Review of The Village (2004) by Luis V — 02 Aug 2011

A simple love story in a complicate scenario. M. Night Shyamalan's The Village has pretty nothing new to see but is not terrible as everyone is saying. The plot follows this blind girl Elizabeth walker whom is in love with the serious down to earth personality of Lucius Hunt whom is a wood cutter. The people in an isolated village are surrounded by the woods that are habited by some weird creatures. They have made peace with them until someone enters the woods. Another character is introduced in the movie, Percy which suffers from mental retardation. As the film progresses, Percy injures Lucius because he loves Elizabeth. Now Elizabeth must go to the woods in order to save the man he loves and confront the creatures.

The movie is not bad, is just that it is not good enough. I mean I like the fact that the story was simple, we got a group of characters here that have a problem in one atmosphere. I didn't mind the twist ending, what I did mind was the constant use of plot twists up to the point that I got bored with it. Either M. Night Shyamalan can only make films with plot twists or he really has pride with these twists that he doesn't realize he is making a bad movie. The film does have message in which you shouldn't be fooled. This film sort of reminded me of The Truman Show, that we must leave our own world in order to reach a certain truth in our lives. You can't live under a rock all your live, you must face what is reality, what really matters in life. That we should be independent, and not be controlled what our society is saying to us, that this place is better than any other place. No they're wrong, you have the liberty to decide where you want to live.

The problem with this movie is how it was marketed. When I saw the trailer for the first time, I thought this movie was going to be a horror movie. But when I started watching this movie to the end, it had nothing to do with the horror genre. Seriously, if you are going to watch this movie, don't watch it as a horror movie. The film doesn't have anything scary about it, not even close! The film lacks the tension to be called a horror movie. The film is sort of like a drama/romance type of movie because that is what is more focused on. As a horror movie it blows to millions of pieces, but as a drama film I think it would pass. I also have one question: What happened to the cast? This film had a great cast and it doesn't have any memorable performances in this movie, I think they could have done this movie much better.

The worst part of this movie is the script. What was M. Night Shyamalan thinking? There is one scene in which the girl tells the boy: "I won't tell your color, so stop asking." In what scene does the boy ask her about this color? When!? Just you know, color she refers the aura of the person, because she is blind, she can only see that of the person. Also, the creatures are called "Those We don't Speak Off". Yeah, great original name to the creatures. What kind of creatures, would you call that!? Oh and by the way, they talk about the creatures all the freaking time in the movie. There are loads of lines in this movie that are completely bad, terrible, pointless and not satisfying for a movie!

I recommend this movie to people that love simple, illogical, drama movies that you really could have a nice time with. This is not a good movie, but I think you will like you love constant plot twists. If you are a fan of M. Night then you are going to adore this movie.