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The Village (Widescreen Vista Series) |  | Actors: Joaquin Phoenix, Adrien Brody, Bryce Dallas Howard, William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver
Studio: Buena Vista Home Entertainment / Touchstone
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.99
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Rating:  928 reviews
Sales Rank: 4203
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Dolby, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Languages: English (Original Language), French (Original Language), French (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Dubbed)
Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 108 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: 03598300
UPC: 786936242867
EAN: 0786936242867
ASIN: B00064LJVE
Theatrical Release Date: July 30, 2004
Release Date: January 11, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com
Even when his trademark twist-ending formula wears worrisomely thin as it does in The Village, M. Night Shyamalan is a true showman who knows how to serve up a spookfest. He's derailed this time by a howler of a "surprise" lifted almost directly from "A Hundred Yards Over the Rim," an episode of The Twilight Zone starring Cliff Robertson that originally aired in 1961. Even if you're unfamiliar with that Rod Serling scenario, you'll have a good chance of guessing the surprise, which ranks well below The Sixth Sense and Signs on Shyamalan's shock-o-meter. That leaves you to appreciate Shyamalan's proven strengths, including a sharp eye for fear-laden compositions, a general sense of unease, delicate handling of fine actors (alas, most of them wasted here, save for Bryce Dallas Howard in a promising debut), and the cautious concealment of his ruse, which in this case involves a 19th-century village that maintains an anxious truce with dreadful creatures that live in the forbidden woods nearby. Will any of this take anyone by genuine surprise? That seems unlikely, since Emperor Shyamalan has clearly lost his clothes in The Village, but it's nice to have him around to scare us, even if he doesn't always succeed. --Jeff Shannon
Product Description
A close knit community lives with the fear of the mysterious danger that lives in the woods around them. Their fear is so great that none dare venture beyond the borders. When one individual plans to step beyond the boundaries his bold move threatens to change their way of life. Studio: Buena Vista Home Video Release Date: 06/06/2006 Starring: Joaquin Phoenix Adrien Brody Run time: 108 minutes Rating: Pg13
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 928
 Great! February 7, 2010
Middle Earth
I was surprised by some of the negative reviews. I really enjoyed it and never guessed the twist at the end.
The Village Gets More Groans Than Gasps January 29, 2010
Samurai Dave (Tokyo, japan)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This review that I had written years ago for an online newspaper is based on the film not the DVD and its features:
To start off with, I don't think the premise in "The Village" is bad one. The idea is quite interesting, but it's the way the story is presented that bothers me. I can't say much on that at this point of the review without giving a way the ending. Critics have been savaging this movie for cheating audiences with a gimmicky twist. While I do feel cheated in some ways, I feel that if the movie had explored other angles, it could have been a much better movie.
The movie begins in a quaint, isolated village of the late 1800s. The people live quiet, simple lives free from the evils of the outside world, which they refer to only as the "Towns." They are not free, however, from fear. For outside their lovely, peaceful village lurk horrible creatures that live in the woods and do not suffer trespassers.
The villagers refer to these creatures as "Those We Don't Speak Of" though they seem to speak an awful lot about them throughout movie so the name seems a bit inappropriate. Perhaps the villagers should have called them "Those We Sometimes Speak Of" or "Those We Actually Speak of Quite Regularly".
Apparently "Those [They] Don't Speak Of" have some kind of pact with the villagers though it's never explained how it came about. It's not like you could have a sit-down meeting and negotiate an agreement with creatures you don't speak of. Perhaps these creatures can be spoken "to" just so long as they are not spoken "about."
The pact, anyway, is simple and straightforward: villagers don't go into the woods and the creatures don't go into the village. Oh, and the creatures are attracted to the color red, which the villagers call by ominous name: "the bad color". The villagers make sure there is nothing red anywhere in the village. For some reason, yellow is fine by them so the villagers wear yellow when they go walking near the forest or when they go on guard duty.
For creatures that aren't spoken about, the villagers worry about them a good deal. The villagers burn torches at night on their perimeter and they keep a guard on duty in a tower. They also paint yellow streaks on the torch stakes that supposedly is to ward off the creatures. The expense of keeping these torches lit should be reason enough one would think to attempt a pre-emptive strike against these creatures before they run out of wood and yellow paint. In addition for defensive purposes, one would think a wall would be far more effective than a few torches and a bucket of yellow paint.
One of the villagers named Lucius Hunt (Joaquin Phoenix) thinks it's possible to go into the woods and even to the "Towns" if a person is brave and has an honest purpose such as procuring medicine for the village. The Elders, a group of the original settlers that administer the town, dismiss this notion. The Elders are the only ones who have seen the "Towns" where each of them lost family members due to violence. They are reluctant to have any contact with the outside world again. Plus there are those creatures that might rip them all up if they go into the woods [insert a slight snicker here].
Eventually someone gets injured and medicine from the "Towns" is desperately needed. A party is organized to go into the forbidden woods and to the world beyond. Edward Walker (William Hurt), the de-facto leader of the Elders, plans to go himself but another Elder reminds him of the oath he once swore that he would never go back to the "Towns." So instead he sends his blind daughter Ivy, played by Bryce Dallas Howard.
This makes perfect sense: send someone who can't see through a forest full of unspeakably horrible unspoken-about creatures and hope they will take pity on her. Then if she makes it through the forest, she will have to deal with the "Towns" where she has never been to before nor has any experience with. She's liable to wind up like many country bumpkins do when they go to a big city for the first time: get swindled or outright robbed.
Director M. Night Shyamalan's signature twist to the "The Village" is ultimately what kills the film. Too much of the film is wrapped up in delivering the twist and keeping the audience clueless until the end; by the time we get there we feel cheated out of a movie. The twist here is too much of a gimmick and doesn't work the way it did with "Sixth Sense" (1999) and to some degree "Unbreakable" (2000).
Shyamalan is effective, though, in creating an atmosphere of suspense and fear at the beginning of the movie. It's just unfortunate that the twist sabotages this promising beginning and creates more than a few plot holes that threaten to swallow the film whole. It's a twist that likely to bring more groans than gasps.
=========SPOILER ALERT==========
If you haven't seen the film read no further!!!
============================
There are no monsters. There never have been. There never will be unless you want to count the Elders as monsters for having lied to their children and grandchildren for over 20 years.
The monsters are a fabrication created to keep the younger generations from wandering into the woods and finding out that they have been living in a National Park all this time.
Apparently the Elders did not abandon the modern society of the 1870s but rather the 1970s. Fleeing violence, disco and polyester leisure suits, the Elders decided to create a Utopian society for themselves away from the world and shag carpeting. Hurt's character it turns out used to be a Professor of American History and Folklore. He came up with the idea of an Utopian Village set in the past and the "Those [They] Won't Speak Of" to protect the illusion.
This is why the twist ruins a good story. It would have been far more interesting to dwell on the Elders' decision to keep the village's future generations in the dark about the outside world. The village is a sham supported and protected by another sham. Sooner or later someone is likely to stumble across them or simply fly over in a Cessna. The preserve that the villagers live on is surrounded by a wall and guarded by Forest Rangers but that isn't enough to stop potential curious trespassers.
And how would the younger generations feel towards the Elders if they found out they had been living in abject fear all their lives for nothing? What would happen if they found out their parents had been lying to them for all these years just to maintain an illusion built for their comfort and solace? Not too mention that their parents are responsible for their neurotic life-long aversion to the color red?
There are many different angles this story could have been approached by that might have made for a more interesting film.
For one thing, I wanted monsters. I know whole point is that there weren't any monsters but I think a better storyline in this regard could have been either:
1) The monsters did exist and were either brought into existence by the power of belief of the villagers -- much to the shock of the Elders -- or the creatures had always existed and were somehow awoken by the villagers;
or
2) One of the Elders who had either left the village a long time ago or everyone thought dead has gone insane and is living in the woods believing himself to be one of the creatures, thus obeying the rules the Elders made; or it's one of the Elders in the village that has gone schizo and on some nights attacks villagers and livestock.
Either way, it would have been better than having the village idiot, played by Adrien Brody, bumbling around in one of the costumes -- which he just happens to find a little too conveniently. He looked like he could barely get his clothes on by himself much less one of those costumes.
The monsters being real would have made for a more ironic twist on the Elders who in creating a legend to keep people from going into the woods now actually have something in the woods to be afraid of. The story could have been that the creatures have become so dangerous that the village's only hope is either to escape or bring in help from the outside.
I think that could have made for a poignant point: that the very thing the Elders fabricated to keep the village together becomes the very thing that threatens to destroy it because the village is a lie supported by another lie. In the end, the illusion of the village can't last and the lie threatens to destroy them all.
Since there are no creatures, however, the rituals for dealing with them come off as far too elaborate (not to mention ridiculous). The Elders must have sat up late many nights coming up with all these rules while they were also trying to figure out how to farm, sew, slaughter livestock and bribe major airlines from flying over.
It also becomes staggeringly apparent that it would have been a heck of a lot easier for Hurt or one of the other Elders to have gone to the "Towns" and got the medicine. They would have been more familiar with the outside world as opposed to their century-handicapped children. The bit about the oath mentioned above just doesn't seem like a strong or convincing enough reason for Hurt not to go. The oath seems more like a deliberate tool used by the writer/director to send the blind girl in order to heighten the suspense.
Hurt does reveal to his daughter out of fatherly love that the creatures don't exist but he says, almost reassuringly to the audience that wants monsters, that there are legends that say these creatures once existed. Hurt reveals to her a costume of the creatures hanging in a shed that the daughter calls, with dread in her voice, the "Shed We Don't Use."
At this point I realized "The Village" suffered from a lack of imagination when it comes to naming things. With names like "Those We don't Speak of," the "Towns," and the "bad color," it makes me wonder what other corny ominous-sounding names they have for things in the village. "This is the 'Fork We Do Not Use For Salad'" "That is the 'Shirt We Do Not Wear At Grandmother's.'"
Hurt's revelation is the worst part of the film. Finding out that it's really modern time wasn't as crushing a blow to me as finding out the creatures were fake. The explanation he gives really doesn't wash and it feels as though all the noises and brooding atmosphere of rituals and "bad colors" are there just to keep the audience in the dark so as to surprise and shock them later.
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Overall, I give "The Village" 3 out of 5 stars. The acting is believable though a bit wooden. The atmosphere is creepy and brooding. It's the twist and the missed opportunities that film could have taken that bring what could have been a more interesting film to a disappointing climax.
Thought provoking movie January 26, 2010
MommaMia (NY)
This film is so well done. I am not a big fan of M. Night...however, this was a very thought provoking film. There are many times when I've wished to just run away, to get away from what I consider the ills of our society, but I think in the long run, as this movie shows, you can't escape by running away. Life is what it is and pretending doesn't change that. There is good and bad everywhere, even in an idealistic hidey-hole like The Village. Give this one a try. It will leave you thinking.
Interesting setup is ruined by bungled "twists" December 25, 2009
H. Jin (Melbourne, Australia)
'The Village' is the exact point where M. Night Shyamalan started losing his mojo. By this point, 'The Sixth Sense' had become a bit of a millstone around his neck, and Shyamalan clearly felt pressured to deliver the "twist ending" yet again. But unlike his previous three films, his trademark twists and turns are badly bungled, and they end up ruining a film that would have been much better off without them. The film actually relies on a succession of "revelations", but once the first one is known, you can pretty much guess what the others will be. So the entire second half of the movie (including the Really Big Revelation) is simply confirmation of what you already half-expected, making it a big let-down.
It's a shame really, because the basics of the film are pretty good. The main cast, especially Bryce Dallas Howard as the blind heroine Ivy and Adrien Brody as the disturbed (and disturbing) Noah, are good in their roles (although William Hurt and Sigourney Weaver are a bit wasted). And Shyamalan does a reasonable job of setting the period and mood, giving the first act a brooding, slightly Gothic quality. The film actually would have worked much better had it simply continued as a straight period piece, as concept of the creatures attacking an isolated village is a great premise for Gothic horror. There was simply no need to throw all these (fairly predictable) curveballs at the audience, and to turn the film into something completely different.
Unfortunately, it seems Shyamalan was stuck in a rut by this stage, and could only fall back on the same old tried-and-true "twists" he's done before. The interesting setup, and some of the performances, keeps this from being a total disaster, but it's fair to say that `The Village' is one of his weakest.
Very intriguing December 23, 2009
L. Adams
Very thought provoking and entertaining. A little weird in spots with a very good ending that you don't see coming.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 928
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