Shyamalan decline begins

Rating: 4/10 (5 January 2010)

After hitting the world with The Sixth Sense M. Night Shyamalan was considered on of the hottest directors around. He got himself Oscar nominations and was considered to direct Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. His next project was Unbreakable which did fairly well critically, but not so successful at the box-office. His follow-up was Signs, which won critically acclaim, and is a film I like, but has split film fans into lovers and haters. After all that Shyamalan started going down. His next film The Village was not so successful, critically or commercially, before really loosing the plot when making Lady in the Water and The Happening.
The Village is set in a small rural community at the turn of the century. It is run by a good of village elders, including Edward Walker (William Hurt), Alice Hunt (Sigourney Weaver) and August Nicholson (Brendan Gleeson). It seems to function like early colonial towns in America, with town meetings to decide issues. However, this is no ordinary town: in the woods are strange creatures that could attack the village. Anything red is bury because it's considered the bad colour, whilst yellow is the colour of protection. There is a truce between the village and the creature, but something ends up attacking and killing some animals. One of the younger members of the community, Lucius Hunt (Joaquin Phoenix) offers to risk his life to get medicine from the nearest town. He would have to walk through the forest to do this. He believes that the creatures wouldn't attack him because of his noble intentions. But the elders refuse. Lucius also rekindles his friendship with Ivy Walker (Bryce Dallas Howard), a blind woman and daughter of Edward. They start to fall for each other and end up getting engaged. However, Lucius gets stabbed, and Ivy ends up having to leave the village to get medicine for him.
The Village was marketed as an interesting horror film, but has a was really a film about social control. The social control idea by itself is interesting, but the way it was handle should have been a lot better. I think it would have made a better film as a proper horror film in a period settling. It could have been very scary and effective with a proper fresh twist. But Shyamalan did not do this. Shyamalan is a director who is famous for having a twist in his films. I don't mind that, but if you see that ended up trying to make a more grounded film at the end it ends up making the film fall of plot holes. This twist doesn't work like it did with the Sixth Sense. The writing is the problem, but Shyamalan's direction is decent. He's not perfect but there are some good shots in the film.
The film's main strength is the cast. Bryce Dallas Howard has a strong debut and is a pretty interesting character. Joaquin Phoenix and Adrian Brody are both normally good in their films and they don't break that trend here. William Hurt was a little hit and miss, but he does have a really good moment when arguing with the Elders. However Sigourney Weaver offers a weak performance compared to what she usually does, and Brendan Gleeson's (who I normally like) character may as well not have been in the film.
There are some interesting ideas and decent scenes, but it should have been a lot better.