The Village

So The Village was actually the first M Night Shyamalan film that I really was exposed to. The Sixth Sense came out when I was too young and movies like Unbreakable and Signs never really intrigued me enough to see them. The Village came out and I think Shyamalan had a good enough reputation with one great film in the Sixth Sense and two pretty good films (based on reviews) that people were excited for The Village. I saw a little bit at a friends house and from the little I expected it to be super scary.

Years later, I've read the reviews, I know how this movie did not do well critically and I was trying to remember what exactly about this movie was actually that scary the first time I watched bits and pieces of it. Also it's the only M Night Shyamalan movie I have instant access to so I thought it would be a good movie to go with.

The Village takes place in, you guessed it, a village. The village is Covington and the year is 1897. It's a very isolated village but that doesn't really stop the movie from having a lot of characters. There are the village elders with a lot of familiar names, at least for me. William Hurt plays Edward Walker, the head elder of sorts. Sigourney Weaver plays Alice Hunt. Those are the two main elders, and then you have Jayne Atkinson who played Catherine Durrant on House of Cards and Cherry Jones who played the President on 24, as well as a couple of other elders like Brendan Gleason.

You see this village is isolated because it is surrounded by Covington Woods. In the woods there are  dangerous creatures that will kill anybody who goes out into them. The elders say there is a truce between the Village and the monsters in the woods and as long as nobody goes into the woods, nobody will be hurt.

But then animals start to be killed, skinned, and displayed for the people of the village to see. People are wondering if the truce is at risk.

All the while, a young man by the name of Lucius (played by Joaquin Phoenix) the son of Alice (Sigourney Weaver's character) requests to go into Covington woods to go to "the towns" and get medicine for the village.

You would think this would be the main story but it really isn't. While the monsters in the woods are very important to the story, they kind of take a backseat for the majority to the younger characters in this village falling in love.

You've got Lucius but then you've got a blind girl by the name of Ivy (played by Bryce Dallas Howard). Then you've got her sister Kitty (played by Judy Greer, and if you're a fan of Arrested Development you found that just as funny as I did), and a mentally challenged boy by the name of Noah (played by Adrien Brody). And yeah the entire movie is more focused on these weird love triangles between all the characters and their intentions to fall in love with one another and the heart break that comes along with it.

Seriously, I'm actually a little bit embarrassed that I used to think this movie was scary because A LOT of the movie is just these characters pining over one another and having really sappy dialogue with one another because its supposed to be 1897. Like there is a part where Joaquin Phoenix talks about how he really cares for Bryce Dallas Howard's character. I have never been a fan of Joaquin Phoenix, I don't think he's very good of an actor, but I've seen him do a lot better and that scene was just terrible. Even Sigourney Weaver had some dialogue that I was like, "Sigourney... c'mon, what's going on here? Your delivery of this dialogue is really bad"

The dialogue is horrendous by the way.

The main character really is Ivy. I think I get why M Night wanted the character to be blind, but I'm not sure why he made her Daredevil blind. Seriously, especially in a time where Daredevil came out a year before this movie, it was kind of odd that she was "blind" and yet looked directly at people, walked around barely needing a cane, and can tell exactly who someone is without them actually saying that they're there.

I like that M Night decided to make his main character blind but find a better actress that can actually play a blind person. Not Bryce Dallas Howard.

On a funny note. Did you know that Jesse Eisenberg was in this movie? He has a very small part, but yeah he's in this movie...

There he is.

So why was this movie advertised as a horror film? Well, I don't want to misrepresent this film. There are moments in this film that I guess are supposed to be scary. A lot of the scary elements of this movie come in the fact that there is a lot of mystery. You don't totally know what is going on in this village and it's not totally clear if it's a supernatural element or not. 

The problem is, it is really undercut by both the romantic elements of this film and the filming choices that M Night makes. 

There was one part in this movie that I actually thought was suspenseful and was done decently well. I'm not gonna give anything away, but Ivy is in the woods and she comes across one of the monsters. Now the first thing I will say is that this scene would have been a lot scarier had it been at night, but hey it was kind of suspenseful during the day so I'll give it a pass. 

Ivy is running away from the monster and for some reason M Night just keeps on cutting away to shots of the trees. Then he'll cut back to the action. It's just sloppy cinematography and it kind of took away from a scene that I will admit had me on the edge of my seat unlike the rest of the film. 

And then there is the twist. 

M Night... NOT ALL YOUR MOVIES NEED A TWIST!

I know that this movie came out in 2004 and he really hasn't stopped making twists in his movies, but I think this was the point in his movie career that it was just starting to become a joke. 

This twist is pretty easy to pick up on but honestly the more I think about it, it probably could have made for a better miniseries rather than a single movie. I'm not saying I want to see that, but I'm thinking about it the same way I think about Wayward Pines. 

Yeah I'm kind of in an M Night Shyamalan mood lately and I have been checking out his show on Fox. 

I haven't decided yet if I'm a fan of Wayward Pines yet but I could see another show developing like Wayward Pines in the same environment as The Village. Do I want to see that? No. But in an alternate timeline, I would have suggested M Night go with that route instead of this movie because this movie is extremely dull. 

I'm hoping I can do a review for Wayward Pines sooner or later but we'll see if I actually get through it or not. 

Overall, I think that there was something there in The Village. It is kind of an interesting concept and I think the ending, while you could see it a mile away, is kind of intriguing. But the movie get caught up in what I think M Night thought was character development but instead was just really boring dialogue and a weird love triangle. The scary moments in this film are pretty few and far between and that's coming from somebody who gets scared pretty easily. I know that there were at least two movies in between this and The Sixth Sense, but this was a pretty far drop from the quality of movie The Sixth Sense was. 

I'm really looking forward to checking out the apparently "good films" Shyamalan put out, but I'm also really looking forward to the bad ones. While The Village isn't the worst film M Night has done, (that definitely goes to Last Airbender... for now), it's definitely one I probably didn't need to see. If you haven't seen The Village, you can probably skip it.

But those are my thoughts on The Village. What did you think? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as your requests for the next film I should review on the blog. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out soon.

I'll leave you with this. One thing I will give this movie credit for is the music. I think it actually won an Oscar for the music and I totally understand why. Enjoy!