I now present for your enjoyment, a brief summary of my relationship with the
films of M. Night Shyamalan.The Village
Plot:
A small, isolated village of the Amishy type has a tenuous truce with red-cloaked monsters that live in the surrounding woods. After some bad things happen, and the ‘monsters’ get riled, a courageous young blind girl (are there any other kind in the movies?) must travel through the woods to the wicked towns nearby. Guess what she finds out? Go on, guess!
Comments:
I now present for your enjoyment, a brief summary of my relationship with the
films of M. Night Shyamalan.
The 6th Sense , “Oh my God! That was the best film I’ve seen in
years! This will be remembered as one of the greatest horror films ever made! It
may even revitalize the entire genre!”
Unbreakable, “Well, OK, that had some problems, but the directing was great,
and it was a lot more intelligent than most of the stuff coming out of Hollywood
today. It was just a small career misstep, I’m sure. M. Night was probably
feeling the pressure stemming from ‘6th's' success. He’ll probably
won’t feel the need to do another big manufactured twist ending next
time.”
Signs, “Alright, that was boring as hell, and that twist ending was so damn
pat. But look, let’s not jump to any conclusions. I could see what he was going
for with the message, even if it was shallow and phony. Once he realizes, he
doesn’t need the ’O Henry’ endings, and in fact that they are impeding him, his
style will evolve. Just watch, his next film will probably be
brilliant!”
The Village , “Oh come on! You have got to be shitting me! You expect me to buy this crap?!”
And so, the apologist scales finally lifted from my eyes, I bring you my review of The Village.
This film is slow. No, not normal slow. You don’t know slow till you’ve watched this movie. In between lame and asinine plot twists, 90% of the film is taken up with the same three gotdamned scenes rehashed in various fashions;
All of this is related in the most stilted ersatz colonial dialog ever conceived. It’s as if you asked a group of historically illiterate junior high school kids to pen a sequel to ‘The Crucible’. Yes, that bad.
At this point, I’m going to offer a
spoiler warning for those of you foolish enough to want to see this mess, and who might actually be dim enough not to grasp the utterly telegraphed Big ‘ol Shyamalan twist ending that tap-dances across the screen throughout the proceedings.
Well now, we mentioned some monsters didn’t we. As a matter of fact, the ad
campaign for this film took every opportunity to mention the monsters! Yesir’e
them’s was some monsters!
*Sigh*, in case you don’t get it, the monsters are actually the town elders in really goofy looking suits, who are trying to dissuade people from leaving the village and going to the nearby towns. Why do they want to do that? C’mon, do you need to ask?
Look, maybe at some point, this revelation seemed clever, but after a century of having the same damn thing happen in ever timid little pseudo-spooky flick (not to mention 30 years worth of Scooby-Doo) it’s just another crap cliché. The main problem I have with this development? If this film was too spineless to be an actual horror movie, they at least could have marketed it as the thriller. (*cough*) No, they played the old bait and switch game to get me to part with my hard earned dinero, and I don’t forgive them for it.
At this point I will add a personal note, I found one of the plotlines of this film remarkable offensive. You see, my little brother is autistic. One of the characters in this film is the village ‘idiot’, who is in love with Ivy, so he stabs Lucius. I don’t want to be so myopic as to say that every mentally-challenged character portrayed in film should be angelic, that’s just another brand of stereotyping. But gotdammit, they deserve more respect than being used as a lazy hack contrivance to forward the plot of your sh*tty feux monster movie!
Just an added bit of idiocy, the script convenience retard is locked up in a storehouse, where he breaks through the floor, and finds, exactly under the spot he broke through, one of the creature suits. How fortunate! This will simplify everything!
Well, anyway, he uses the suit to scare Ivy, who’s gone to the towns to get
antibiotics for the ailing Lucius. Oh yes, the towns have antibiotics. If you
cannot, see the significance of that in regards to the final twist, then you are
officially develop-mentally disabled (which means you are icky, and given to
sexually-related acts of violence).
Why doesn’t the village have antibiotics if they are available? Well, that’s a good question. In the beginning of the film, a small child is being buried from lack of ‘medicines’, and I believe Lucius dies in the end (my brain, had by that time, gone bye-bye, and I couldn‘t make out all of the cast‘s silly mumblings) Basically, M. Night is making a big political statement about how the US shouldn’t become a hegemony because of terrorism. Trouble is, if you’re going to purposefully make a film as allegory you better be damn sure it holds together as narrative in the first place! Besides, even as metaphor, it doesn’t hold water. Look, this isn’t a site for political whining, so let me just say that while I think Bush is a terrible president, last time I checked 3,000+ people died because we didn’t take terrorism seriously. Al Queda isn’t just Donald Rumsfeld running around in the woods wearing a turban and a fake beard.
Well, the movie’s just not very good. However, the cinematography was beautiful, on the big screen that is, sometime last year, and not really $7.00 worth of beautiful. So unless you’re a time-traveling theater hopper, I’d feel free to skip The Village.
2.5