The village, Yes, it really is that bad

[Pielorinho]

I also have to call B*S* on the people who "figured it out from the beginning". There is nothing in the film which telegraphs the end, before Night begins to reveal it. If you happened to guess it, it's nothing other than lucky meta-gaming.

Maybe--but I'm normally pretty awful at guessing twists, and this one was so obvious to me that I was really hoping I was wrong. And I was partly wrong:

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When Ivy was taken to The Shed That We Don't Use to be shown something, I was half-expecting dad to show her a motorcycle .

I do believe the movie would've been better if this had been clear from the beginning, as follows:

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The people in the village had to have excellent tools, right? After all, they had no source of metal beyond what they brought with them, so their tools were going to have to last many decades. If there'd been some shots in which we saw that their hammers, their saws, their cooking pots, and so forth had modern names stamped on them; if we'd seen rubberized seals for the water pumps; if we'd seen other incontrovertible signs of modernity, then that would have increased the mystery for me. Instead of thinking, "oh, please, don't let this be set in modern times," I would've been thinking, "This is set in modern times? What the heck's going on here?

The mood was great, the acting was superb, the visuals were breathtaking. The story, IMO, was awful. I credit Shyamalan for doing many things right, but I desperately wish he would team up with a writer who would rein in his worse impulses, who could give him a plausible and non-hokey story to tell.

Daniel

 

[Cthulhudrew]

As a side bit of annoyance, for

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something called Those We Do Not Speak Of, they sure spoke about them an awful lot.

Maybe petty, but it annoyed me.

I said the exact same thing to my friends when we left the theatre. Ugh.

I can appreciate the Sci-Fi network's fake documentary in a different light, given that

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the blind girl running from the guy in the outfit had a very Blair Witch vibe to it.

Again, going to have to agree with you on this one.

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Even the camera movements seemed "Blair Witchy".

Just wasn't that impressed at all, sadly. And not just because I'd figured out the "plot twist" months ago, when the news of the picture first started to come to light. (Not trying to brag, because it really wasn't all that intuitive of me, necessarily- just the name of the movie, "The Village"- shades of "The Prisoner", as well as the early advertising screamed "big conspiracy by the elders to shelter us from the outside modern world" to me. Also had the elements of the Morlocks/Eloi thing.

And there was a tv show that was similar- I want to say it was an episode of "The Outer Limits", where the people are survivors of an alien attack and oppressed inside of a town, and they finally rise up and open the doors, only to see that the outside world is lush and beautiful and has recovered from the war and the aliens are gone. Does anyone else remember the show I'm talking about?

I did think the Elders were going to be more actively malicious in their oppressiveness than they turned out, though. Got me there, Night!

 

[Cthulhudrew]

I also have to call B*S* on the people who "figured it out from the beginning". There is nothing in the film which telegraphs the end, before Night begins to reveal it. If you happened to guess it, it's nothing other than lucky meta-gaming.

I don't know about "lucky meta-gaming", though I would say that there isn't anything in the film itself that telegraphs the ending. As I posted above, I figured out what the likely story/ending would be months before it ever came out simply based on my observation of early info about it, and comparison to similar movies/stories, such as

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The Prisoner- ie, the title of the film, 'The Village'; Morlocks/Eloi comparisons; and some tv movie or something that was similar- an episode of "The Outer Limits" IIRC; not to mention just similar things I've probably seen/read and just can't recall.

Couple that with Night's reputation for "surprise plot twists" and it all added up to me.

Still, there were moments when I thought maybe I was wrong, and- towards the end- moments when I hoped that maybe there'd be additional twists that I hadn't seen coming.

In the end, though, I just don't think it was as strong as "The Sixth Sense" or "Unbreakable". I'd have to watch it again to pinpoint exactly what I felt was off about it, but just offhand, I'd say the pacing was too slow. That's the only criticism I can really make without looking at the movie more in depth.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

I haven't seen the movie yet, but had it spoiled (and have to say I don't mind, I won't go see it now and end up annoyed). Having said that, here's one point I was thinking about:

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Considering that these people are just living on some nature preserve in the modern day, and don't tell the truth about the outside world... Why do they bother to pretend that it's the 1890's, wear the quaint clothes, etc.? Why not use the real date, and make homespun t-shirts instead? It's not as if they're going to teach their kids the real world history and geography circa 1900 anyway, because their little world is slightly behind the times even by 1900 standards, and the true US history could potentially raise a lot of questions / stir up curiosity.

I wondered the same thing. The only thing I could think of is this:

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Walker mentions he was an American History teacher in the "real world." Presumably, then, he is using old texts for his teaching, and therein they probably mention dates and things, so in order to explain the dates away to the students, they pretend they're living in the past.

However:

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The world in the movie is not really internally consistent because of this - it's just designed to be the way it is to trick the audience into making certain assumptions, which seems rather lame...

I suspect this theory of yours is closer to the truth.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

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One thing I didn't get though, was why was the government protecting them by diverting flight paths from going over the reserve and such?

I think it has something to do with:

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Recall that Walker's brother who was shot and killed was a billionaire. That is, presumably, where he got the money to buy/maintain the Walker 'Wilderness Preserve' that they live on, and to pay for the guards who patrol its borders. Presumably, then, some of that money goes to directly finance the government to keep flights from passing over the property, or maybe to pay lobbyists in the government to press legislation that would keep the airways free.

 

[wizardneedsfood]

The film was beautiful, well acted, well directed, and with deeper themes than just "the twist". I feel sorry for people who can't see and enjoy it for that.

The acting was decent, the directing was solid but questionable at times. I've seen a lot more beautiful films lately, ones that are more hack fests than true dramas. Maybe their were deeper themes, but they were so lost in a horrible and contrived plotline that I surely didn't notice them. The utter lack of sense the movie made seriously made my head hurt. This has nothing to do with the movie being made by Night. I disliked it because the only redeeming quality about the whole film for me was the score.

But yeah, that's all opinion. I was expecting something different than what I got, but that's not why I disliked it. The whole thing was just extremely too contrived to me, and this coming from a guy who loved how everything worked together perfectly in "Signs".

 

[TracerBullet42]

Sounds to me like the problem wasn't with the movie, rather it was with the trailer. I'm hearing lots of "it's not what I expected" or "I wanted it to be scarier" from y'all. I do agree that the trailer was misleading.

However, I enjoyed this movie a lot. I enjoyed the idea of "how far are people willing to go to protect what they believe is right..."

I mean, it was pretty out there, yet reasonable enough. I liked it.

But what do I know...

 

[Delgar]

I'll have to chime in and say the movie was bad, very, very bad. Many people in the audience booed at the end of the movie.

Personally, I think the movie would have been better without the twist, what the director actually presented us with was false suspense and in the end the only people cheated are the audience. I think had the movie had no twist, and just told a story, it might have been interesting. But I think the big problem is, most people feel cheated by the twist, because he didn't really do it in a soild creative way, like he did in the sixth sense.

This movie is not worth seeing, spend your money on watching Spiderman again, or go see Harold and Kumar. I think it's about time we put Mr. Shaymalan out to pasture.

Delgar

 

[Dr Midnight]

I think it's about time we put Mr. Shaymalan out to pasture.

That's right, one less-than-stellar film out of four means you need to be shut down.

C'mon.

 

[Shadowdancer]

I really enjoyed the movie, even though I had figured out part of the twist in the first five minutes of the movie (honestly). However, I didn't figure out

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it was really set in our modern day, mainly because I believed the tombstone dates

until right as it was being revealed to the audience.

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But the fact that the elders were behind it all, and the monsters were just made-up -- yeah, I figured it out real fast

I think many of you are getting too hung up on the twist element, and not paying enough attention to the story. It was a well-done little morality play, and raised some serious questions about the steps people are willing to go in order to feel safe or to protect their children. But sometimes in going to those extremes, you can do as much harm as good, if not more.

Also, the woods are used as wonderful metaphor for the sexual awakening of the children raised in the village.

The acting was terrific. And the cinematography and the score were very good.

Some other spoiler-related comments to things posted above:

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Someone said the suspense was false. Yes, for the audience it ultimately was. But not for the characters -- at least the young people. The suspense was real, especially for the blind girl when she was in the woods. Just imagine if you were one of those children, raised in that environment, with fear of the woods and those creatures instilled into you every day. The fear exhibited by the young people was genuine, because it was genuine for them.

Some others posted that it seemed the village was needlessly 19th century. I don't think so. The elders were running away from the dangers of 20th century life. They believed the "good old days" of the 19th century offered less danger to them and their children. But they forgot that basic human emotions and instincts remain no matter what the technology level of the surrounding culture. Less complicated technology doesn't equal a less complicated lifestyle, nor less complicated emotions and feelings. These problems are as old as Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel.

As for how they kept the airplanes from flying over the preserve -- yes, the Walker fortune funds a Walker Wildlife Preserve, and there are probably lawyers and directors and lobbyists and advocates on the outside -- all of whom have no idea what is going on inside the preserve -- fighting to keep the real world out. Setting it up as a wildlife preserve is pretty smart, because there are lots of laws, protections and guidelines set up IRL to protect such preserves.

One complaint I do have about the trailer:

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I remember in the trailer, either in a voiceover by a narrator or as dialogue spoken by William Hurt's character, that the pact between the village and the creatures had existed for centuries, or at least a century. When some of the characters started mentioning about living in the towns beyond the woods, before coming to the village, I was confused because from the trailer I had come to believe that several generations had lived in the village. So that was misleading.