Review of The Village (2004) by Filipeneto — 28 Jun 2018

This film tells of a small village where people live as they did a hundred years ago and totally isolated from the rest of the world, fearing nameless creatures that live in the surrounding forest. This idea seems something worthy of a horror movie and it could have been taken of that way, but no. Night Shyamalan decided to play with one thing: the idea that cities are the source of society's corruption. The whole movie revolves around this, which is to say that you have almost no story. It starts well, manages to create a good atmosphere and I quickly realized that there is something rotten in that village. But the absence of a strong main plot, capable of sustaining the film, causes it to lose its rhythm and crawl through uninteresting subplots, created to "fill the sausage" with anything that would justify it to the end. And even the ending was disappointing, as I expected something stronger and more dramatic, something that would make everything worth it.

Positive things? Yes! The actors did a good job, as far as they were allowed. Few stood out because there was little to do and little to work with. Adrien Brody managed to do it, although his character is poor and Bryce Dallas Howard was the actress who appeared and shone, but was not always the most positive. There are moments when her performance is quite forced. The scenarios were well made, the use of the forest was intelligent, cinematography was good as was the use of colors. But is anyone going to see a movie just for that? Of course not. Anyone who wants a good story will not like this movie.