Fairy tale or origin story?

Rating: Null/10 (8 September 2004)

I kept thinking while watching "The Village" that M. Night Shyamalan had obviously been reading "Little Red Riding Hood" late one night and decided to look for a way to make it scary again. One of the theories about fairy tales like Red Riding Hood is that they were once used as a means of social control -- "go into the forest and the Wolf will get you." I went into this wondering whether this was a werewolf movie, but the Big Bad Wolf was something quite different here.
In truth the whole movie exists to support the final act: Red Riding Hood's journey into the forest. The rules of this village are so hard and fast, and the elders support them so adamantly, that a truly exceptional situation has to occur before anyone will be allowed to bend them; the tension has to build to unheard-of proportions before anybody cracks. And the final act is worth it: Ivy (Howard) is deserted by her frightened erstwhile comrades, leaving her to face her fear alone in a long, tense, dialogueless sequence. Howard's acting talent is really showcased here.
Shyamalan seems to have a penchant for writing superhero origin stories; "The Sixth Sense" clearly sets the boy up for future adventures as a psychic ghost investigator, and although I have not seen "Unbreakable" I understand it is also basically the origin of a superhero. It is likely that Ivy too will be revered as a superhero in her village after things settle down again, and although she knows the truth, it is not clear that she will tell anyone else about it, at least until she becomes an elder herself and is put in charge of maintaining the social order.
I was not disappointed by this movie in general. It was a tale well told in a small world well put together. But there were two small disappointments for me: first, it was not entirely clear at first that this was Ivy's story.
Lucius (Phoenix) is strongly featured from the start, but once we are into the final stretch, well, to avoid spoiling it, Phoenix has no further lines, and Ivy is suddenly thrust to the fore to make her journey. Also, after all the anticipation that there is something supernatural happening here, there is nothing. Nothing beyond the natural. Then there were those sudden gratuitous shots upward toward the treetops during the chase sequences in the last act, as if Shyamalan thought viewers might feel deprived of commercial breaks, or was perhaps worried about the plot resolving too quickly. The score seemed not to quite fill the sonic gaps during the wordless chase sequences late in the movie; I found myself thinking of things the composer could have done to make the music more emotionally effective.
The characters were clearly drawn: even minor characters had their recognizable personality traits to make them memorable. Romance between Alice (Weaver) and Edward (Hurt) seems to be slowly developing, but their story is not what we're focusing on in this film. We're given the impression that something could develop later, and that's fine, because the film isn't really about them. And then there's Christoph Crane, always worried about his shirt getting wrinkled.
"The Village," like "Signs" before it, has a claustrophobic intensity; the characters are thrown into a small crucible, and pressure is applied to them to see what they will do, reminiscent of "Lifeboat." The difference is that some of the characters have lived inside this crucible all their lives, and don't know what it's like to live outside it -- indeed, to them the outside seems more frightening than the crucible itself. I would also compare this movie to "The Navigator" (1988), where a group of medieval villagers seeking a cure to the plague find themselves in the modern world, which to them is as alien as another planet would be to us.
"The Village" is about characters and tension, stories and their power, boundaries and whether they really keep us safe. Do not see it for the Shyamalan surprise plot twists. See it if you like to see modern adaptations of fairy tales, especially developed in the direction of suspense and horror. This is a werewolf movie without any werewolves.