Twist? What twist?

Rating: Null/10 (3 August 2004)

I've never felt compelled to comment on a film here at IMDb until viewing "The Village" last night and then reading the comments already posted here. I did'nt go into the theatre expecting a horror film as M.Night's previous works have always been more Twilight Zone-esque (including that mother of all Twilight Zone ripoffs "Unbreakable"). Let's just say that I was disappointed that I was not given a chance to work out the so-called twist ending because the film gave it away within the first few minutes! I don't consider myself a genius by any stretch but anyone paying attention to William Hurt's opening Q&A session with his schoolchildren, wherein Hurt's character gives us all the details on "Why we must'nt go into the woods", should have been able to write the rest of the script themselves. When a film gives you a piece of information, you can't help but momentarily ponder that information (and this film gives you LONG stretches of moments with which to ponder) and in the case of "The Village", it took me about 30 seconds to figure out what was going on. Not that I wanted to! I wanted to be swept up in the plot and the "mood" of the film. I was not on some sort of crusade to unravel the mystery of "The Village". Unfortunately, the director unwittingly gave the game away by either underestimating the intelligence of his audience or with hack screen writing. All I was left to do was endure the pointless misdirection and banal love stories until the movie reached it's painfully obvious climax. This film was like an 8th grader's creative writing assignment. "The Village" is embarrassing!