Nerds That Geek Movie Review: ‘The Village’

Written by John Edward Betancourt

One thing that is truly fascinating when it comes to cinema as a whole, is how audiences regard films when all is said and done. Because once a movie is released to the masses and absorbed, opinions are formed and that’s really where things get interesting. For in essence, people generally love or hate a film, and there really is no in between. Which is fine, because you like what you like. But it is fascinating to know that people often stay in one camp or the other, simply because there are a lot of inconsistent motion pictures out there that quite frankly, deserve more praise than they originally received.
 
For these are the films that offer up surprisingly good performances, but a shoddy and incomplete plot. Or they straight up feature the opposite. But the bottom line, is that these mediocre films are the ones that are heavily watched and rarely discussed, and they truly do deserve their day in the sun because cinema is a special medium for creative minds to tell their stories and the effort they put forth into ‘okay’ films deserves some level of recognition. If anything, all of this is relevant to today’s discussion simply because the next movie that M. Night Shyamalan created, falls into the ‘good but not great’ category, thanks to some fascinating missteps and successes.
 
In fact, let’s start this grand discussion of The Village by reflecting upon what makes this film work so well. For starters, this is a movie that features one hell of a cast. One that quite frankly features too many big names to break down in detail here and well, that’s a good thing. Because every single super star in this motion picture provides us with some compelling and powerful performances, the kind that sell this story and they all do such quality work that you’re hanging on every single word and every single moment and this film really doesn’t get enough credit for assembling one of the finest casts to ever appear in a horror film.

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But while this review could go on for ages about the various nuances in regard to the acting present in this movie, we do need to take a moment and discuss the wonder of the atmosphere present in this story as well. Because the isolated setting and the strange beasts that roam the woods surrounding this tiny village, make for one incredibly eerie environment. One where you feel unsettled over the fact that something is likely lurking about in the shadows and truly, one half of the ending’s grand reveal is quite impactful and honestly, had the story kept the big twist related to the evil of mankind and our need to control others, then this film might have been regarded as a masterpiece.
 
However, the ending is precisely what brings this motion picture into mediocre territory because the big twist is in a word, awful. Because it’s just silly to plop this mysterious village into a ‘wildlife preserve’ in modern times when one considers how connected we are in this day and age. Granted, Shyamalan works to dismiss that possibility by adding a ‘no-fly zone’ into their area. But satellites would see something, and something as simple as starting a fire would create some kind of smoke that would engender curiosity, making it impossible to isolate this tiny little world and that unrealistic ending does undo all the wonder that comes before it, which is a shame.
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Because the core of this story is about how mankind uses fear to control one another, something that could have offered up some stunning commentary about our modern world. But alas, M. Night’s desire to impress the world with another shock ending, ruined the gravity of everything that came before it and that may be why this movie is often discussed with great disdain. For so many wanted this film to reach its potential. But in many ways, it really does, and there really is a lot to celebrate in this motion picture. Provided of course you just disregard the ending when watching. But all praise aside, this was sadly the last time that M. Night would offer up something genuinely special. Because it would seem the heat, he took for the ending in this tale, would alter his writing style in an unfortunate manner since his next film took a wild turn storytelling wise.     

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