What an absolutely frustrating film. I so wanted to like this, I didn't want to believe all of the bad reviews I saw, I wanted to believe in the good ones. It's hard, as a film goer, not to suffer a little anxiety when going in to see a film from a director whose work you like so much. This is especially true when the reviews are either of the ***.5 or * variety, with nothing in the middle. But I'm getting ahead of myself. We need to back up a bit before we can go forward.
It all began back in 1999 with a little film called The Sixth Sense. It was a phenomenon that sprung creepy kids back into the spotlight. Not to mention being an intelligently written, and acted film that stood up under scrutiny after discovering the twist. Then in 2000 he struck again, this time redefining the superhero film with Unbreakable. Move ahead a little more to 2002 and we get a new take on the alien invasion story with Signs. Now, in 2004 we get, I guess, a new fairy tale. Unfortunately, it is not nearly as successful in execution as the previous three.
It's hard to really talk about this film without giving away the twist. Of course, after knowing the twist, you wish you did do you could have saved your time and money. There were a large number of things that I did like about the movie, but not enough to really recommend it. I guess I should start with some sort of plot description.
The story takes place at the turn of the century, in a village that is completely isolated from the outside world. The reason they are so isolated is because the entirety of the town is surrounded by woods that are inhabited by strange creatures called "Those We Do Not Speak Of." There is a truce between the villagers and these creatures not to trespass on each others lands, and that truce has lasted until now. Of course this leads to something happening that causes the break of the truce. The creatures start to enter the village, leaving warnings for those wishing to leave, in hopes of squashing an attempt to break the delicate balance that is in place.
Article comments
1 - Vic
I was on the side of liking the movie. Sure, it had it's problems, but after so many years of TV shows and movies with "twist endings" I think it just gets harder and harder to come up with something that doesn't seem totally contrived. (BTW, one of the BEST I've seen was in Dark City.)
As far as the flat performances go, it seems to me that was to go along with the loss of a "spark" among the inhabitants of this idyllic village. Kind of like the price they paid for living there.
Vic
2 - Tom Johnson
I have noticed some people, the few who actually do like this movie, to be incredibly, insultingly defensive about it - such as the person you note who says intelligent people will like it, stupid people will not. This is the kind of argument people make when they have nothing of value or substance to back up their claims, but do possess a desperate, white-knuckled grasp of a belief that they're just one of the elite who got the film.
M Night's been good to great with his previous three films and I think that has carved out a little safe hovel in people's minds where if this film doesn't really please then they can say "Well, he's doing that on purpose and you just don't get it." But there's nothing here to really get - I grasp fully what he was trying to do, but it just falls flat. What's worse, I had already figured out the twists shortly into the movie, but I hoped desperately that they really weren't going to be the twists - and of course they were. It was just a really dissatisfying movie experience overall, where his other three were still enjoyable - even if the ending of Signs was kinda lame, the rest of the movie was great and very engrossing. The Village was simply not.