A Review by Phil Calabro
2004, Touchstone, Dir. M. Night Shyamalan - Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Bryce Dallas Howard, Adrien Brody, William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, Brendan Gleeson, Cherry Jones, Celia Weston
M. Night Shyamalan became an overnight success with his shocking horror film The Sixth Sense, which combined excellent writing with phenomenal acting to creating a chilling tale of the paranormal. He then made Unbreakable, which loosened up its casting job as well as its writing to make a less-horrific thriller. After that, he made Signs, which was incoherently written and poorly executed as an anticlimatic scare-fest. And now comes the Village, which is possibly the lowest point in his career. He has dumped any ounce of talent into a puddle of plot twists surrounded by a slow plot and wasteful acting.
The Village is about a small colonial Pennsylvania town known as Covington, which is surrounded by woods which supposed evil creatures lurk in. But the people of the town make a truce with the creatures for them not to step into each others areas. But Lucius (Phoenix), a young man of the village, decides that he should explore the worlds beyond the creatures area, which seem to be blocking out the villagers from life.
Joaquin Phoenix is the sole, worthwhile object of this film. His taciturn personality and stellar acting still are not able to save this movie from its utter monotony, but it adds a small kinder of hope for Shyamalan's career. Sigourney Weaver is absolutely wasted in this movie, accomplishing nothing at all but starpower - the same goes for William Hurt as the town's leader and Brendan Gleeson, who does nothing more than stand around and mutter a bit. Adrien Brody is not enjoyable to watch, and tends to get on my nerves as a mentally retarded brother of our heroine. Our heroine, however, is the worst cast member of them all. She plays a blind lover of Lucius, who does nothing more than wander around the place, assuming her "believable role as a blind person with....fear!" will save this movie.
Here is The Village in a nutshell - the entire movie is built up on the last twenty minutes of the film, with the remaining hundred minutes as incredibly boring material. The movie just isn't scary at all - it feels like Shyamalan took the idea of "showing the alien" from his movie Signs, but adding no horror to the execution. Not to mention, his signature twist ending is one of the stupidest damn finales to a movie I have ever seen - it is so pathetic and unbearably laughable - that you'll probably cry at how stupid it is.
To be quite blunt, I absolutely HATED The Village. It's boring, badly acting, badly written, and topped off with an incredibly stupid 'twist ending'. It's not worth watching, so much that I actually felt like complaining for my six-fifty back from the movie register. Maybe you all think I'm just going a bit overboard, but this is one of the first times I have actually been angry coming out of a movie in a while. Erg.
0.5/4 stars
