M. Night needs to try something different. When your career is built upon films that always have spooky ideas (like ghosts, aliens or monsters), and they always have a surprise twist, the films are going to get tiring and even predictable.
I must begin with saying that The Village is not a bad movie, far from it. It however, seems to fall a bit flat, and is less thought provoking than The Sixth Sense, less emotional than Signs and not as entertaining as Unbreakable. It falls flat, full of ideas, but flat.
The story concerns a love triangle between a guy (Pheonix) a blind girl (Ron Howard's daughter) and a retarded man (Brody). They all live in a village, taking place in the 19th century. There are woods all around the village, and you can't enter them because monsters are in them. Phoenix is the bravest of the people in the village, and wants to venture into the woods and is in love with Howard. However, Brody stabs Phoenix within the second act of the film, jealous of his relationship with Howard. So, to get medicine, Howard, a blind girl, must enter the woods and reach "town". Before going out though, her father, the leader of the village, explains to her that the monsters were actually fake, and her father and the elders use the monster tale as something to keep everyone in the village. So, blind Howard goes out into the woods, gets attacked by a monster (who was actually Brody in a monster costume), and comes out of the woods. Here we see that it is actually present day, and a guy in a car drives up to Howard. She asks him for medicine, and medicine he gives her, and then you find out that the leader of the village is actually a millionaire, and he had bought land for his village, and payed people to keep other people from flying overhead or wandering into the area. He wanted to have a simple non-violent community.
So, as I got from it, the point of the film is the ol' there's nothing to fear than fear itself, and, no matter how hard you try to get away from the real world, humans are humans. There will always be violence. There was absolutely no violence ever recorded in the village, but Brody shows us that, well you can't get away from it. Sure this film makes you think, and does have the usual spooky, psychological atmosphere found in all M. Night films, but M Night is so obsessed with throwing off viewers that people attracted to trailers of the movie will walk away disappointed, and he spends too much time trying to outdo himself, with rather than his single one note plot twists he's so famous for, he pulls out numerous plot twists in The village. And, sadly, when you pull a plot twist, the movie goes in another direction. All of Night's plot twists in his other films were one-note, but you could use that one note twist as a bigger situation. Does everyone have a purpose, asks The Sixth Sense. For everyone person is there an opposite, asks Unbreakable. Is there an order of events that are actually planned out by God himself, asks Signs. All these can be attached to your personal life, depending who you are, but the village tries to understand what fear is, but is too pre-occupied with plot twists that it lacks any tension or horror, to put, well, fear into the audience. Even the "fake" monster doesn't look scary. Now I'm going to make a quick little script for my F. Day Rice film "Movie Signs"
Mel Gibson: There are two kinds of people. People that believe the more plot twists the merrier, or a plot twist always throws the film in another direction- if you like the new direction then fine, if you don't then the movie loses points. So you gotta ask yourself a question, do you think that plot twists are too risky, sending a movie into unwanted territory, or they're perfectly welcome.
Me: We I saw 'The Village'. It was thought provoking and all. But the plot twists were lacking too much logic, and often ruined the tone that the film had earlier, and in the end, diminished everything that the movie trailers promoted.
Mel Gibson: But that's what M. Night is famous for. Illogical Twilight Zone thrillers with plot twists. Impressive, eh?
Me: No, more like a rut for M. Night. And it would've worked better as a straight up monster movie with one cool, wrapped up twist.
Set in rural Pennsylvania in the late 1800s, a town is isolated from the rest of the world by a menacing forest that contains terrifying creatures. Wh...More at HotMovieSale.com
The Village depicts the thrilling tale of an isolated town confronting the astonishing truth that lies just outside its borders. At first glance, this...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.