Absurd snooze fest

Rating: 3/10 (28 February 2013)

For this movie, M. Night seems to have taken Ingmar Bergman and added a touch of horror, but The Village does not work as a Bergman film or as a horror film. In fact, it does not work as a film, period.
The Elders in the Village have decided to isolate themselves from the rest of the world. Although they were all formerly living and working in modern cities (i.e. the year 2000), for some reason they all speak in a stilted, formal manner that must be M. Night's idea of how people spoke 150 years ago. For example, "What manner of woman was she?" Nearly all of the actors have problems with this pseudo-dialect, especially William Hurt, and they come off as sounding somewhat idiotic and very artificial.
The director makes a point of showing shot after shot of barren trees, leafless and black against the cloudy sky. It must be November at least, yet we have a garden full of bright green cabbages. Our heroine, Ivy, is blind, but in the tradition of all lousy movies, she can "sense" things--in Ivy's case, people's "color". In order to get medicine for her boyfriend, who has been stabbed, Ivy decides to go through the woods where the "monsters" live and make her way to a town. Her father lets her go...he lets his blind daughter travel through the woods and to a town while he stays home. Her escorts, two young men, chicken out, and let her go on alone. But hey, it's okay! Before she leaves, Ivy's father tells her that the monsters are a myth created by the Elders to keep people in the Village. But wait! There is a real monster, whom Ivy manages to kill, clever blind girl that she is. But back in the village, we find out that the monster is actually the Village's village idiot who found a monster costume the Elders cleverly hid under the floorboards of the room they locked him in (brilliant move by the Elders and how convenient for the director). He goes after Ivy dressed as a monster. Blind as she is, she manages to lure him into a pit she encountered before, and he dies in it (why, we don't know).
This movie could be seen as a parable, but it would only apply to North Korea. I recently saw another M. Night offering, The Happening, and I cannot decide which one is worse. I wish I had three arms so I could give both movies three thumbs down.