It’s pretty hard to forget when The Village came out in theaters. The movie came on the heels of the amazing 2002 movie, Signs, so hopes were high.
All hope got left behind when people saw the movie, though. It felt stilted, stylized, contrived, not as scary as we thought it was going to be, and in the end, there’s a major What-the-Heck moment that made many audience members cringe at the time.
The reviews didn’t help, either. Roger Ebert said,
“The Village” is a colossal miscalculation, a movie based on a premise that cannot support it, a premise so transparent it would be laughable were the movie not so deadly solemn. It’s a flimsy excuse for a plot, with characters who move below the one-dimensional and enter Flatland. M. Night Shyamalan, the writer-director, has been successful in evoking horror from minimalist stories, as in “Signs,” which if you think about it rationally is absurd — but you get too involved to think rationally. He is a director of considerable skill who evokes stories out of moods, but this time, alas, he took the day off.
Steve Newton said, “The theme of fear and its effects on people’s freedom is a timely one, but {Shyamalan} forgot to make the movie entertaining.”
For those who might not be familiar with The Village, the plot is simply this: A nineteenth-century village in some unknown locale seems to be normal and idyllic, but they live in fear of mysterious, monstrous red-cloaked creatures known only as Those We Do Not Speak Of.
Despite preventative measures such as wearing yellow cloaks (because yellow is the safe color), leaving animal carcasses out in the woods and not wearing red under any circumstances, these beings come of of the woods now and then and roam around the village while the frightened villagers huddle in their basements.
What Those We Do Not Speak Of do to those unfortunate enough to be caught outside we never know, but their mere presence is menacing enough to keep the villagers from leaving the village and going into the woods.
It’s not until Ivy Walker’s (Bryce Dallas Howard)’s fiancee, Lucien (Joaquin Phoenix) gets stabbed by Noah (Adrien Brody), a developmentally disabled man who’s jealous of Lucien, that the cautiously happy monotony is broken. Ivy decides she’s going to go to “the towns” through the woods to get medicine. Will her blindness and her yellow cloak be enough to get her past Those We Do Not Speak Of?
Also, there are things in the village that Ivy’s dad and village patriarch Edward Walker (William Hurt) and the village elders have kept hidden. Edward decides to let Ivy in on a few secrets before she sets out for the towns.
And no, I won’t spoil anything too much. The Village might be a twenty-one year old movie, but it still needs a little courtesy.
Speaking of twenty-one years, though, time hasn’t been unkind to The Village. If the more current press is any indication, the film deserves another look, and the film has aged pretty well when all is said and done. What makes The Village worth visiting or revisiting? Well…
It’s not so bad once the unfamiliarity wears off.
Yeah, it could have been scarier, and yeah, the dialogue is delivered with a little too much Don’t Give Anything Away carefulness, but it does a good job of peeling back the layers as time goes on.
The design is pretty cool.
The men wear conservative black, brown and white. The women mostly wear demure light colors, blue, green, brown, and prints. The village itself is mostly very neutral with no strong colors except brown and black. It makes Those We Do Not Speak Of stand out all the more with their red cloaks, and Ivy with her yellow cloak, because yellow is the safe color.
It’s got a retro charm.
This is Shyamalan before Lady In the Water and The Last Airbender. Heck, it’s also before The Happening, another movie that’s got a cult following. And it’s after Shyamalan’s box office winner, Signs. Ergo, it’s Transition Shyamalan and seems downright idyllic. We didn’t know where he’d go from here, and for some people, we didn’t care.
The cast is amazing, especially Bryce Dallas Howard.
Lots of familiar faces, Besides William Hurt and Adrien Brody, we’ve also got Susan Sarandon, Judy Greer, Fran Kranz and Michael Pitt. It’s also fun seeing all the Shyamalan vets, like Joaquin Phoenix and Cherry Jones, plus Frank Collison, affectionately known as “The Hot Dog Guy” to fans of The Happening.
Kudos have to be given to Bryce Dallas Howard, though, who gives a tour-de-force performance as the immensely capable and clever Ivy. This character does a great job of using her environment and her limitations to her advantage despite her seeming weaknesses.
At the very least, it’s a guilty pleasure.
Granted, The Village is not to everyone’s taste, but what movie is? To each their own, and we all know that it’s nice to have those movies we like even though no one else does. Seeing as The Village has been called a misunderstood, underrated masterpiece by various viewers over the years, especially recently, it’s not too shabby of a guilty pleasure.
Our first Cooking With the French Chef post is coming up tomorrow, and since it’s January, you can probably guess what it’s about. Thanks for reading, all, and I hope to see you then…
The Village is available on DVD and Blu-ray from Amazon.
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