The Duke had to suspend the disbelief till I thought that damn thing was gonna break and smack me upside the face, but to no avail. The twist came too early, is what. You can't for a second expect me to buy such ridiculous toss just five minutes after explicitly stating that such toss was indeed a load of the "balls".

It's like if Hitchcock tried to convince us that Mamma Bates was still running around the place a second after showing the corpse in the cellar.

The most telling shots arrive in the form of the patented Shyamalan cameo, when he can't even look at the audience. We get the back of his head, and then a reflection of him in a glass cabinet, but he never looks right at us. It's like a kid tryin to tell you he didn't piss the bed and that it must've been someone else. He looks at the floor, he looks at the ceiling…

Look me in the eyes, motherfucker. Look me in the eyes and say you didn't piss that bed. You think I'm stupid? Don't insult my motherfucking intelligence.

Sorry folks. It's just that The Duke is a respected member of the intelligentsia and the very thought that M Night Shyamalan might try and pull such nonsense is nothing if not a hideous slight on my character.

There are many, many things to enjoy in The Village, not least the performances of Joaquin Phoenix, Adrien Brody and Bryce Dallas Howard, the latter being the daughter of the fella from Happy Days what went on to make films about Russell Crowe does a few sums and stuff.

The Fonz, I believe he was.

Also, Shyamalan's direction is perfect for the most part, flinging the tension around with abandon, doing it so well, in fact, that even a load of the daft slow-motion antics can't blight it.

James Newton Howard's score is also fantastic, sounding on occasion like something Phillip Glass might have come up with. There's also the matter of the cinematography by Roger Deakins, what paints the whole affair in a gorgeous autumnal haze.

But there's just no escaping the fact that The Village sells itself short on numerous occasions. For one damn thing, it has everyone going in expecting a horror flick, of all things. Let The Duke be the first to swear by Lincoln's Knuckles that this is far from a horror flick. It's more like a curious reinvention of fairy-tale mythology, like what Neil Jordan got up to in the brilliant The Company Of Wolves, except The Village has less sexing metaphors, far as I can see.