Don't Avoid the Village Because You Think It Might Scare You. Avoid Because it Sucks.

Rating: 2/10 (3 February 2005)

The Sixth Sense was good. Unbreakable was OK. Signs was OK. The Village, well, it looked bad. I'm sorry, but Shymalamadingdong was not making a great impression with this one. I did want to see it, if just to say I saw it. So is the Village worth anything at all? Plot: 5/25: Basically, we have a village (shocking, huh). It is apparently the 1800s or so. This village is residence to a very small number of people. There is a group of elders, who have meetings only they are privy to. Oh, and the forests around the village are off-limits because they are surrounded by monsters, called 'Those We Do Not Speak Of', which is an oxymoron in itself (apparently, Shyamalamadingdong was too lazy to name them). Anyway, the villagers and the creatures made a truce. The villagers stay out of the forest, the creatures stay out of the village. This means that the villagers are isolated from the outside world. So when a child dies due to illness, Lucius Hunt (Phoenix) asks to go to the town across the forest to retrieve medicine for future purposes. He, of course, gets a no, but curiosity gets the best of him and he takes a few steps past the boundary before getting scared off by a noise. That night, the creatures visit and leave warnings. Stay out.
There is also a love plot that involves Lucius and the blind Ivy Walker (Howard), daughter of the leader of the elders Edward Walker (Hurt). Lucius has a love for Ivy, and they get engaged once he saves her from the creatures. But this gets Ivy's friend Noah Percy (Brody) jealous, and Noah is, well, retarded.
Of course, there is the Shyamalanic twist, but unlike that in The Sixth Sense or Unbreakable, this one is painfully obvious. There are actually two, one I knew right away and another that is just fill in the blanks work after all the holes you poke through it earlier. The twists are disappointing, to say the least. The actual plot is actually pretty dumb once you sit through it once. It is fairly original, I'll give it that, but nothing more.
Horror: 6/25: To say this movie provided no thrills isn't true. It provides a couple. Mostly cheap ones at that. Shyamalan is a master at the type of camera tricks that make something scary, and this is no exception. It just never seems really horrifying. It's not a scary concept, but some cheap camera tricks make it a little scarier than it should be. Without Shyamalan behind the camera, this wouldn't be scary, it'd just be dumb.
Acting: 8/25: The acting here is much like other movies when I say they took some good talent and ruined it with one of the worst scripts I have ever seen. Everyone talks like they're in the company of the Queen of England, so we get long, drawn out sentence and words that haven't been casually used since Shakespeare was shat out of his mother's womb. This pretty much ruins Phoenix and Weaver here. They are both good actors, but the script hurts them. Adrien Brody, despite an Oscar under his belt, is not right for this role. William Hurt gets his share of crappy lines, but he makes the best of it and isn't half bad. Bryce Dallas Howard, despite this being her first real role, is the only one here who is impressive in the least. If this is what she can do with a bad script Entertainment: 0/25: This is one of those movies that feels like it never ends despite being only a bit over 1 ½ hours. The whole dialogue problem really makes this much worse than it should have been. I really couldn't wait for this to be over.
Total: 19%: Shyamalamadingdong made a poopie. That's basically the best way to put it. The Village is boring, stupid movie that really is guaranteed to disappoint anyone who even remotely liked the other three. Enough said.