Spoilers... if you LIVE in "The Village."

Rating: Null/10 (8 August 2004)

There was absolutely no mystery in this film. The setting, architecture, and clothing only worked if The Village existed in modern time. I wanted to think, naw, that's not a twist, is it? He's just pulling a Tim Burton, drawing from many time periods to create a sort of "time out of time" and make The Village a metaphor... Clearly, I was giving the man WAY too much credit.
As soon as we see Ivy with her cane, we know two things. 1) This is now confirmed as a modern piece. Think of Helen Keller in the Miracle Worker, or John Malkovich's character in Places in the Heart. It's anachronistic, especially for a society that has been afraid to contact the outside world for decades. 2) We know she will venture alone into the "modern" world and not be able to tell anyone about what she sees there... If you needed any other clues, look to the fact that Those The Writer Dared Not Think Deeply About wear red, the color that supposedly offends them. Heck, it's so offensive, they even use it on every door. Looks greatr on a poster, makes about 6 senses less than Shyamalan's first film. None, whatsovever.
Now, 6th Sense was... passable. The twist did hold up. There just wasn't anything else of value to the story. I wasn't ever scared or all that intrigued. It would have made a decent half hour Twilight Zone. Unbreakable had a good ending, but it was a painfully long process to get there. And Signs... Was it one of the worst movies I've ever seen? Signs point to Yes. I had low expectations for this film, and it didn't even meet THOSE.

What IS Joaquin's color? More important, when people try to claim this is romantic, what makes it so? How does Ivy form this romance with a boy who almost never speaks? Love at first sight? Oops, no... Isn't her love in the final analysis as shallow and juvenlie as her sister's?
Besides, she's a horrible actress. Her blindness sort of comes and goes. Much the way her sister's period speech comes and leaves for the rest of the film. The film is full of cheap cheats, like the repeated back and forth exposition of the creatures. When the voice over tells reminds us that the creatures might actually exist, there's a sign that the plot went wrong. And, Night, you're no Hitchcock, and with your extended, useless cameo, you're a Tarantino. And in my mind, that equals "got lucky once, and have stretched your 15 minutes to the breaking point."
Wretched, weak filmmaking.