Review: The Village

A remote, self-contained 19^th Century village lives in fear of ‘Those we do not speak of’, creatures who supposedly guard the woods between the village and the rest of the world. However, when one of the villagers becomes gravely ill, it’s up to blind Ivy (Bryce Dallas Howard) to venture through the woods and go to ‘The Town’ to procure medicines. William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, Brendan Gleeson, Cherry Jones, and Celia Weston play the town elders. Younger members of the village are played by Joaquin Phoenix, Judy Greer, Jesse Eisenberg, Fran Kranz, and Adrien Brody (as the resident simpleton).

A movie that should never have even been committed to film without serious rewrites, this 2004 atmospheric period film basically took the crown off the seemingly promising career of writer-director M. Night Shyamalan (“The Sixth Sense”, “Unbreakable”, “Split”). A definite talent in building atmosphere, mood, and excellent visuals, Shyamalan is an uneven director of actors, and seemingly a pretty awful screenwriter too. I’ve liked a few of his films (“The Visit”, the dumb but underrated “The Happening”, and especially the super-tense “Signs”), but when he’s bad, he’s really, really, really bad. Among the most disappointing films I’ve ever seen, this one looked phenomenal in the trailers, and indeed it does look great. Shyamalan knows what he’s doing with a camera, aided by cinematographer Roger Deakins (“Dead Man Walking”, “Jarhead”, “The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford”) doing an exemplary job. This could’ve and should’ve been a classic Gothic horror film. Unfortunately, that’s not really the film Shyamalan is ultimately making, and outside of the atmosphere and look the film doesn’t have enough of interest going on anyway.

The opening credits are ominous, James Newton Howard (“The Fugitive”, “Signs”, “The Happening”) gives us yet another great score, and the cast is, on paper absolutely sensational. Hell, even the plot is at least filled with a couple of workable ideas. However, the problems come early, chiefly Shyamalan’s stilted, phony-sounding ‘old-timey speak’ dialogue that removes contractions for the most part. It sounds awkward and it does even the normally excellent Sigourney Weaver no favours whatsoever. She’s terrible, but almost none of the amazingly pedigreed cast is able to get out from beneath Shyamalan’s vision here. The whole design of this worldview (that is, the scripting design) seems modelled on someone’s third-rate, secondary school production of “Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman” (It’s no surprise to find a co-star of that awfully corny show, Frank Collison featured here too). It’s fake and boring, whilst Award-worthy actors like Brendan Gleeson, William Hurt, a young Jesse Eisenberg, Cherry Jones, and Adrien Brody are rendered stiff and useless. Weaver has never been worse on screen. Poor Judy Greer probably fares worst of all though, because in addition to that awful dialogue, she appears to have been instructed to play the period stuff for parody, either that or the writer-director doesn’t realise what a comical tit of a woman he’s created. Honestly, I don’t feel like giving him the benefit of the doubt here, given how awful this thing ends up. Oscar-winner Adrien Brody does himself no favours here going all stereotypical Lenny from “Of Mice and Men” here in an ill-advised career move. Why take on such a limiting and limited role? The one actor to fare best here is probably the weakest and newest, Bryce Dallas Howard, who actually has her best showing to date here, performance-wise. She’s the one who seems the least ill-suited to the affected period dialogue. I suppose Joaquin Phoenix is well-cast too, but he’s been much better elsewhere.

Shyamalan knows all about mood, tension and atmosphere (Watch “Signs” for proof of that), and he and his chosen cinematographer know how to light and shoot a pretty picture. However, it all ends up collapsing and not just at the terrible ending. No, this thing sucks well before that due to the script and no amount of striking foggy imagery can hide the rotten, stinking flesh of the script. In addition to being stupid, the first big plot reveal really deflates any subsequent tension. As for the ending…holy crap is it ever one of the worst endings in cinematic history. Shyamalan’s attempts at making the biggest reveal of all work aren’t remotely convincing, and even the slightest bit of thought would alert you to that. It just wouldn’t be plausible. Meanwhile, I’ll offer up a *****SPOILER WARNING***** here as it’s impossible to talk about the film’s flaws without discussing the biggest of them: In addition to the first reveal rendering any tension or terror at certain creatures as moot, Howard’s supposedly blind character acts like she can actually see the creatures in the finale and is scared of them. Why? I mean, 1) She’s been told they’re probably not even real, and 2) She’s meant to be frigging blind and can’t see them. And no, she’s not reacting to their sounds either. It’s bullshit. *****END SPOILER*****

A triumph of cinematography, music score, and initially mood, yet a failure of character, plot, and dialogue. In the end, the latter basically cancels out the former, and the ending is a giant deflating whoopee cushion to boot. Alternatively embarrassingly laughable and dull, it’s the film equivalent of Shyamalan being given atomic wedgie in public. And yet, there’s some filmmaking talent here to suggest it could’ve housed a much better film if the script were only up to snuff. The best thing I can say for it? It’s not the worst film of Shyamalan’s career (Which for the moment shall remain nameless. Review pending…all I’ll say is you’ll probably hate me for it).

Rating: D