Shymalan swings, he hits, he... puts one in left field.

Rating: 7/10 (3 March 2005)

M. Night Shymalan is making a name for himself not only as an auteur in the psychological thriller genre but as a moralist. So my "7" score is partly due to the fact that "The Village" fails to live up to its hype, or to the rest of Shymalan's work, for that matter. Of course, Shymalan is a money maker these days, so the producers probably felt pressured by the money men to make us see "Village" commercials in our sleep prior to release.
The problem with the media blitz, of course, is that almost NO movie can live up to a full-on 21st century movie ad campaign. The nice sense of schadenfreude when something like "The Day After Tomorrow" goes flat can be satisfying, but it should never happen to one of Shymalan's films.
"The Village" just plods along most of the time. I've spent a lot of time in woodland clearings at night, because a lot of my relatives lived in the woods or close to the woods or between the bayou and the marsh on a levee, and he captured that ambiance very well... but I didn't feel as though the movie was going much of anywhere until halfway through it, because the pace just lagged.
The pace of the film does pick up about halfway through the film, which is good because I was about to duck out for a lined notepad and pencil to start writing the foreshadowing down so I'd remember it in the second half of the film - or out for a nice meal, something.
And that's as close as I'm going to get to spoiling the film, except to say that the Shymalan twists at the end of the film were predictable - unlike "Signs," which starts off making you sure you're watching a psychological thriller despite the spooky 50's sci-fi setup, then makes you sure that everyone in the house, especially the Mel Gibson character, is a head case - and the next day, guess what - you're in a modern science-fiction movie which then morphs into a play all about faith... and there you are leaving finger indentations in your hardwood coffee table or the plastic armrests of your theater seat.
"The Village" is, unfortunately, nowhere near as unpredictable as "Signs." The final, chilling plot twist occurred to me a third of the way through the film, and halfway through, I was certain of it. And I was right. Ditto with the second-to-last chilling plot twist.
I can't decide whether it's the actors' fault or Shymalan's that the characters all seemed to have gotten into a private stash of quaaludes before every scene until halfway through the film (of course, William Hurt acts like that all the time, so was it type casting in his case?) I mean, I was appropriately moved when I should have been, but not moved in the way I'd come to expect of Shymalan's work. It's just not fair being M. Night Shymalan, you know? Reviewing a thriller is difficult - unless you're sadistic enough to want to spoil everyone's pleasure in the film in question. And that would be a shame for this one.