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M. Night Shyamalan's The Village

This review is safe to read. It contains no spoilers.

Most of the reviews have been seriously dissing this movie. I didn’t think it was bad at all. It’s a lot better than Shyamalan’s last movie, Signs.

For a little background, M. Night Shyamalan has directed three previous movies: The Sixth Sense which was his best, Unbreakable which is a movie I enjoyed also, and most recently Signs which was an absolute mess. Well, he can be forgiven for one stinker, can’t he?

M. Night Shyamalan’s movies are best known for their plot twists. Except that I have a hard time remembering the plot twist in Signs, and the plot twist in Unbreakable seemed to me to be a pretty minor twist. The Village has a plot twist that I will remember; it’s his biggest twist since Sixth Sense. Is it as shocking as The Sixth Sense? No, it’s not, but it was still an enjoyable movie.

The Village introduces us to Bryce Dallas Howard, who is Richie Cunningham’s (oops, I mean Ron Howard’s) daughter. I enjoyed watching her; she’s not drop dead gorgeous like a lot of female actresses, but she has a very attractive realness about her that’s pleasant to watch. I’m sure we will see more of her in the future.

Shyamalan has an interesting affinity for southeastern Pennsylvania. All of his movies take place in or near Philadelphia, and The Village is no exception.

The cinematography is great. There are a lot of beautiful shots of the village in all sorts of lighting conditions. And Shyamalan also makes you think a lot about colors. The strange things living in the woods like the color red, the villagers wear yellow when they don’t want the creatures to attack them, and Ivy (the blind girl played by Bryce Dallas Howard) says that she can “see” people’s colors.

The Village reminded me a lot of the The Blair Witch Project, because they both involve a lot of walking around in scary woods. Except that The Village is by far the better of the two movies. It’s scarier than The Blair Witch Project (which was the least scary horror movie that I’ve ever seen) and The Village actually has a point to it.

The Village was probably disappointing to people expecting a typical action filled horror movie. But The Village is only partially a horror movie, and there isn’t much action. It’s about deeper issues than girls running around screaming and idiots walking around alone when everyone knows that people in horror movies only die when they’re alone. The horror aspect of the movie is an excuse to make us think about other issues, which unfortunately can’t be discussed without giving away the plot.

So if you don’t mind watching a slow moving horror movie in which the horror aspect is only part of the movie, then I recommend The Village. It’s not Shyamalan’s best, but neither is it his worst.

posted Saturday, July 31, 2004