The Village review

Lucius Hunt: I am not the one with secrets. 
Alice Hunt: What is your meaning? 
Lucius Hunt: There are secrets in every corner of this village. Do you not feel it? Do you not see it? 

Director: M. Night Shyamalan
(2004)

I’ll admit, I was all too happy to bash M. Night Shyamalan until recently. Like many of his detractors, I liked The Sixth Sense, but it was 2002’s Signs where I started to become disappointed with the famous directors work. The ending felt weak compared to the tour de force of The Sixth Sense, and Mel Gibson could be in contention for one of the worst performances I've seen. With disdain for the director and knowledge that it didn’t fare particularly well with critics, I went The Village without the burden of expectation. If only every movie goer could do this for every film, cinema would be a far more enjoyable experience.

The film is set in the late 1800’s; focusing on a village is surrounded by dense woodland. The villagers don’t enter the woods, due to a pact that they’ve made with the fearsome creatures that reside there. No human enters the woods, no creature enters the village, a rule that every member of this tightly knit community are taught from a young age. Our protagonist Lucius Fox (Joaquin Phoenix) wishes to venture through the woods to the nearby towns to gather supplies to improve the standard of living for his fellow residents, most notably Ivy (Bryce Dallas Howard). The elders (including his mother) forbid it, something that he outright ignores, plunging everyone in mortal danger.

Just like his last film Signs (2002), Shyamalan does a spectacular job of mounting and developing the atmosphere of The Village, accentuated by howls in the wind and schools that teach of ‘those we do not speak of’. Shots that are seemingly insignificant, a figure in a red cloak for instance, soon has great meaning bound upon it. Cinematographer Roger Deakins allows Shyamalan to infuse loneliness in images of empty rocking chairs and flickering candles smothering scenes with a creepy, foreboding vibe that dominates first half of the film. It makes for unsettling viewing; so far the beasts that lurk in the tree line haven't even been seen. This is what The Village does so well, the little details add up to make an intricately detailed whole.

Like the vast majority of Shyamalan’s films, things aren’t exactly what they seem. To pinpoint this exactly would be a horrific spoiler, but it’s easy to say the film gives payoff to its build up. In differentiation to the signs or the sixth sense, the twist here leads the plot in a different direction, rather that signalling the end of the film. As a result we have a more satisfying film that doesn’t spend its entire time building up to one moment, portraying Shyamalan’s subtle maturation as a filmmaker instead of the centre point of his films being a cheap trick on the audience.

Even with its terrific atmosphere and gripping narrative, The Village stumbles with its writing on more than one occasion. Halfway through the film I realised Ivy was actually blind, a disability that really wasn’t made clear from the beginning. Exchanges between character is stilted, the 19^th century dialogue comes across as wooden regardless of the actor who delivers it. Weaver is horribly miscast and Phoenix little in the way of lines or development. But through intense build up, shocking payoff and thoroughly haunting music, the village is a good film. It’s not the same calibre as the Sixth Sense, but it isn’t deserving of the hate that it is so often lavished with.

7