unsurprising and slow

Rating: 5/10 (30 July 2005)

It must be tough being director M. Night Shyamalan. He has built a career off of movies with unexpected turns, and I imagine with each movie it must get harder to come up with something. So while The Village only has two real twists, one of which is surprising but no more so than many other movies by more obscure filmmakers and the other of which I fully expected from the beginning of the film, I have to be fair and say, well, you can't get those great twists every time.
The problem with the movie isn't the lack of twists but the fact that it's just rather dull. The stilted speaking style is sort of interesting but also a bit annoying and the story never grabs me. Judy Greer and Adrien Brody are both quite good and there are a couple of effective scenes of suspense, but for the most part the movie is so measured as to feel static.
I think much of the problem is Shyamalan uses his twists to make the audience forgive him for any film-making faults. Signs wasn't a great movie, and without the surprising finale I would have walked away disappointed, but because it had a strong pay off it made everything alright. If Shyamalan has run out of clever twists then he is going to have to work on making his movies pay off not with a stunning denouement but with engaging and engrossing film making throughout. Hopefully he'll learn to do that, and won't even need the clever tricks that have endeared him to me.