The biggest disappointment of 2004!

Rating: 1/10 (28 January 2005)

Ever since the the success of his only good movie, The Sixth Sense, everyone, including the media and himself, seem to think of M. Night Shyamalan as the next Alfred Hitchcock. If this is so, he's got a very long way to go...
The Village plays like it was made by an absolute sell out of M. Night's early work. Don't get me wrong, he can still utilize bits of suspense when he wants to -- but suspense is supposed to lead to something, which in the case of his last three films, has been a true disappointment. Furthermore, if he is to be the next Hitchcock, he's got to learn that one big suspenseful twist per movie will not make him the new "Master of Suspense." He'll need to approach his films with the notion that the entire film he's creating needs to be suspenseful and mysterious to fill Alfred Hitchcock's shoes.
M. Night shows a lot of potential, and I'm convinced he can do so much better, and trying to be original is not a bad thing. But, when trying to be different is the main factor between making a good movie and a bad one, maybe simplicity isn't a bad thing.
Perhaps The Village would not have left such a sour taste in my mouth if it weren't billed as a Mystery/Suspense movie. The last half of the movie plays like a family movie, and the "big twist" became apparent one third of the way through. Furthermore, the advertising campaigns, the very misleading Sci-fi channel special (similar to the Blair Witch Project's special a couple of years back), and even blatant lies from the parties involved when in a magazine interview, it was stated that this movie was not a Science fiction movie (like Signs), but rather a genuinely scary movie, with actual creatures in it (they even verified more than one creature) gave the notion that this was a very different movie from the finished project. I truly felt mislead when I saw this film, and I hadn't felt this cheated and insulted since the Blair Witch Project.
Having seen it a second time, I don't think this was a bad movie. Had it been billed as the Disney movie of the week, I might not have even minded it. However, because of its misleading marketing campaigns, and it's weak and not so very thought out plot, I still find it to be the biggest disappointment of 2004.