Village Idiocy

Rating: 2/10 (18 May 2005)

I quickly became a fan of M. Night Shyamalan's films.
In "The Sixth Sense," we the audience were not only thrust into the nightmarish world of a nine-year-old boy, but soon realized the boy was actually telling the truth. We also discovered that we were already on the other side of that boy's nightmare.
Pretty interesting stuff here, Shyamalan, I will sally forth and buy more tickets to witness your subsequent filmsderivative, yet spooky spectacles that, I presume, will spark my jaded senses for all spectacles celluloid.
And, yes, a few more of these spectacles followed.
For me "Unbreakable" (while still chipped and forgettable) nevertheless kept that spark going.
"Signs" contains a few creepy goosing moments, combining 1980s United Kingdom crop circle-hoax phenomena with 1970s Erich Von Däniken's "Chariots of the Gods" crop circle-hoax phenomena I for one 'ate both plates' anyway, as did many other film fans of the outré sect.
"Signs" also had one final scene in which the respective adult and child had to save themselves from the harmful, outside forces that be (in this case, the traditional sci-fi bug-eyed extraterrestrial creatures that somehow further managed to whet our Shyamalan-film appetites).
A few years later, "The Village" arrived on billboards and later in theaters... and my curiosity, however diminished, was still intact. This time, however, something gave me a hunch that I should stay home and wait for friends and film critics to empty their pockets before I did.
I was right. This one reeked worse than a steaming compost heap.
Not long after its DVD release, I paid this rural town a visit and found nobody was home.
Sure, this film is filled with the usual oddball denizens seen in other similarly designed fictional burgs: the widow, the widower, the village idiot, the blind girl/vestal virgin with extrasensory sight, and the usual band of foreign-born yahoos (Gaelic, Welsh, Scottish, Australianit matters not which country these actor imports are from...they're stored somewhere in Hollywood or Broadway, kept in suspended animation, thawed and then served to us to further entice our presumed desire for watching classically trained actors fall flat on their faces).
But I digress. "The Village" tries its best to entice us with that same sense of wonder that had theatergoers clamoring for movies like "The Sixth Sense" and, to a lesser degree, the director's subsequent films.
I expected more sizzle from 'Village.' Actors Sigourney Weaver and William Hurt are just here as authoritarian figureheads to spark nonexistent yearnings for each other (breadcrumbs to lure the unsuspecting Shyamalan-film fan, no doubt...these actors have seen better days); Adrian Brody will never become Jodie Foster or Sally Field in the way of acting (or even Leonardo de Caprio in "What's Eating Gilbert Grape"), no matter how many Oscars Aidan wins; and I advise Joaquin Phoenix to start looking for another landlord director.
Lastly, 'Village' is just one big talcum powder-keg precision-timed to blow up in our faces. See it if you believe all the hype regarding its thoughtful message and all that... I say this 2004 movie was all just a waste of time and DVD-rental money.