Let's have a good old chat about "Those We Do Not Speak Of"

Rating: 7/10 (13 August 2004)

He pulls the rug from under your feet, you pull out your wallet - that's the M. Night Shyamalan way. Box office receipts prove that building a movie around a twist can work beautifully, but what's left if, like me, the viewer is wise to the scam?
Nobody gave away the ending of The Sixth Sense, but I'd done the math before the movie even started - "The kid sees dead people!" + "There's a great twist!" = "A-ha!". I enjoyed it none the less. The Village did actually have to begin before I worked out what was going on, but where The Sixth Sense still managed to sustain an air of suspense and creepiness, this became a mere exercise in red herring-spotting.
No matter how rich the photography or how many orchestrally-prompted shocks and starts he throws in, Shyamalan squanders an intriguing set-up with a "so what?" denouement.
The cast aren't to blame: Richie Cunningham's daughter is excellent and William Hurt gets his best role in years but all the talk of "Those We Do Not Speak Of" and the inevitable opening of "The Shed That Must Never Be Opened" made me wonder when Night is gonna give us a "Movie Not Based On A Gimmick".