M. Night's upcoming brainchild regarding an 1886 Pennsylvanian village being surrounded by "fairy tale creatures" concealed within the cordon sanitaire of woods. I might have the story's date wrong, but for those of you who read the allegedly leaked script, the date is irrelevant. However, I don't believe for a second this "leaked script" is bona fide. Sure, it's an ending with a kick, but it's nothing that hasn't been done before. Just like The Sixth Sense: Nickelodeon 1993 (?) TV series "Are You Afraid of the Dark?" had an episode virtually identical in premise and twist ending to that of The Sixth Sense LONG before the movie was released.

I watched the trailer for this movie. I'm definitely going, and I have a feeling there's so much more to this latest project than what the "leaked script" suggests. I read somewhere that two characters in the movie are physically impaired in that one is blind and the other mentally challenged. You just KNOW this'll play in with the surprise twist.

Glad to see Joacquin Phoenix in this one. Not a William Hurt fan; I sort of find him to be an a-hole. Ashton Kutcher's name was attached to this movie for a while and then just inexplicably disappeared. This must be the movie off which I heard Ashton was fired. Apparently, the director discovered Ashton can't act. Gee, YA THINK?! Ashton comes across to me as a suped-up version of Steve the Dell Dude, which isn't saying a lot (;

I think after this movie, M. Night ought to give his next project a Wes Craven's New Nightmare type of spin in that the movie would concern some "force/presence" pervading the set of a director/writer, who wouldn't necessarily be the star. In fact, why not make the very "force/presence" THE STAR and see the movie from its perspective a la the movie Fallen. This could provide a much longer M. Night cameo and direct his moviemaking skills in a whole new direction instead of doing the same horror/thriller-twist ending movie over and over again. Happy New Year!

"...Direct his moviemaking skills in a whole new direction..."--Me.

Let me be the first to celebrate my eclectic vocabulary (insert sarcasm here).

One more post (sigh, I need a life).

"Where am I?"
"The Village."
"Whose side are you on?"
"That would be telling..."

Anyone catch that reference? (;

Well, I saw it tonight, and I realize now that I kind of liked it. I thought the first half was a whole lot of nothing, though I did like the relationship between Phoenix's Lucius and Bryce Howard's Ivy. That was nice to watch.

The 2nd half, when we get to see many of Shyamalan's trademarks, that was much more interesting. I especially liked how he worked his cameo into this one. Clever.

Anyway, it was interesting enough. I'd definitely see it again.

In brief: M. Night Shyamalan’s worst movie yet, slow and sleep-inducing in the beginning, manipulative and cheap in the end.

It’s become clearer and clearer to me that with the success of The Sixth Sense, M. Night Shyamalan may be just a one-trick pony. What was a well-written and well-acted drama with tension and a shock ending worthy of a classic has given way to a trilogy of progressively worse movies that seem created more just to justify a clichéd shock ending than to provide a coherent or meaningful story, and this comes to a crux with The Village. Even Unbreakable, with its snore-inducingly drab color palette and lighting, which put me to sleep at both screenings I attended for it, had a somewhat interesting human story that held up surprisingly well when I saw it on TV recently. Signs, despite the same boring first Act, villains whose actions made no sense, and plot holes big enough to drive a Mack truck through, had genuinely scary moments. The Village, however, lacks any of these virtues, but whose first 35 minutes (and some intermittent moments afterwards) is of that same flat quality that works better than NyQuil, and whose ending doesn’t seem so much as a shocker as it does an offensive hoax.

The movie is set in (I believe) the 1800’s, in an isolated Pennsylvania village surrounded by the Covington Woods, into which the villagers are forbidden to cross, lest they disrupt the truce between the village and Those We Do Not Speak Of, demonic creatures that even in their first obscured appearance in the film, do not look scary, but rather merely silly, resembling the Scarecrow monster in the current story arc that just wrapped in Batman. There is not a single scary moment in this film, absolutely nothing in the way of suspense, character development, or an interesting plot in the first forty or so minutes of the film, until a character’s contrived serious injury requires the film’s female heroine, Ivy (Bryce Dallas Howard—director Ron’s daughter), to venture forth into “the towns” to find medicine, at which point the Shyamalan Shocking Revelation^TM is revealed, which unlike those in Shyamalan’s previous three films, resembles more a massive scam than it does a plot twist, a scam perpetrated on both the characters and the audience, and if it took you until this scene to figure out that Ivy’s blindness was contrived to mesh with this eventual plot twist, then perhaps you haven’t been watching a lot of Shyamalan films. Or many films period.

Edward Walker (William Hurt) tells Lucius (Joaquim Phoenix) that he is fearless in a way that he will never be. D@mn right, Edward. Most people who suffer from grief eventually get over it. You and your fellow rejects, on the other hand, were so cowardly that rather than face your pain, you not only retreated from society, but decided to engineer a massive lie to your children to cover up the truth, when you could very easily have retreated from society and lived a simpler existence without making the kids believe that they were living in a past century, complete with silly bogeyman costumes, and your silly insistence on using antiquated phrases in your speech like “fortnight.”

It is at the point of this “revelation” that the entire movie doesn’t seem at all like a journey in which insight is made in terms of characters or themes, or the audience is treated to even a plausible plot (Shyamalan explains that airspace is restricted over the wildlife preserve in which the village is located, but doesn’t explain how that small group of founders transported all the building materials necessary to build all those nice-looking homes and town halls), but just one big practical joke; a pointless exercise in how to maintain a color-by-numbers format that Shyamalan seems to insist for all of his films, such as the obligatory Pennsylvania setting, the use of the color red as a plot harbinger (as it was in The Sixth Sense—in Unbreakable and Signs it was water), and of course, Shyamalan’s patented Shoehorned-Into-The-Story appearance, which is thankfully kept to a minimum, as it takes the form of mostly a voice and a minor reflection in the glass door of a medicine cabinet. Hey, Night! Wanna come up with a new schtick? It’s getting kind of old, ya know.

Luigi, I completely agree. While the performances were solid, the material was dull and the twist ending was, while not 100% predictable, ultimately not surprising. And considering what that twist WAS, that's really bad. Ivy's blindness smacks of the same lazy scriptwriting that tried to pass off the unlikely combination of neurotic water-glass girl, allergy boy and frustrated baseball star with poor impulse control as "God's Plan" in "Signs" when in fact it was just a pile of "get me out of this corner." Hey, M--it's "God's Plan" when something that unlikely happens in REAL LIFE. In a movie it just means you stink as a writer.

This movie might have fared better had "Sixth Sense" not come along first, but we expect it by now. M. Night Shamalamadingdong needs a new schtick--hmm, maybe we could see if he's capable of telling a coherent narrative for starters? Get him and Tim Burton together in a room and see if between the two of them they can tell a story.

I entirely disagree on your assessment of the coincidences in Signs... the contrivances in that movie were designed to be contrivances. And I believe that they were revealed in a very clever way... and the twist was at the heart of the story.

***SPOILERS OF THIS FILM (AND OTHER FILMS) AHEAD***

The biggest difference between the "twist" in The Village, as opposed to Shyamalan's other films is that the twist isn't revealed cinematically... it's told to us. Bruce Willis never says, "Oh my God... I'm a ghost!" It's presented to us through visuals and already-heard dialogue that illuminates the twist and completely changes our point of view. The same goes for other classic "twists"... Chazz Palmentieri doesn't cry out, "Holy ••••! He was Keyser Soze all along!" Charlton Heston doesn't say, "Hey! That looks like the Statue of Liberty over there!" The audience is involved in the process of discovery and revelation... which makes the experience that much more enjoyable.

Shyamalan seemed to take a vacation with certain elements on this one... I don't think the twist is bad... I think it's poorly presented.

Another thing... while we walk into his movies expecting a twist or surprise of some sort... none of the other movies really remind us of it during the watching. Aside from an amusing piece of dialogue in Unbreakable (where Jackson tells Willis the comic has a surprise ending), I don't recall any of Shyamalan's other films (at least since The Sixth Sense) reminding the audience that there's a twist coming up. This film seems to continually remind us... "This village has secrets." And then when those secrets are revealed in such a boring (not to mention confusing) fashion, it's no wonder people are less than impressed.

Speaking of cinematics... one scene in particular I think demonstrates just how lazily Shyamalan approached this film... the discovery that Brody escaped from the "quiet room" is (like the twist) told to us. I think his mother says something along the lines of, "My God! Where is he?" And then we spend a minute with the camera panning down to the floor to chow how he got out of the chair and broke through the window... except this is information we were just told.

On top of this, there's the revelation that he took the costume from under the floorboard (now, THIS is a contrivance... an even worse one than the blind girl)... which is again, communicated strictly through dialogue. I almost feel there was supposed to be an earlier scene that explained this, but it got cut in the editing process, and a line of dialogue explaining it was dubbed over the scene.

Now, in my mind, Shyamalan has hardly tipped the scales to the point where I cannot respect his work. The Village is disappointing... and sometimes outright bad. But... I'm not upset that I saw it... it's still better than a lot of stuff that gets made today. And I look forward to his next film... after he's learned from his mistakes with this one.

I don't recall mentioning any coinicidences or contriviances in Signs, either on this board or on the board for that movie. Plot holes, yes. The first person to bring up the topic of coincidences for that film on that board in fact, was you, Darth.

Um... my post follows D Mann's, not yours... in his post, he compares the contrivance of the blind girl with the set-ups in Signs.

I don't only disagree with you, Luigi.

Oh, sorry.

Darth, could you please explain what you mean by "the contrivances in ["Signs"] were meant to be contrivances?"

And do you really think M will learn from his mistakes? His movies get worse over time. He comes off as incredibly hubristic in his movies. Do you think he's capable of acknowledging his mistakes?

I'm nowhere near as eloquent as Luigi in expressing my thoughts (though I swear they make sense in my head).

You had suggested that the contrivances in Signs (water-obsessed daughter, asthmatic son, etc.) were a symptom of lazy writing, much like Ivy's blindness in The Village.

The difference (to me, anyway) is that while in both films the set-ups are very convenient in relation to the eventual payoff, the whole point of Signs was that these things were meant to be convenient... "What if there are no coincidences," says Graham. The contrivances were central to resolving the thematic arc of the film... a man who has lost his faith.

This is different than the coincidences in The Village... the girl who falls in love with the dying man (and hence wants to get medicine for him) is the only character who can leave the village without exposing its secrets because she can't see what the outside world looks like. The girl was made blind only because it was a convenient way of allowing her out of the village. It really served no other purpose.

I hope Shyamalan learns from his mistakes. I disagree that his films get worse over time. Yes, The Sixth Sense set the bar pretty high (and the only way to go is down from there)... so Unbreakable seems a disappointment in comparison. But if you haven't already, I suggest you watch Unbreakable again... because I feel it's a heck of a lot better than people (even me, for a time) gave it credit for.

Shyamalan films are mostly about mood... there's not a heck of a lot that happens in them. He just seems to sit the camera and shoot these lengthy scenes. And in comparison to most films nowadays, his films seem slow-paced. But I've found this compelling more than slow. I've found myself enthralled with the visuals -- even when it seems there's nothing there, there turns out to be a lot there. There is a whole 20 minute (or so) sequence in Unbreakable with no dialogue. And yet, he's able to run the gamut of excitement as well as terror in that sequence. No, the twist wasn't as cool as The Sixth Sense. But then, I don't think the twist was meant to be.

As for Signs... I, for one, love it. In my opinion, it's a near-perfect film. Like his previous two films... not a lot happens plot-wise. But there are big changes for its characters.

Is it believeable? No. But then, what movie really is?

But I wholeheartedly agree with much of the criticism for The Village. It is very hubristic at times... spoon-feeding information to the audience. Do I think it's awful? No. And perhaps on a second viewing on DVD I'll find more redeeming qualities. And while I agree that the film smacks of laziness, I don't think it has anything to do with the premise. I think it's a neat idea (and one we haven't seen before in a film... to my recollection). But it's the execution of that premise (both in the writing and the directing) where the film falls incredibly short.

Funny question:

Are the inhabitants of the village called: "The Village People"?

No, but Adrian Brody was certainly the Village Idiot.

Just saw it. This movie was neither thrilling nor horrifying and was pretty much a complete waste of time.

I, too, agree that the movie was not interesting on its own and bad compared to Sixth Sense. I didn't know what the secret would be at the beginning, but I wondered right away about a small village of a couple hundred people max. (from the big gatherings we see) that has no trade possibilities (because the woods can't be crossed because of the Unspeakables), yet they have a lot of nice clothes and other stuff that would be hard to produce locally. (I also can't remember anybody doing a lot of agricultural work - or was that supposed to be because of the late season? If it was late autumn, they should still be gathering harvest, and we should see fields all around instead of grass meadows. If the tombstone at the beginning says 1897 (and that's what they strive for), then 80% of the population have to work hard in the fields (since there's no modern machinery). And even if the dresses the people wear are linen instead of cotton, wouldn't they need a machine to break and spin the raw plant in sufficient numbers? Also, where are the sheep for the wool clothes?

SPOILER

Secondly, when the creatures appeared - obvious by their cloaks to be humanoid - nobody had any weapons. Even in hindsight - that the elders pretended that - it makes no sense: esp. in America, every farmer near woods would have a shotgun at least, if not for active hunting, than for defense against rabid wolves and coyotes and similar. Even if one of the rules of their little society was to have no guns because so many of their loved ones died because of the violence, there are less easily deadly weapons like bows and arrows or spears that still can defend against wild animals. (And considering that the woods aren't entered either by the villagers or the rangers, there must be a bunch of wild animals running around now).

Third, as Luigi already said, and especially considering it takes place in Pennsylvania, where the Amish and other societies live a more primitive life, why the elaborate set-up?
If they didn't want to join the Amish or similar because they didn't agree with that special religion, why not simply set up a loose commune based on simple life and peace? Some of the hippies did that, and it worked - as long as people have the options of leaving available.

Even that Walker is a Prof. of American History doesn't explain this - is he planning to write a paper 10 years later on what it's like to re-create the last century? His monster story will skew any results, anyway. And anybody who does a half-way study of human history should know that small communes, trying to isolate themselves from outside, very quickly run into trouble.

A professor of history should also know that modern medicine saved many lives, and that denying modern medicine to everybody for an arbitrary reason is unneccessarily cruel. The retarded son Noah and blind Ivy might both have profited from medicine.

Also, considering apparently that the elders withdrew from modern society because of the heartbreak caused by death from violence, did nobody ever stop to consider the psychological damage they did to their children with these monster stories, scaring them only to keep them out of the woods?? Shouldn't people who've lifed with the fear of being gunned down in the streets (if life is as violent as their stories sound like) remember how terrible that is? (Angst essen Seele auf = Fear eats up soul is the title of a different movie describing accurately how terrible it is to live with fear all the time.) Also, they don't seem to understand how alluring a secret and a command of "Don't do" makes things for young children.

Also, considering that Walker - who apparently founded the project - was a Professor, how did he get so wealthy? He says his father was a good businessman, but also that he was killed because of a quarrel over money. So how much money did his business father leave him, and how good at investing is the Prof. to buy not only the reservation and build the village, but also pay for the whole upkeep of the wardens every year? Personnel costs are quite high.

A big plot hole is the time Ivy needs to travel through the woods. When her father tells her the way, he says to follow the sound of the river for half a day, until she comes to the road, and then follow that. (He doesn't tell her in which direction.) Yet Ivy camps down in darkness with pouring rain once, and camps down again after her companion left her, so spent two days and nights on a half-day journey? But speed is important here, because once sepsis sets in, Lucius could die in half a day.

Also, the doctor seems to be far too talkative. That was the first strong hint that things were wrong, when, after Lucius babbling about unspecified "medicine" in the town, Ivy also believes that there is a medicine that could save Lucius from sepsis. If any of the elders opposed to her travel would've spoken up like a real person from 1897 - about 30 to 40 years before the discovery and commercial availabilty of Pencillin, the first antibacterial medicine - then the whole problem of letting her travel or not would've been moot.

Also, if they were worried about Ivy learning about the outside world (I didn't know it was a reserve, and talking with town people, even a blind girl would quickly figure out the time and tech. gap), Walker himself should've gone. Not only would he have found the way quicker than a blind girl, but it wouldn't have been a shock for him. That he took an oath doesn't matter if he breaks it anyway by helping Ivy to go.
Since I saw the dubbed version: Do the villagers talk in an old accent/variant of English? If so, shouldn't Ivy notice that Kevin outside the barrier talks quite different? Why doesn't she ask him any further questions when he talks to her about a "vehicle" (do the villagers even have something like a horsecart?) Since she isn't dumb, shouldn't she start wondering and asking questions later?

Also, I didn't hear how long that experiment has been going on, but that forest didn't look like a wilderness reserve that's been going on for 20 years (if all the children had been born in the village and not before, since there is no mention of memories of a modern life from the elder children). It's quite airy and without broken trees and brushes and tangles and so on like a real uncared forest looks like. And the animal life seems to be also missing.

Finally, I found the love story and the first part to be boring and dragged-out and far too predictable. But also the journey through the forest took far too much time.

Did anybody else think that it was bad form of Kevin to accept a valuable gold watch for a bit of medicine he took for free from the rangers hut?

Oh, and the basic plot reminded me strongly of that one DS9 ep. where the shuttle lands on a small moon/planetoid with an agricultural society lead by a strong-willed woman who claims that a strong occurence of technobabble element in the soil makes the use of any modern technology (including communicators, shuttles or transporters) impossible. She's ready to let a member of her society die rather than get modern medicine for the patient when Sisko and the others discover that the rare element is really a disguised artifical dampening field. There was also a lie and letting people die for ideology.

Oh, who - in terms of the movie - dug that (plot) hole in the forest Ivy almost and Noah fully fell into? Because it looks far too deep and the walls too smooth to have been naturally caused, but also too deep for a bear pit or similar. (Also, it's supposed to be a reserve).
Did Noah break his neck falling down that hole, and that's why he died? Because his mumbling was a bit unclear to me (I expected him to die of exposure or catch a cold), but at the end when Ivy returns, the kids are saying that Ivy killed the Unspeakable.

And who did do the animal-killing-and-skinning stuff that had the villagers so scared at the beginning? Was it really one of the elders? Because then that person needs treatment. Are we supposed to think it's retarded Noah all along, or that he found the red cloak-mask under the floorboards (yeah, unspeakably contrived that was!) only at the end?
The elders make a big deal that the Unspeakables might break the armistice between the woods and the village - all this to scare Lucius off from going into town? Why doesn't the doctor explain to him that these "miracle medicines" don't exist, as a real doctor would've told him in that timeframe?

Funny how when Walker tries to console Noah's parents that their son gave his life and thereby saved the community, that it was Noah act of violence of stabbing Lucius that led to the "dilemma" in the first place. (Noah, btw, showed the same kind of acting first without thinking about consequences that Lucius called courage when talking to Ivy on the terrace, when acting without thinking ahead is simply plain dumb.)

So, did Walker (the professor and father of Ivy) know that the Rangers would patrol the road around the reserve 24/7, and therefore, she wouldn't get to the town itself? Because, depending on how big that reserve is, and how many rangers there are, this might not work. I mean, if the ranger hadn't found her, or hadn't been so nice to believe her, wouldn't it have been more likely that a girl talking in a old form of english, wearing an out-of-date dress, without money or any papers, saying that she lives in the woods, would have ended up in the insane asylum?

I wonder: if Lucius had gone without permission (while he was still healthy), would he have really been shocked at seeing the ranger's car and the modern road? To us, the viewers, it's a shock because we know a car is modern (although the flashbacks and the photo gave it away already long before Ivy reached the fence). But if Lucius never heard of cars, how would he look at it? He might not even think "Horseless carriage" if he'd never heard or seen a horse carriage, either (I didn't see one in the village). As for the blacktop road, which is far too smooth, that should've been noticeable to blind Ivy, too. I really don't see why Ivy was better suited to go into the modern world, I think the only people would've been the Elders.
Also, quite convient that Ivy's father happens to be the guy who started this all so that his name will be respected by the ranger (who simply believes her story, instead of thinking her deranged and in need of help.)

Thinking about the idiotic premise a bit more: the y never explain why they picked that special time period, did they? It's not as if that period was more peaceful than the 20th century. There was the genocide against the Native Americans in the middle of the 19th century, and the Armenian genocide at the end, and a civil war for the US in between. Obviously, violence was just as accepted as best method of solving problems in the US then as today, and life was similarly regarded cheaply by many people. I don't see how the basic cultural attitude (both predeterminism-calvinism - that people get what they deserve - and utilatiranism - that people's worth is measured in money and how much they contribute to society) has changed much in US society in the last century. Wasn't the wild West much more lawless, with people gunning others down willy-nilly if they liked to (no fair duels in real life), because the law was absent?
Yes, I know that people with limited knowledge will say that the old times were better - mostly because they remember limited instead of looking at the whole picture - but a professor of history shouldn't make that mistake.
I think it would've made more sense (though a different story) if they'd said they wanted to build a time machine to go back in time when their loved ones were still alive/ to prevent the death of their loved ones.