The Village

Review by Jason Gaston

Gather around, kids, it's story time...

In my youth, I went to Big Bend National Park in Texas. While we were waiting outside a building to ride horses - and while being half-bored out of my mind - something caught my eye... it was a small brown statue of a coyote... looking around, there were about a dozen others and they were all originals. Now, I've always had an appreciation of art especially when it's art someone does with their own two hands so I decided to go take a closer look. I was about five feet away from them when the most God-awful smell hit me. These precious sculptures I had just admired were made out of fresh horse manure - and I do mean just-hit-the-ground-fresh. I was amazed what the coyotes were made out of... something that had looked so beautiful at first was, in reality, a lovingly and expertly crafted piece of feces.

See where I'm going with this?

In a way, I almost feel pity for M. Night Shyamalan. He made three great movies in a row, The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs and established himself so quickly as a master filmmaker that, for some reason, a lot of movie fans who were either jealous of his success or who just wanted to make themselves look cool and different, started decrying his movies as garbage. This is one trend I've never been able to understand, after all, why hate a guy who provides you with genuinely good entertainment? Shouldn't you be thanking him instead?

Still, I've heard it all... I've heard how The Sixth Sense was predictable, how Unbreakable is boring, and how Signs was the worst movie of 2002 (all of which is nonsense) but now, I find myself confronted by The Village which is not only M. Night Shyamalan's worst movie, but perhaps one of the most disappointing and pointless movies of the entire year.

Great, so now the M. Night Shyamalan haters have genuine ammunition.

Set in, obviously, a 19th century village surrounded by dark and scary woods, The Village tells the tale of a happy town with a terrible secret... the woods are filled with monsters and to venture into them means you're going to get eaten or beaten or raped by them or something. Of course, we're introduced to a brave young lad, played by Joaquin Phoenix like he's on Morphine, who is very brave, and as a result, very stupid and who wants to know more about the strange creatures out there.

The Village has a great atmosphere, but the intensity and fear that we had in M. Night Shyamalan's previous horror movies is no where to be seen. The movie is so dour and depressing that you almost want to send everyone in The Village flowers just so they will cheer the hell up. Simply put, this is a long movie and it really feels like a long... tedious... butt-numbing movie.

Of course, this movie has a big twist... or at least what's supposed to be a big twist because, unlike The Sixth Sense or Unbreakable, I saw this twist coming from a mile away and the more and more the twist played out, the more and more ridiculous it became. M. Night Shyamalan is still a great director, you can just look at this movie and realize that, but the story that drives The Village is just a traffic accident of silliness and hard-to-swallow contrivances. I mean, it's pretty bad when the most surprising plot twist isn't the "big" plot twist we thought it was going to be, but rather a senseless and tragic act of violence about half-way through the film.

This movie is a boring mess. Terrible in almost every account of plot, laughable when you think of the acting, and hysterical when you think of where it ends up. There's no color, no joy, no terror, little suspense, and not a bit of fun in the entire stretched out, monotonous, two hour affair... watching The Village is like doing homework or chores.

I've got to hand it to Shyamalan, though... this one one of the most beautifully crafted pieces of shit I've ever seen. Better than the coyotes, at least.