Taking place in a valley surrounded by ominous woods, M. Night Shyamalan's The Village isn't the type of place anyone would like to live. It's always overcast and a little damp and everyone always seems to be dying. One prominent citizen, Noah Percy (Adrien Brody) is slightly psychotic, and another, Ivy Walker (Bryce Dallas Howard) is permanently blind.
Oh, and if anyone goes into the woods, giant red-cloaked porcupine-like creatures will kill them.
The Village opens at the funeral of a young boy; the death date on his gravestone reads 1897. The most fearless young man in the village, Lucius Hunt (Joaquin Phoenix) approaches the council of elders, asking their permission to journey into the next town for much-needed medicine. The elders (William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, Brendan Gleeson, Cherry Jones and others) say no; there has been too much death already.
If life wasn't miserable enough, the elders also have established a set of strict and bizarre rules, such as that no one may wear or carry anything red because it attracts Those We Don't Speak Of—a kind of vomit-yellow is The Safe Color. Nor may anyone step into the forest's edge, but the village boys have a game in which they test each other's bravery by seeing who can stand longest with their backs to the woods.
Even with these rules, the uneasy truce between humans and porcupine monsters has been broken lately as Noah Percy wanders into the woods to pick red berries. The creatures break into the village, skinning farm animals and leaving red slashes on doors as a warning.
As with Shyamalan's previous three horror/suspense films (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs), there's more than meets the eye. Describing any more comes dangerously close to giving it away. Suffice it to say that you should look for the twist, then a twist upon the twist, and then another.
In fact, it's all a bit much. We're left wondering if The Village is a horror film or a parable about non-compassionate conservatism. Unlike many horror directors who he's compared to and draws from (Hitchcock, Craven, etc.) Shyamalan doesn't particularly seem to believe in any of his tales. He isn't pulling them from a hidden dark side or using them to re-channel his frustrations and obsessions. Watching them is more like accepting a challenge or playing a game—not necessarily a bad thing. It's just less genuine.
At the same time, Shyamalan is clearly a talented director with a definite sense for making superior cinema. He favors long shots, offscreen movement and noise, and has a flair for open spaces and weather. He loves to borrow Steven Spielberg's method of showing characters reacting to something horrific or wonderful before showing us what the thing might be, as well as Wes Craven's technique of quick, sudden movements in the background or foreground.
As a writer though, he looks only to sideswipe the audience with twists, even if they don't hold up to close scrutiny, as was the case with Signs and is the case here. While The Sixth Sense involved us in its characters, The Village hinges entirely on the big twist. Shyamalan just can't wait to tell us about it. Moreover, he is a poor author of period melodramas. His idea of making 19th century English sound authentic is to simply do away with contractions. Characters say, "I am this" and "I do not that." William Hurt is the only actor on hand wooden enough to get his lips around it and make it sound like anything approaching realism.
Of the rest of the cast—most of whom seem overawed and out of place—beautiful Bryce Dallas Howard (Ron Howard's daughter) makes a striking debut as the movie's spunky heroine, Ivy, even if she makes a fairly unconvincing blind girl.
The true test of a twist movie like The Village comes with multiple viewings. The Sixth Sense surprised its first time and impressed its second time. The Village may or may not surprise the first time and certainly doesn't invite a second viewing at all. It's a nice place to visit.