One of Shyamalan's great 3

Rating: 9/10 (12 December 2007)

I've seen The Village three times already and I'll probably see it many times more in the future. What makes this film so strong is the incredible music, photography and the acting. As mentioned by many people before me, the young Bryce Dallas Howard is sensational. Joaquin Phoenix and William Hurt are good as always while the rest of the cast is appropriately bleach. The stars are given the room to shine and shine they do.
As for the score, I think it's one of the finest ones ever to not win the Academy Award. Intense where it has to and subtle where it has to, James Newton-Howard does a tremendous job. Some of the strongest scenes however are silent ones. It's M.Night's credit that he doesn't feel forced to fill every second of the movie with music and effects. This is a mistake that is made in a great deal of movies, The Hours to name just one example.
There's more than a score required to create an atmosphere. The cinematography and photography has to be top notch as well and in The Village, it is. The locations are beautiful and even though one can argue that woods already have a certain atmosphere, that it's not the Directors credit's...I believe they really made the most of the available locations. It's a fine art to do so.
Now let's talk about the plot a little bit. It's a fairly simple premise but the story takes many twists and turns further on the road and in the end it satisfies. Semi-open endings are often the most powerful and intelligent ones, and I think this one is a prime example. If they would have tied all the lose ends then this movie wouldn't have been half as memorable. M.Night gets his audience thinking and leaves him feeling confused, excited, happy and sad at the same time. What more can you ask of an ending? Many people feel the Twist (even though there are actually 3 twists, there's only one with a capital T) came too early. While I can understand this impulse to think so, I feel the revelation early in the movie made the rest of the movie more interesting. The suspension wasn't gone, but merely replaced with a different kind of suspension. If the revelation would've been made in the end, like it could've been, it would have been too similar to The Sixth Sense or Unbreakable and as it is now...it's something special. Too bad not many people realize just how good this movie is. I hope it'll later be remembered as a misunderstood work of fine art, instead of a failed horror movie. It isn't a horror movie, it never tries to be, and the trailer is misleading. It's a well-made trailer, it got many people drawn to the theater, so from a business perspective it serves it's purpose. From an artistic point of view, the trailer is shamefully bad. Please don't go see the movie expecting it to be just another suspense horror movie. It's so much more.
Everyone should see it at least once. You may hate it, but you should give it 1 try because you just might find yourself moved by this fine film. And that's about the highest thing that 'just a movie' can achieve.