Well acted and beautifully filmed.

Rating: 8/10 (1 June 2013)

The Village tells the story of a large clan of people who live in an enclosed Village (Duh), The Village is surrounded by a forest. In this forest lives "Those we shall not speak of", I'll call them creatures from now on. The Village people have an assortment of rules to keep themselves safe from the creatures. Don't let the bad color be seen. It attracts them. - Never enter the woods. That is where they wait - Heed the warning bell, for they are coming. They have these rules because they organized an agreement with them, they stay out of the woods, they won't harm them, but if they go into the woods, they're will be consequences. But a man named Luscious walks into the woods, the creatures decide to unleash these consequences on The Villagers, and now we have The Village.
Now The Village is often regarded as Shyamalans first bad film, it's been accused of false marketing, a dumb plot and a disappointing plot twist.
First of all, I don't think it's fair to downgrade a film because of false marketing, I personally don't remember the marketing for The Village, but it's wrong to accuse it of something out of the directors hands.
Secondly, this is a bit subjective, but I thought that one of the best things about The Village was it's interesting story. It's original and compelling throughout the film.
Lastly, the plot twist. It is undeniably not very good at all, it's horribly unveiled in the film, it's not very thought provoking, it's kind of dumb too. I'm sure there was plenty of other ways Shyamalan could of went with it, he could of even avoided a twist and I would have been fine, but it happened and it wasn't very good. My problem is that people are completely attacking the movie just because of the plot twist, of course it isn't good at all, but think about how good it was before the twist was unveiled.
Now, I'm giving The Village a 8 out of 10 because of how much I loved the first hour and a bit of the film, it certainly would of got a 9 or 10 if it wasn't for the twist, but sure what can you do. What I loved so much about The Village was the syrup thick atmosphere throughout the film, you could almost feel the mystery of The Village in the air. This atmosphere is established by the beautiful score which I'm glad was praised by most an nominated for an academy award, and the riveting performances.
The performances in The Village are some of the best I've seen in a while, especially that of Bryce Dallas Howard (Ivy), she stole every scene she was in. Joaquin Phoenix (Lucius)& Adrien Brody (Noah) are both also very good, they completely owned there characters. Everyone in the film is great, but those three were the standouts.
The setting of the film is very picturesque, and the beautiful cinematography really brought it out. The script is also something that was very stick out for me, the dialogue between Lucius and Ivy was just so well written, not to say that the rest isn't but it's definitely something worth mentioning. I am disappointed that The Village does suffer from the horrible plot twist, which is a shame.