A Sociological Tale

Rating: 6/10 (10 September 2004)

'Village,The' is directed by M. Night Shyamalan, who gave to us the blockbuster 'Sixth Sense' maybe one of the most famous movies with a supernatural theme of all times. Shyamalan is a director with a style, maybe a project: to develop movies about ordinary peoples (like the character played by Mel Gibson in 'Signals')involved in uncanny and weird situations. In fact, it's a interesting aspect in his career, because it's very rare to find a filmmaker with a definite style and a personal way of telling stories and artistically worked upon the reality. But Shyamalan was not completely successful in this challenge. Some of his films - especially the uninspired and silly 'Signals' - resulted in a great deception and frustration. His new movie - 'Village,The' - although not a great movie, give to him a new chance to find a good way to carry on. But 'Village,The' is a chance of mood. In the bottom line, it's not a supernatural tale, even with the touches of evil creatures, fear, and fragility of human being in front of the unknown. The movie is, in fact, a sociological comment about human nature, an interesting - although a little far fetched and not original - methapora about political force and the means used by society to estabilish control over mankind, here included fear, violence and general ignorance. The movie hits some of it's goals with competence and Shyamalan, at least, shows to the audience that the uncanny is not just made of ghosts, ET's and heroes of comic books. We, men and women, are so weird and frightful as the strange creatures of his previous movies.