One of the worst-written flicks I've ever seen

Rating: 1/10 (2 August 2004)

M. Night holds true to his pattern of following a hit with a stinker (see "Sixth Sense" and "Unbreakable") with this gem. The dialogue was stilted and dead, like a bad parody of Hawthorne or Austen; the characters were caricatures; and the trademark twist was obvious a mile off and rather unsatisfying when it arrived. This movie fails as a thriller, fails as a romance, and isn't all that strenuous as an intellectual exercise.
*Spoilers*
I get that the "period" dialogue was meant to help sell the set-up, but at times it gets so bad that even the most generous viewer won't be able to help but think, "These folks sound like they learned how to talk by reading Regency romances." If anything, the movie would have been more convincing if the actors spoke contemporary English. This is a common liberty taken in film, where a movie is understood to be historical through setting and costume, even if language is contemporary. As a parallel, think about movies where foreign-speaking characters either 1) speak with an atrocious accent throughout to demonstrate that they're not speaking English or 2) speak in their native tongue with subtitles for a few lines, then in unaccented English throughout. However, if the filmmakers are dead-set on the period dialogue, at least it could have been done halfway decent.
I get that the knifing of Lucius is "another dang Hitchcock homage" (henceforth, "adHh"). A little tip of the cap to the master in the form of a little stolen slice of Psycho. Why is it that so filmmakers today think that cribbing is the best lesson that can be learned from their predecessors? The take-home lesson from Hitchcock ought to be "innovate and surprise," not that "wounding/killing the main character and focusing on a new main character is a good plot device because it worked in Psycho." And this brings up another issue: After Ivy is becomes the new main character, why oh why would her father send his *blind* daughter into the woods, with or without guides? If the guides remain with her, then the secret of the village would be compromised as they would see the truth. If the guides turn tail, then you've got a blind girl stumbling around alone in the forest. And this for the sake of saving lives in the village?
To consider the movie as an intellectual exercise, it seemed to me that the more you think about the thing, the more it unravels. For example, why on earth would these people adopt wholesale the style of the 19th century except to fool the viewing audience? Yes, as far as being a closed environment, the villagers would have to produce everything themselves which, while very "Frontier House," gives absolutely no reason why they'd adopt the period speech. Aside from the Elders, everyone in the village would have been born there. The elders wouldn't have to adopt ridiculous speech patterns to fool their kids as their kids would have no real idea about the outside world, let alone the history of the outside world. Aside from Hurt, none of the other characters have any background in history. Maybe this is why we're to believe the dialogue is so bad: because everyone is trying to talk in the manner of "Masterpiece Theater." This leads a viewer to believe that the great farce is staged not for the youth of the village, who have no notion of nineteenth-century vs. twentieth-century idiom, but rather for the audience in the theater.
To pick a final nit, why on earth was the guard shack so well equipped with first aid supplies? Most fire stations aren't so well stocked. The "for animal bites" explanation seems so contrived that, well, I guess the assumption was that if the viewer is still buying this, they'd swallow anything.
So what's left to take home from this movie? Are we to assume that the social commentary is that Heightened Terror Threat Levels are bad? That manipulating a community through fear is detestable? If so, then why does the village carry on? Why do we get a strangely hopeful end for this isolationist village? Because protecting innocence is worth a little fear and deception? Whatever. Bad, bad, bad.