A great film...if you're not looking for something scary.

Rating: 8/10 (14 January 2005)

If you walk into this film thinking it's a thriller (which I don't blame anyone for except the people who marketed this film), you may just walk out disappointed. There aren't really that many scary things about this film. However, if you walk into it expecting quality drama, acting and storytelling, you might just find something likable about it.
M. Night Shyalmalan (director of "The Sixth Sense," "Unbreakable," and "Signs,") brings us an intriguing period piece about love, jealousy, and how far people are willing to go when driven by fear.
An "Amish" type community resides in an isolated village surrounded by a forest with a dark history. They fear "those they do not speak of" who dwell in the woods, and dare not cross their path. But when a dire need of medicine from the towns beyond the woods emerges, one blind woman dares to face the dark in order to bring back the light.
The film has an interesting (and creepy) atmosphere to it - a characteristic few movies these days are able to accomplish. One particular shot that comes to mind is between the two main characters, Lucius Hunt (Joaquin Phoenix) and the blind woman Ivy Walker (Bryce Dallas Howard), when they're talking on the porch. It's a close-up profile shot of them talking, and in between their faces you see a gray fog covering the vast field in front of them - making the audience wonder what's out there watching them. It really symbolizes that not everything may be as it seems.
The performances given by William Hurt(AI: Artificial Intelligence), Bryce Dallas Howard, and Joaquin Phoenix really make this film stand on firm ground. But perhaps the most interesting character is that of Noah Percy, played by Adrien Brody (The Pianist). He plays a mentally-challenged, and sometimes unstable man who happens to be in love with Ivy Walker. When he finds out that she's in love with Lucius Hunt, his unstable characteristics really start to take hold of him (as well as creep out the audience).
If this were the first film from Shyamalan, it would be critically acclaimed. But since this is his fourth major film, and Shyamalan is now known for putting plot twists in his stories, people go into it immediately starting to second-guess everything they observe. So many people would probably figure out the twist long before the film ends because they're already looking for it. Either that, or they spend the whole film waiting in anticipation for it, only to be let down because they built it up to be the Second Coming. They remember how cool it was to discover what really happened to Bruce Willis' character in "The Sixth Sense." But they forget that, at that time, they had never seen a film quite like it before. They had no preconceived notions or expectations.
As much as I enjoyed "The Village," I think Shyamalan should stop making films with plot twists for a while and just make some good movies with good stories. And he should not hype it up by advertising it as "An M. Night Shyalmalan Film." That name is now immediately connected with plot twists and thrillers whenever someone sees it. Otherwise, he may very well come to be known as "M. Night Shyamalamadingdong."