M. Night Shyamalan proves the law of diminishing returns with this snore-a-thon

Rating: 3/10 (8 August 2004)

Contains Spoilers I've just seen it... I have to say, this film has been aggressively over-hyped to the point where most people will walk out the cinema feeling they must have seen trailers for a different film.
M. Night again shows his now established pattern of diminishing returns here - his style of pacing that worked so wonderfully in Sixth Sense, reasonably well in Unbreakable and rather poorly in Signs here is one of the films cardinal flaws. Essentially it takes the film over an hour to actually get to the relevant part - where we discover that, surprise surprise, there are no monsters it was all a big trick.
It wouldn't be an exaggeration to think that M. Night's (one should always get worried when a director becomes sufficiently egotistical to prefix a film with his own name) The Village - might as well be called, The Pseudo Amish. I waited the whole film for a buggy... I didn't see one and it would be worth pointing out that this anticipation is about all that kept my eyes on the screen.
One should appreciate that this is not a monster film - despite the advertising which makes you think it is. Really, it doesn't even have that much "monster" tension at the start. In fact, the first hour of the film doesn't really seem to achieve anything IMO - one doesn't really get that much of a feel for characters or the like, it's just sixty minutes of boredom... and then it's all explained more or less - then there's some more cheap thrills, the origin of the Village is revealed (if you didn't work it out, then you were either asleep or were thinking about whether giant porcupines would be a real danger.) and its over. I guess the twist at the end was - there was no twist.
Attempting to trick you into thinking the creatures are real when the blind girl is in the woods seems a bit foolish. As it's really not too hard to guess what it really is but that's about the only part of the film where there's any sense of danger or anything interesting going on. Not to mention that you have to question the insight of sending the blind girl to get the medicine - which seems like a pretty unfair choice, the guy saves his son-in-law while other people have died but that's brushed aside for more tedium.
This film is essentially a morality lecture about how our society is so evil, that people are driven to escape it by being a rip-off of the Amish people, enforced by the threat of fictitious monsters, all nicely ringed off and guarded from the outside world somehow. Quite why they didn't just go and join the real Amish or become Mormons or something is beyond me... it would probably have made a more interesting film but then, most things would have.
So if you're looking for a monster film, a clever social commentary, something with a twist in the tale, or even a couple of hours entertainment - I humbly suggest you look elsewhere.
All in all, a pretty poor effort, in my opinion - 2 out of 5. Let's hope M. Night decides to quit/take a break/ get his act together before he lays another one on us.