The Village
Published August 02, 2004
Two words: "yawn" and "sigh."
Could there be any more plot holes in this story? Of course, I can't really relate the story in order to display those holes so as not to destroy what little surprise this movie has in store. In short, I saw it coming after 20 minutes of the movie. If you're paying attention, you will too.
The story, real quick-like, what I can reveal: strange creatures of the woods surrounding a small town prevent the townsfolk from leaving or interacting with the rest of the world. The town and the creatures have an agreement - we don't bother you, you don't bother us - but that truce is broken one night and the creatures begin showing their anger to the town's folk by cutting up their livestock and painting their doors with the dread color red. The kind, quiet Lucius begs to go to the towns outside the woods to fecth badly needed medicine, but is repeatedly turned down. In the meantime, blind Ivy and Lucius fall in love. A tragedy occurs (which cannot be revealed in order to not give away one of the few really good moments of the story) and Ivy is forced to make the journey Lucius wished to make. In between there is that whole twist thing and when revealed it's just about as exciting as this review makes it sound: not very.
What a waste of some fanstastic actors, reading stiff dialogue like they were still practicing it. I don't care what time-period M Night was trying to evoke, no one has ever talked that stiffly in any time period. The feeling I immediately got was that these were just people play-acting to pass the time between meaty roles. Ron Howard's daughter, Bryce Dallas Howard, however, stuns with an evocative, emotional display of acting in every scene - it's just unfortunate she's wasting her talent here. Hopefully she'll get enough exposure to find movies that will really display her talent. Adrien Brody also turns in a fantastic performance as the mentally handicapped Noah. Everyone else . . . well, the term "phoning it in" might be appropriate.
Everything felt forced and unrealistic. The whole thing was just silly - that's the only word I can use to describe it. And this is unfortunate because it's intriguing, the story - M Night is just, unfortunately, occupying his and our time with his trademark "twist" endings. If he'd taken away the twist and just let the story breathe and live like it could have, it might have been an amazing movie. As it is, it's one of the most disappointing movies I've seen in a long, long time.
(Shameless plug: my new site, The Beautiful Lull, is a lot better than this movie.)
- The Village
- Published: August 02, 2004
- Type:
- Section: Video
- Filed Under: Video: Horror
- Writer: Tom Johnson
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Tom?
What are the clues you saw that gave it away?
I saw the plot twists about 5 minutes before they were displayed. I thought the pacing was very good in showing the secrets; cut scenes and the like.
Chris, I loved The Blair Witch Project - I thought it was intriguing and scary as hell. So please don't lump me in with those who can't appreciate some different and non-gory spooks. This was just an effort that falls flat in nearly every aspect.
Tom, it's really difficult to address anything without giving too much away. The first giveaway to one of the two twists was in the first five minutes of the movie, involving a long focus on what might be considered just part of the setup. The clues to the other twist were more piece together than outright - once I had an idea about the one twist, the other fell into place behind it pretty quickly. I sincerely hoped that second twist wasn't going to be what I thought it was, but it turned out to be exactly what I predicted.
Tom,
Didn't mean to call you a "soccer mom," just meant that The Village will have a similar division of opinion I believe......there WILL be a lot of folks who hate it.....I'm not one of them.
I too loved Blair Witch Project - a better film than The Village by far, but a film that created heated debate and angered many viewers........
I've spent the past couple of days thinking about why this movie was so disappointing. I think he dropped the ball, big time. In thinking about why and how he could have avoided that, I came up with a much more intriguing set of scenarios than what actually happened in the movie. If you'd like to read it, do so here, but don't do so if you don't want the story to be spoiled.
How bad a movie could it have been to keep you thinking like that for 2 days?
That's how bothered I am by it, Justene. I just can't let this crap go. I need help, therapy, pills . . . something.
Tom, I am pretty sure that's why they invented single malt scotch.
Hmm . . . I keep thinking that if people would stop treating M. Night's movies like gumball machines that produce surprises instead of gumballs, they would find that The Village is, in fact, quite a moving and thought-provoking bit of film.
The group I saw the flick with loved it, and spent hours talking about it, and saw it again the next day.
And sure enough, leaving the theater the second time, we were surrounded by comments like, "Suckiest movie ever!" and the like.
Oh well.
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Tom, a lot of people will have your reaction. Sort of like The Blair Witch Project......I walked out of the theater loving it, and a soccer mom standing next to me said, "That's the worst piece of shit I ever did see...."