As a romance device, the journey/ordeal is more common with a male protagonist, (e.g., Odysseus's wanderings, the adventures of all knights-errant, Tamino's Prüfung in The Magic Flute, Martin Chuzzlewit's fevered, abortive sojourn in the U.S. and David Copperfield's trudge to his aunt's in Dover, Huck Finn's trip down the Mississippi, etc.), but it serves the same function either way. And Ivy's blindness doesn't make it ridiculous: it's a test of spirit not a literal Olympic event. (Click here for the etymology of "ordeal" and here for historical accounts.)
The problem with this final section of The Village is that it's intertwined with the surprise revelation, which is in a realistic, rather than a supernatural, mode and thus blunts the impact of the ordeal, which is essentially a romance element, i.e., fantastic (Ivy is blind, after all). Shyamalan does not show Scott's ability in The Heart of Mid-Lothian to dovetail genres. This may also be why the ordeal is so indifferently shot (unlike the act of violence that necessitates the ordeal, which is as unaffectedly startling as any I can recall). By the time Ivy sets out we know too much to have responded if it were made spooky, and yet it needs some stylized distancing technique because it's symbolic, an internal struggle projected out onto the world. Not to mention, by this time Lucius is out of commission, and, as good as Howard is, she's better when she's provoking and responding to Phoenix.
Shyamalan works out a solid premise and expands his range, but makes some miscalculations. The combination of genres is altogether stumbling. The problem with Adrien Brody's role as an unbalanced young man isn't that the character is the village idiot, or that the actor overdoes it, but that his symbolic function as the personification of the folly and criminality that are inescapably human (like Dickens's Barnaby Rudge) doesn't quite mesh with the realistic explanation any better than the ordeal does. They might have, perhaps, but don't.
In addition, the movie could use more humor. Having one of the kids make a crack about the fact that they speak of Those We Don't Speak Of all the time could have turned a minus into a plus. (If Shyamalan didn't intend this irony then the name must be an error for Those Whose Name We Don't Speak, or some such.)
Finally, I'm not too attached to the movie's intimations about how fear can unite a community. The experience-tested home truths dramatized by the love story, however, along the lines of, "Love heals ... the wounds it's responsible for inflicting in the first place," do resonate, because of the performances and direction. And as for the deficit of humor, the grave, tremulous mood protects the love story and it's more than a fair bargain. The scene on the porch between the two young, uncorrupted stars suffuses the entire movie and has made me forgive, if not forget, the movie's flaws.
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