamalan, but I am not one of them. But then, I review horror movies. In that context, Shyamalan is several steps above the masses.
While Rish and I did not manage to see this one together, we did get together long enough to do Skulls. There was some debate about whether we should skip reviewing this one The Sixth Sense style, but ultimately, we decided that making the Threat and Weapon of Choice TBA was sufficient. We even decided that we should probably go back and properly review The Sixth Sense since it has been 4 years.
Posted: August 9, 2004

Rish's Reviews
Tyranist and I don't always agree on our movies. In fact, we probably only agree half the time. But on M. Night Shyamalan we're in complete agreement: the man is a genius. I love Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs. The Sixth Sense was my favourite horror film of the Nineties, as well as the scariest. So, it would've taken an act of God to keep me from seeing his newest film on opening weekend.
Unfortunately, however, back in April (or perhaps March), I had the big twist ending spoiled for me. I made the mistake of looking it up online, and there, in obnoxious bold letters, was the ending spelled out for me. And, as when Darth Vader told Luke Skywalker the ending of The Usual Suspects, as soon as I heard it, I knew it to be true. It ruined my day.
But I thought, Hey, maybe you could still enjoy a film if you knew how it was going to end. I mean, I knew the giant cockroach was going to eat Aragorn and Pippin at the end of Return of the King, and that was still a great movie when I saw it. I think . . . it was a long movie.
So I went. And it's hard to say if I would've loved it or not, had I not known . . . it's not something you can know. There was actually a moment there where I was sure I had been told wrong, somehow. I can't tell you what scene it was without spoiling the whole thing, but it was a pretty amazing moment. Let's just say that someone had told me that the twist was that the monster turns out to be an alligator, and then, halfway into the movie, they showed the monster and it wasn't an alligator. That was nice.
It had a great cast, including William Hurt, Joaquin Phoenix, and Sigourney Weaver. There were some nice scares, and Shyamalan hasn't forgotten how to rack up the tension in a film. Like all three previous releases, The Village is an extremely scary film with a fascinating story, told with flair and a methodical pace. He also is great at making us like his characters and be afraid for them.
But the man has two fatal flaws (what my teachers used to refer as "hubris" or "achilles heels" or maybe "achilles hubrises," I don't know, I didn't do well in school): one is his title as the Master of the Surprise Ending. Always knowing that there's a twist coming can do a disservice to your film. People go in trying to figure out what it is, focusing on solving the riddle instead of caring about the characters, dialogue, and the story. And hey, it shouldn't always be about the twist. Sometimes "Twilight Zone"s didn't have huge twists, the concept was enough to make it worth watching. I think he handicaps himself by making people expect a reversal somewhere down the road.
The second flaw I've found in Mr. Shyamalan, which is even worse than the first one, is his desperate need to stick himself in all his movies.
I suppose the proof of the pudding of The Village is in the twist. And I just don't believe the twist worked. It all left me with a blah feeling, and I'm pretty sure I would've felt that way had I not had it spoiled for me. But the movie shouldn't live and die based on its surprise ending. Both The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable would have worked just fine had the final twist not been there.
Tyranist didn't say in his above review if he liked the film or not. I imagine that he did. And that's good. My Irish friend, who simply hates EVERYTHING, loved The Village. Another friend of mine told me I was wrong in being disappointed by the film. So there are many out there who dug it. For me, though, Shyamalan has made three great films and one mediocre one (and I still haven't seen the Rosie O'Donnell thing). It's not a horrible movie, but it's not great. And that's too bad. It's still worth seeing, I just think that it was so inferior to Shyamalan's previous films that it seemed awful by comparison.
Best Scare: There was a moment involving the blind girl and the approaching creature that was almost too tense to watch. Good work.
I'd Recommend It To: Fans of Shyamalan's work that don't already know.
Posted: August 18, 2004

Total Skulls: 9

Sequel
Sequel setup
Rips off earlier film
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie
Future celebrity appears
Former celebrity appears
Bad title
Bad premise
Bad acting
Bad dialogue
Bad execution
MTV Editing
OTS
Girl unnecessarily gets naked
Wanton sex
Death associated with sex
Unfulfilled promise of nudity
Characters forget about threat
Secluded location
Power is cut
Phone lines are cut
Someone investigates a strange noise
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door
Camera is the killer
Victims cower in front of a window/door
Victim locks self in with killer
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls
Toilet stall scene
Shower/bath scene
Car stalls or won't start
Cat jumps out
Fake scare
Laughable scare
Stupid discovery of corpse
Dream sequence
Hallucination/Vision
No one believes only witness
Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth
Warning goes unheeded
Music detracts from scene
Death in first five minutes
x years before/later
Flashback sequence
Dark and stormy night
Killer doesn't stay dead
Killer wears a mask
Killer is in closet
Killer is in car with victim
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes
Unscary villain/monster
Beheading
Blood fountain
Blood spatters - camera, wall, etc.
Poor death effect
Excessive gore
No one dies at all
Virgin survives
Geek/Nerd survives
Little kid lamely survives
Dog/Pet miraculously survives
Unresolved subplots
"It was all a dream" ending
Unbelievably happy ending
Unbelievably crappy ending
What the hell?