Better than most, but still disappointing

Rating: Null/10 (31 July 2004)

With all the pre-release hoopla I was, of course, expecting more than this film delivered. It was an interesting premise, presented freshly, but with an unsatisfying resolution, made even more so by the build-up, both within the film itself and through the media surrounding it.
From the beginning, I was extremely let down by the PAINFULLY embarrassing TV mockumentary "The Buried Secret..." which was released to whip up interest. While "Buried..." is in the same tongue-in-cheek vein as Hitchcock and his whimsical teaser shorts, "Buried" kept up its flimsy pretext an hour and a half too long. It came across as little more than desperate.
Likewise, "Village" tries to sustain a Twilight Zone episode premise far longer than it can be stretched. The film has great strengths -very great strengths- such as the moody photography, the deeply expressive score (with some fine playing by Hilary Hahn), excellent performances all around (Adrien Brody and William Hurt particularly) and a wonderfully written script full of dialog resembling half-remembered schoolbook Colonial.
Knight's direction, also adds to the ever-present sense of impending doom, drawing the viewer in to his world of insipient hysteria. The underlying sense of something not-quite-right is always there, but the viewer never knows precisely when or where -or even how.
But again, the twist and resolution is wholly unsatisfying and seems almost a cop-out -a cheat- after luring us into this fairy tale world of fog and darkness and Those We Don't Speak Of.
By they way, are Those We Don't Speak Of related somehow to He Who Walks Behind The Corn?