Shyamalan well on his way to obscurity

Rating: Null/10 (6 August 2011)

Director M. Night Shyamalan was considered something of a wunderkind when he burst upon the scene with the hit The Sixth Sense. His follow-up film, Unbreakable, was bound to underwhelm. This was largely because The Sixth Sense was so absurdly over-hyped that nothing could equal it, even though Unbreakable was arguably a more intriguing film. I even enjoyed Shyamalan's Signs, which was a big hit but which detractors slammed because they did not like the final reveal regarding the aliens. Shyamalan's next entry, The Village, is fairly indefensible.
The film is set in some non-descript place and time, although the dress and characters seem to indicate the rural 17th or 18th century. An isolated village is populated by a large number of hard-working folk, who fear to cross the village boundaries lest the evil creatures that inhabit the surrounding wilderness terrorize them in rebuke. There is a love story of sorts with young village blacksmith Joaquin Phoenix spurning the flirtation of flighty Judy Greer in favor of village elder William Hurt's beautiful blind daughter Bryce Dallas Howard, who in turn is the unrequited love of seemingly harmless village idiot, Adrien Brody.
There are a huge number of problems with the film and the majority of them stem from a writing/storytelling standpoint. The biggest problem is that Shyamalan has fallen into a trap wherein he apparently feels his films MUST follow a certain formula. Introduce a conventional story told fairly well and then cap it with a big twist that no one saw coming to make the viewer go back and re-evaluate all that went before. This works well in The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, has mixed results in Signs, and fails miserably here.
It is particularly tragic here because Shyamalan handles the opening passages regarding the village, its denizens and their fearfulness of the unknown waiting just beyond the village outskirts quite well. The film captures the flavor of a Grimm fairy tale and there is undeniable suspense when Phoenix, testing the boundaries of the village taboo, moves beyond the village limits and the mysterious creatures descend upon the village to launch an attack during a wedding. If the story continued on in this straightforward vein, Shyamalan may well have had another hit on his hands. Unfortunately, he unleashes one far-fetched and wrong-headed "surprise" revelation after another in the final two-thirds that shoot the film in the foot and then run it off a cliff. And for the record, I was able to predict the "shock" ending while standing in line looking at the poster and pontificating aloud that if Shyamalan really wanted a crummy climax this is what he would do...and he did it!
Shyamalan has compiled a solid cast, but they are often not well used. One can forgive Shyamalan for having a shocking Hitchcock-style attack on a main character that sidelines them at the midway point, but when one sees where this set-up is going and how wasted the actor in general ends up being, it just becomes lamentable. The only cast member to truly come out of this smelling like a rose is Howard. She is appealing and charming and provides some much-needed energy to the film. By contrast, the normally reliable Phoenix has been instructed to play his role in such an introverted fashion as to appear catatonic. Hurt is uncomfortably affected as the village elder and Sigourney Weaver is sadly wasted as another elder and Phoenix's mother. The film seems to be building to something between her and Hurt, but then forgets about it. However, all of them have it made compared to Brody, who is strait-jacketed into the role of the happy mute idiot who abruptly turns into a psychotic stalker by plot fiat.
Finally, we come to the final third of the film, which puts the nail in its coffin. Sadly, we come to realize that the entire point of this exercise was an excuse for Shyamalan to wow us with this asinine twist. It does not work. It does not work because the story worked immeasurably better when taken at face value. It does not work because a twist without a decent story to back it up is pointless. It does not work because scrutiny of the dates on the cemetery grave markers bely its foolishness. It does not work because it relies upon an almost impenetrable suspension of disbelief in regard to the motivations of the elders. Why would supposedly "sensitive" and well-meaning people place their purportedly loved offspring in such predicaments, attempt to rob them of their free will, and then absolve themselves from helping when matters hit rock bottom? This latter is especially irritating when Hurt makes his various revelations to his daughter. After copping to the truth of the reality of the village, why on earth does he not make the final journey himself instead of sending his blind daughter off into the wilderness on an arduous and potentially deadly rescue mission, particularly when time is of the essence? The lack of credibility in these actions is mind-numbing. One can just imagine Shyamalan thinking how novel and suspenseful it will be to send a blind woman off on an adventure without wondering whether it makes any narrative sense to do so. It is also absurd that the film never gives Weaver's character any kind of soul-searching moment in these final passages considering what is at stake. Do none of these village elders have a conscience? Between the misused cast, the narrative and logic lapses, the predictable yet laughable twist ending, and the promising opening squandered on folly, the film is never more than a painful memory and never less than a monument of a filmmakers tragic overindulgence. I would say better luck next time, but alas Shyamalan seems to be on a spiral downward with his subsequent follow-ups.