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The Village (2004) (1 Viewer)

John Doran

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well, of course that's not plausible. because the story of hell is a story that involves dying first, before the penalty is suffered.

however, i can definitely imagine a time and a place where kids are told that they will get a spanking or have their most-loved toys taken away should they disobey their parents, both of which alternatives are feared by those children if and when they decide to do what they've expressly been warned not to do....
 

AlexCremers

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I see that you trying to deliberately miss my point. Are you toying with me? What is my point here, John? My initial complaint has to do with "bringing the terror to life", so that children won't get any funny ideas in their heads. Here it is again what I wrote and what you apparently find completely normal and plausible: "What kind of parent tells his child that it can only live on a field and if that child does not obey it will die horrifying deaths? What kind of parent puts on the most macabre costume and goes to extreme lengths to terrorize its babies?"
It's materializing the terror! And that's what they did in The Village. Are you saying that you believe that everywhere parents dress up to scare the living s**t out of their children? (whether that be the bogeyman, the devil or some other frightful creature). Why do you (if you really) believe in that? Because M. Night made a movie about it? Surely you must know that his main purpose is to scare the cinema-goer and that he's willing to go to great lengths to realize his mission.

Shyamalan always tries to make us believe in the unbelievable (Signs, The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable). I'm afraid that with 'The Village' he just didn't try hard enough to be somewhat convincing. The whole "Let's terrorize our kids to death" method or sending your blind child through an immense forest, which is based on believing in the capabilty of your child, in this particular case nothing more than cinema.

------------
Alex cremers
 

LanieParker

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I love that I went into this movie without knowing one single thing about it (other than my perception of it from the previews).

I enjoyed this film a great deal. I have to say that it is high on my list of good movies (right along side Garden State, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Life Aquatic).

I have not been a big fan of M Night Shyamalan's movies, but this one just amazed me. He really had my brain working overtime trying to figure things out on this one.

It wasn't until Ivy went to her father and asked permission to go to "the towns", that I started to suspect that the elders were the ones pretending to be the creatures. At that point, I had no clue that it would be taken a step further and turn out to be a group of modern day people living out in the middle of a nature preserve, trying to create a pure community.

WOW! That was good.
 

Joe Kamsan

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I've noticed that those with muted expectations going into the movie - myself included - were able to enjoy it more. I didn't 'brace' myself or lower my expectations simply because I was not drawn to the film's horror aspect, which the marketing campaign clearly highlighted. While I watched it, I became immersed in the atmosphere of that era and that community. I didn't try to solve or guess the twist.

Its difficult not to view it as an allegory, that the idea of utopia and sheltering the young from the dangers of the outside world is best acheived through fear and control. The relationship between Lucuis and Ivy is agitated with the ever lurking Noah, as the proverbial spanner in the works. Lucius being stabbed is the impetus that drives the narrative, it forces Ivy out of the comfort of their community and forces the elders to rethink their philosophy regarding the preservation of their charade: at what cost?

I didn't guess the twist, so if you did, good on you you're much smarter than me :) However, it didn't feel like it was sprung on the viewer like in Sixth Sense or even Unbreakable. The revelation that the village exists in the present day does change the story in that it clarifies the reasoning behind the actions of the elders and their consternation about venturing outside the woods. Importantly, though, it doesn't change the relationship between Lucius and Ivy. If anything it in fact strengthens it.

The Village is far from perfect, but it wasn't the steaming pile of dung most people are saying it is. Of course, my opinion only.
 

Dan Hitchman

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This film could grow on me as well as is (as an allegory--albiet somewhat of a forced one--about using the power of suggestion, fear, and lies to manipulate and control a populace into believing and acting a certain way... very real today), but it could have also worked well (if not more so due to the clunky Twilight Zone-esque way he went about it) if it still HAD been set in the 19th Century (or even 18th) at all times and that the creature at the end really WAS a real, strange creature of some sort(and they had based their lie on some forgotten truth; and had been the one leaving mutilated animals around... not something that dressed in clothing and had a real society, but was more fowl) and by finding the sharp tree stump, Ivy killed it by accident towards the end.

The first time I saw the creature inside the woods with Ivy I thought perhaps that was going to be the case, and so I admit I jumped a few times.

However, there were still character and plot/writing flaws (like in Signs, which I thought was even more of an "oh brother," eye-rolling type of film... I mean the first mistake was showing the aliens in the first place... quick glances at shadows would have been better and let us use our imaginations) that kept this from being a truly great psychological thriller.

All the main characters needed some fleshing out as I didn't care very much about any of them, truly... which was a shame. More delving into the inner workings of the "elders" could have made it more mysterious too. Or even more with Weaver and Hurt and their estranged relationship would have put some meat to it.

The music and cinematography were first rate, however.

As to Ivy's blindness... her father said she lost her sight, but at some point in her childhood could see. Also I agree that her level of blindness was not described.

M. Night should have re-written his cameo as it sounded more like poorly concieved blathering than anything else, just like his short, and needless appearance in Signs. He was just fine as a doctor in the Sixth Sense.

Dan
 

Will_B

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I wasn't clear on why Weaver and Hurt couldn't date. I thought, while watching the film, that their society must have strict rules about widowers and widows or something - like you can't ever be divorced or remarry or something. But honestly I don't know what the situation was. Maybe Hurt was just shy?
 

Mary M S

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who was flinging dead animal carcasses all over the place..
Hurt's character thought one of the elders was disgruntled. But I guess it must have actually been Brody, right?


I thought Hurt said the Elders took turns doing the carcass thing.

you have two carcass things going on. The “meat offering” shown at the wedding, a village ritual.
And the mutilated senseless killing and scattering of livestock around the village of unknown origin.

Hurt tells Ivy when she asks in horror…”and the dead animals? That’s the elders too!!!” He reassures her that is NOT an elder approved activity, - he thinks it is possibly one disgruntled elder..and it will be stopped.

Noah’s mother says, “The Animals!” when the parents see the opened floorboard, which indicated to me, that what Hurt thought might be a sole disgruntled elder, had been in reality the entire time, Noah role-playing in the suit with increasing abandon. And if you want to put some psychology into it. By the time of the wedding (the largest manifestation of stock killing) Noah would have been increasingly agitated by Ivy and Lucius’s new relationship.


I wasn't clear on why Weaver and Hurt couldn't date Weaver was a Widow, Hurts wife was alive and with him in the village. Remember the woman he opens the box with?
It is she who ‘hint’s to her husband, with great fear, a way out of his despair regarding the unexpected “crime” and the elders ‘oath’, to which he is held to a highest accountability level as the incepting ‘senior’ elder of this village. She emphases to her husband. “You swore. You cannot go. You swore the oath.” Same kind of emphasis as asking, “How do you open a wine bottle without destroying the cork or pulling the cork? By her emphasis on you she is telling him to let Ivy go. Which as Ivy’s mother, - scares her to death.

Lucius being stabbed is the impetus that drives the narrative, it forces Ivy out of the comfort of their community and forces the elders to rethink their philosophy regarding the preservation of their charade: at what cost? Exactly. Night is focusing on (the first of many) critical challenge to a fragile fledgling-engineered Utopia’s existence. The first set of “elders’ who begin this life are still relatively young the community is less than 30 years old. Other than their acknowledged stress over acceptance of natural death, due to illness or accident. “Sorrow can smell you, Sorrow will find you”, Noah’s ‘Crime” challenges what occurs when a society who fled crime and was willing to trade off access to the higher science’s for a peaceful existence, is confronted by being contributory to a crime by omission of care the elders know to be available.
I hope I will always be brave enough to do the just and right thing. (he is...after all...risking...his concepted ..village) The elder's comment regarding if we "deserve" this life, she will be succesful. In others words continued existance is in the hand of a higher fate, or how Ivy's journey concludes. They will accept it (and use it..."we will bury your son"). They feel validation to continue...they were not found out, and the myth was strengthened .

I think that the restraint shown between Weaver and Hurt showed a lot of strength and maturity, all out of the greater concerns for the community. To make it any more of a focal point of the story would have pushed it, IMO. To me exactly right. It was an illustrative point that the elders were neither bad people nor even cult fanatics intent on terrorizing children into submission. They simply attempted to flee a world (their individual experince's) whereupin they had been personally shattered by violent crime. Fueled in Hurts eyes by the aquisation of money. Traumatized, and having the wherewithall, he fled the "bad" color, the color of murder. They had morals, even a desire for an equal society, "where is the boy in all this", "I am not in charge of this meeting" They were not simply control freaks of people, but attempting to shape an enviorment based upon the best template a History professor had. That of a simple past age in history which had a reduced dependency upon money. Their basic decency is hinted at throughout the film, Hurt resisting his attraction to Weaver, they had joy, (they were not grim pilgrams. The children splashing at the water pump, the dances, the closeness of parent to child, the girls turning even sweeping a porch into a swirling game. They wanted peace, no crime, less dependency on money and desire for material goods, which come with wealth. “Money, destroys even good men”.

The only thing that jumped out at me was something at total odds to my personality. At the age of 13, I would have been little red riding hood, sneaking off into the woods. Scary monsters or not. I was known for walking off (when young) when I wanted to go back and ‘see’ something, and the only way I could get there was my own feet.

The young (Dorothy) yearn to leave home, sometimes they pray for red slippers to return but many will never look back.

Even the no fly zone, was only a stretch to me. As I am familiar with charts which specify no fly for various environmental, military, and security reasons. However a controlled airspace for “breeding purposes of birds” etc, will usually top out at Xthousand feet. We have all seen con-trails and commercial airliners tracking 30K up. Night, gets around this by not mentioning charts, but stating. “Those government guys are paid off” to ‘divert’ all traffic ‘around’ the sanctuary.

Best cinematic moments for a romatic this film. Lucius slow-mo grab of Ivy's hand and race to the cellar. Emphasied by his grasp and reach for her hand, (you are no longer, one) during the rush off the dance floor.
 

John Doran

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i'm really not, alex; i'm pretty sure i understand your point, and am just probably not being very clear about mine.

at first, your suggestion was that what was wrong with what the parents were doing in the village - i.e. telling fantastic stories of potentially hostile creatures in the woods and then actually dressing up like those supposed creatures in order to reinforce the stories - was that those things would be traumatic to the children, and would scar them psychologically and emotionally.

in response, i merely observed that this can't be right, since, from the perspective of the children, they weren't being told anything much different than children the world over have been told for all time: children are taught to fear bears and wolves and pedophiles and cars and buses and.....without suffering any harm at all - and they even sometimes (fearfully) see these things and come away no worse for wear.

in other words, it seems to me that you'd be a bad parent if you didn't tell your kids some things that you knew would make them afraid. so making your kid afraid can't be inherently bad.

so that can't be what's wrong here.

then you seem to suggest that what's wrong with the systematic duplicity of the adults in the village is not that the lies are (directly) harmful to the children by making them afraid for their lives, but rather that the parents are not only lying, but also that they go to such great lengths to support the lie - to the extent that they dress up like the monsters they've concocted in order to strike fear into the hearts of their kids.

now - and i agreed with you on this, alex - maybe this is a bad thing for the parents to have done. but what has this got to do with the plausibility of the movie?

1) on the one hand, it doesn't seem to be all that clear just what is wrong with the parents behaviour. i mean, what's the difference if (A) a parent tells its child about bears - scaring the child - and then the child actually sees a bear (and is scared even more), and (B) a parent tells its child about a make-believe creature which, like a bear, may eat the child, and the child actually sees the creature? like i said before, i don't think it can just be the fear suffered by the child, since that's the same in both scenarios.

so. what's wrong with a parent using negative reinforcement to inculcate a moral lesson? why isn't it a matter of straightforward cost/benefit analysis: the child will be (much) better off if she is "terrified" of going into the woods (as she is by being "terrified" of putting her finger into a light-socket or on the stove), than if she isn't.

2) even if it is, in fact, true, that the parents in the village behaved badly, why does that make the movie implausible? not only does it strike me as entirely believable that those parents, suffering from those traumas would actually believe themselves justified in systematizing the ruse of the creatures-in-the-woods, even if they weren't so justified, all that does, it seems to me, is add a layer of moral complexity to the tale by having it include parents acting badly in the pursuit of (what they take to be) a good.

do you find all movies with people doing immoral things, implausible?
 

Shawn_KE

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Everyone is controlled with some form of fear. Do bad things and you will go to hell. If you don't clean your room, your Dad is going to speak to you when he gets home. Wash your hands or germs are going to infect you and you will die. The boogyman will get you. Terrorists will get you.

In the Village, the Elders are doing the same things. Don't go into the woods or the monsters will get you. Their way of protecting their community from the outside world.

Works for me.
 

Yee-Ming

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Finally watched the DVD I bought a few weeks ago.

My take on why they spoke in stilted 19th Century prose: if they had any materials from the "outside world", in particular books, these would have been limited to pre-1890s material, so the language spoken would have to match that contained in the books. I did notice at one point an elder spoke in something more closely approaching modern speech -- use of contractions etc, which at the time I thought was an acting slip-up but now realise was a "hint".

It is indeed curious that the "children", those born and raised in The Village, didn't seem to notice the elders going missing regularly. For instance, when the bell rang and the Walker family was going into the basement, with Ivy standing by the door waiting for Lucius, it was glaringly obvious to me that Edward Walker (William Hurt) was MIA, and though this could be explained by him helping others to get safe, we never saw him doing this (we saw Lucius doing so, though).

Although Ivy was told the reality that the "monsters" were not real, prior to her encounter with Noah in the suit, the "voiceover" by her father reminded us that the elders had created the story out of rumours of such creatures actually in the woods, so from her perspective it was possible she was running into an actual monster. Of course, by the time of the encounter, we the audience knew that it was Noah in a suit, giving her clever way of dealing with the "monster" a tragic twist, since she was one of the people who had genuinely had affection for Noah, yet strangely appropriate in that Noah had stabbed her fiance Lucius.

I wonder why Noah was behaving as a "monster" and charging Ivy, rather than simply calling out to and approaching her (whether clothed in the suit or not) as Noah. Perhaps the idea was that Noah had been "corrupted" by the idea of scaring people while wearing the suit, and he wanted to scare Ivy as well? Was he jealous of the fact she'd gone out into the woods to get medicines for Lucius? Although I doubt he knew that she had, he seemed to have been locked up immediately after they realised he'd stabbed Lucius, and therefore wouldn't have known what Ivy was up to.
 

todd s

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Bringing up an old thread. But, watched with my wife tonight. She is normally not a nitpicker. But, she had a couple of questions:

1-If they are cut off from the rest of the world. Where do they get the supplies they need that cannot be grown or made from local resources (ie-Oil for lamps)

2-She assumes their were more than the 5 original families from the photo who came with them.

3-And she knows the elders made a vow never to leave. But, wouldn't it make more sense for one of them to go and get whats needed than to take a chance of Ivy getting killed or finding out the secret.

4-She also thinks it would have been cooler if The monsters were real
 

Adam Lenhardt

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I finally got around to seeing this one, and it felt like a misfire to me, albeit one with a lot of interesting things going on it.

Example: Two Village Elders are talking alone. Why the pretense in talking about Those Who Shall Not Be Named? Why hedge around babbling about "oaths taken"? There's no need for deception -- they're alone and private. The only reason to not say "When we bailed on society twenty years ago, you swore to keep us secret and safe" is to keep that information from the audience. After awhile, all the dancing around the issue makes it all the more transparent.

For that matter, there's no need to talk in pseudo-19th century language... except to deceive the audience. Their children would have no concept of modern language or not.
Since the entire thing is essentially one big cosplay, the elders need to fully commit if the rest of the community is going to buy it. And I think the pseudo-archaic dialect was a means to help get them into character and stay in character, a way of further setting this new life apart from their lives before.

I find the idea of those in sorrow rejecting their society an interesting one -- I don't find it interesting when exploring that concept is ditched in favor of some dubiously valid twists and the whole structure of the story is designed around the big reveal.

Like others, I couldn't help but wonder why planes never fly across (even by accident), why contrails were never seen in the sky, why they never were discovered by satellite (accidentally) -- and the toss-off of "oh, we paid off the government" is utterly laughable in this particular context.
Is it, though? It seems pretty clear that the Walker estate is indeed formidable in its assets, and William Hurt's character has committed those resources to creating what is essentially an uncontacted tribal people out of nothing. Plane routes have been changed throughout the era of aviation to benefit the rich and powerful. The bigger question is why nobody has hopped the fence and ventured in. Yeah, they have security and a tall wall. Bur surely somebody over the decades would have gotten nosy.

They were maybe a dozen miles from Philly, it seemed. Why on earth set the stage so close to civilization... I mean, I might've remotely bought the concept had they been out in the middle of Alaska or Montana or Canada or something.
It seemed like the father of Hurt's character owned a vast estate in that area, which was repurposed as the wildlife sanctuary.

I'm pretty sure it was stated that they were in Pennsylvania, same as the rest of Mr. Shyamalan's films.
Yes.

You accuse Shyamalan as shameless as if this manipulative technique is some prized idea he came up with on his own. Just about every director manipulates its audience in one form or another and I can think of many other films. Therefore, if you are going to nitpick this film for that element and accuse Shyamalan as shameless, you might want to think hard of all the other films released in the past 100 years that is pure and devoid of audience manipulation because your statement might as well read, “overall they're indicative of (put director’s name here) shameless efforts to manipulate the audience instead of concentrating on the story rather than the twist”.
The way I evaluate being manipulated is whether it feels like a cheat. If there's no reason for it what so ever or than to trick the audience, it's a cheat. But if there's a legitimate in-story explanation, then that's playing fair.

I thought the dates on the grave stones played fair; it makes sense that would change their calendar to further separate themselves from their old lives.

Having a character say "Yeah, um, there are no monsters. It was us in a suit." is Scooby-Doo-esque at best and equivalent to "Oh, the whole movie was a DREAM!" at worst.
That seemed like a necessity to me; the only way she wouldn't be too terrified to go through with it is if she knew the truth.

The bigger fail, I thought, was the reveal that Adrien Brody's "simple" character was dressing up in a monster costume he found under the floorboards and then went about skinning animals. That whole subplot left a bad taste in my mouth. Easier to have her out in the woods and encounter a black bear that she assumed was one of the creatures. Same end result, with significant less stupidity.

I saw it last night for the first time and, having been successful at avoiding nearly all spoilers (the only thing I knew going into it was the RottenTomatoes rating, Scott Weinberg's overall impression, and a couple mentionings at being disappointed about the supposed twist). I enjoyed it greatly -- no wrong words ... not "I enjoyed it", but "it affected me" -- though I think it does have some problems that keep it from being as great as The Sixth Sense (Signs is still for me Shyamalan's weakest film of his famous 4 thus far). Though I "knew" of the outcome before it was revealed, I was expecting the "shock" moment to be from Ivy's POV -- it instead was from Kevin's, and that was very welcome.
That was a well-done scene. It asks a lot of the audience that the wildlife reserve warden would see a young woman jump the fence and say what she said, and not immediately call in the real authorities. Instead, pieces together enough to know that there's something extraordinary going on in there, and decides not to blow it all up.

When the older sister espouses her love for Lucious (in amusingly awkward dialogue, no less), and instead of being shown Lucious' response Shyamalan cuts immediately to her crying on her bed, for some reason this had my audience rolling. I found it slightly amusing but overall very affecting.
Sometimes the reaction is enough to know exactly what happened.

* I was initially confused as to whether or not Ivy was blind -- this stemmed from how she moved about at the beginning. However once I saw her true condition I accepted her abilities. I also think Lucious' color is red, by the way. A shame we don't get a subtle answer to this somewhere.
Her seeing certain people as colors was the only potentially supernatural element left by the end. If this movie were made today, they would have cast a visually impaired actress, or they would have been crucified. I think an actually blind performer would have been more credible in those aspects of the character. But I really liked Howard's performance in this otherwise.

Like I said above, I was very affected by this film, because I empathized greatly with the elders and their wishes to escape from the society that had harmed their loved ones. This was the element that resonated most with me, and was what I took away from the story far more than any twist or horror aspect.
The moral quandary I have with it is that they chose this life, but their children and grandchildren did not. As we've seen, the death toll is higher in the community, including from illnesses that are treatable or even curable with modern medicine.

The Amish live a similar life to the village in this movie, but they allow their children to experience the outside world and choose whether they want to recommit to the Amish lifestyle. And because they don't hide the outside world, when modern medicine is necessary, they don't need to deny themselves access to it in order to preserve their secrets.

Are we to believe that aside from one brief and vague confrontation, that the others don't wish to confront William Hurt about his hypocracy? Brendan Gleeson's son died, the others have had their families suffer hurt, and all without betraying their secret, but all of a sudden Hurt's family is suffering and he gives it up their hope for a peaceful utopia? Are we to think that no one would angrily call him on this?
I got the sense at that point that half the elders were ready to throw in the towel on the whole thing at that point. You also can't forget the fact that Hurt's character was the one who made this all possible. Any peace and serenity they've clawed back from their tragedies is, in part, due to the Walker family.

Furthermore (and forgive me for harping on such pseudo-documentary-ish stuff), for all the hype of him putting actors through boot camp and all, his Village has all the realism of a theme park. The Village Elders were from the city. Creating a whole community, from scratch, without obvious assistance from the outside world and deliberately using 19th-century technology, takes a LOT of work.... to say nothing of keeping such a community alive. There's a couple mentions of "the herd" and "animals" and a couple shots of cows and sheep, IIRC, but that's it(?!). Where is the pre-dawn milking? The gathering of eggs? The fashioning of tallow into candles? Weaving freakin' clothing, for God's sake! For some strange reason, these people seem to have all the time in the world, to do nothing but sit around and look morose. Aside from the basic look of the production design, there simply doesn't seem to have been that much effort in depicting such a realistic 19th lifestyle... yet that is EXACTLY what M. Night is asking us to believe.
This is my biggest issue with the movie as executed. That entire valley should have been covered with either planted crops or penned off fields for animal grazing. It seemed like the only buildings that existed in the village were the ones that the plot immediately required.

In the end, the elders was shown voting to continue the ruse and they would have just told her that Noah was just an isolated incident - that there are far more bad people in the outside world capable of other types of violence and that living this secret and instilling the life of purity and innocence is for her and everyone’s best interest. For the first time in her life, Ivy has a realization of the true reason for the existence of their village.
If anything, the ending reinforces the foundations of this society. Lucius and Ivy were clearly being groomed to be the next generation of elders, and because they know the truth and didn't sign the oath, the village can utilize them to make supply runs that weren't possible previously.

As I said, the most moving part of the movie for me was Ivy holding out her hand and Lucius taking it. I swear the humidity bothered my eyes right at that point, because it got real misty.
Human relationships don't tend to be MNS's strong suit, but I really liked the relationship between Ivy and Lucius, and the strong contrasts in the performances driving it.

Now here's something fun to add to the conversation:

Could M. Night have stolen this idea from a 1995 children's book?
I'm pretty sure the idea for this movie has been floating around in one vein of utopian fiction or another for decades.

My main disappointment with the film is that it just doesn't have much to say and the choices he made in editing further harmed what little opportunity existed to enjoy the film.
I agree. These are pretty extreme measures, and the movie never articulated to me why these people's traumas merited a response so much more extreme than others'.

A major theme of the movie, IMO, is that isolation is not a viable solution to escaping the evils of the world. Human nature is in all people, and so even in a community designed to be "pure" there is sure to be some problems. MNS did succeed in this. There was violence, there was sickness, there was lust - both young and more forbidden (William Hurt and Sigourney Weaver), and so on.
I agree that it's a major theme, I just wish the realization had had more significant fallout. Even after their hypothesis has been disproven, they basically all just double down.

In act 3, the undermining of the potential to terrorize the girl (and us) in the woods seemed a particularly peculiar choice. If it was supposed to have some deeper meaning, it was lost on me. But again, if we had established better some dissension in the ranks of the elders early on, it would have been entirely possible that the "monster" in the woods meant her some harm. But because we knew it was fake there was no terror or fear, only confusion.
The big question for me was why there was this convenient, perfectly cylindrical sink hole in the middle of the woods, first for her to almost fall into, and then later for her to lure the "monster" into. I've been in a lot of mid-Atlantic forests over the course of my life, and I've never seen a sink hole like that one.

The very idea that the father would send his blind daughter out, rather than going himself is preposterous. What is the advantage here? She has no idea what she is going out into. He at least could navigate through the modern society undetected. He could slip out make his way to a city and return undetected. The only way she can succeed is if some kid happens to run across her while she scales the wall and decided not only to help her out by stealing some medicine and giving it to her, but also never telling another living soul about it. Seems unlikely, but of course it happens.
The driving force behind this decision seemed to be that the father had signed an oath never to leave the village, while Ivy had not. Her going instead of him softened the blow of his transgression.

Was it Brody's character who was flinging dead animal carcasses all over the place? Hurt's character said that the elders didn't know who was doing it -- Hurt's character thought one of the elders was disgruntled. But I guess it must have actually been Brody, right?
Yes. The resolution seemed to be that he found one of the elders' costumes under the floorboards of his parents' house, and then started really getting into character with it.

1-If they are cut off from the rest of the world. Where do they get the supplies they need that cannot be grown or made from local resources (ie-Oil for lamps)
This is one of my chief issues with the society as presented. It would take a lot more than what they were shown as having to be self-sustaining.

2-She assumes their were more than the 5 original families from the photo who came with them.
I would think that there would have to be, otherwise inbreeding would get to be a problem very quickly. You need 60 people, minimum, to have a sustainable population. And even then, there would need to be more rigorous selection based on necessary genetic traits. All of the founding families of the village were white, and assuming they all came from the general Philly area, that's potentially not a lot of genetic diversity right out of the bat.

At one point in the Middle Ages, the Ashkenazi Jewish population was reduced to roughly 350 individuals. That community was able to rebound, but there are still a number of rare genetic diseases like Tay-Sachs Disease that plague that population which can be traced back to that genetic bottleneck.
 

Winston T. Boogie

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I finally got around to seeing this one, and it felt like a misfire to me, albeit one with a lot of interesting things going on it.

That took quite some time to get to.

Probably the biggest mystery about this picture to me is why it has never appeared on Blu-ray anywhere.

This to me stands as the last good picture that Shyamalan made and from here his career really just went off a cliff. It has been sort of an epic crash and burn since he was once touted as a new Spielberg.

It was really also the last picture he made that had buzz prior to the release. Since then his pictures have generally been greeted with indifference or just the mild interest of "What happened to this guy?"

There is good reason for this. His films have basically ranged from awful to decent since The Village and he seems to have lost any idea of what to do with himself.

I think one huge setback for him is his career is mostly tied to what the big twist will be in his story. This is kind of a huge problem because now the audience enters his pictures looking for the twist. When he made The Sixth Sense he did not need to be concerned with that but after that the first question people ask prior to entering one of his films is "What is the big twist?" and really, this sets his pictures up to be disappointments.

If people go in expecting and looking for the twist from the start many will spot it before it gets there and then will downgrade the picture because they saw the twist coming.

I did not really look at The Village as a picture based on the twist, although there is one there, I think he is sort of hinting at it for the audience to be able to guess what it is. To me The Village is more of a thought experiment film where the goal is to get us to think about ideas it raises.

This kind of film, and really all of his films due to the way they are designed, is easy to pick apart. Once you know the entire story it does become simple to walk back through it and ask "But what about this? This does not make sense!"

The thing is though those moments are being collected to have an end result which is supposed to be more than the sum of the parts. So, they are being used to hopefully get an audience to ponder things that he wants you to ponder. If you single those moments out though and look at them just based on the face value of that single moment...well...now the moment just looks like a weakness. They are not meant to be looked at on their own but rather as part of the collective of ideas to reach the final goal.

This is a difficult way to approach making a film, which M. Night has discovered in that he has not been able to repeat his successes. Instead he has just proven why this is generally a bad approach to filmmaking.

I enjoyed The Village, as a thought experiment, but sure it has its weaknesses as a story. However, if you want to take the ride and ponder the ideas it throws out, it is quite good I think.

After this picture, Shyamalan's career pretty much becomes a giant disaster. He seems to lose his way in a maze of bad mistakes and poor attempts to get back on track.

In all honesty I think he does have some good skills and good sensibilities as a filmmaker but he should apply them to some pictures that don't require him to come up with a twist. Maybe make a twist film every third picture or something.

It's not easy to fool an audience now and it is not easy to come up with a good twist. He is literally a giant example of this now. I think he obviously likes making genre pictures and he seems to love horror. I think he suffers badly now from the expectations people have of him.

Probably, due to the nature of the business now, he is stuck having to try to do twist films because that's where the business has placed him as that is what he is known for. He likely would have a hard time getting funding if he stepped outside of that box.

My take would be, he should team up with a good writer and just apply his skills to a really good story that does not rely on a twist or fooling an audience. I think the man can direct and has good instincts but he just has applied them to one bad script after another.
 

Josh Steinberg

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Probably, due to the nature of the business now, he is stuck having to try to do twist films because that's where the business has placed him as that is what he is known for. He likely would have a hard time getting funding if he stepped outside of that box.

I wouldn’t be so fast to rush to that conclusion.

He’s actually been self-financing his films for about a decade now; whichever studio releases the film is merely the distributor. He makes the movies he wants to make exactly as he wants to make them and doesn’t take notes from anyone. If you see a new film with his name on it, it’s exactly the film he wanted to make. There aren’t many people willing to put their money where their mouth is but by investing in himself that’s exactly what he does. I don’t always love everything he comes up with but I’m always happy to give them a try. He has a unique cinematic voice and I admire the hell out of him for using his resources to tell stories the way he wants to.
 

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I don’t always love everything he comes up with but I’m always happy to give them a try. He has a unique cinematic voice and I admire the hell out of him for using his resources to tell stories the way he wants to.
Agreed. It's rude to say but at this point, I probably dislike more of Shyamalan's movies than I like BUT I always want to see his new movie because he's talented and when he gets it right, he really nails it for me.
 

Winston T. Boogie

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I wouldn’t be so fast to rush to that conclusion.

He’s actually been self-financing his films for about a decade now; whichever studio releases the film is merely the distributor. He makes the movies he wants to make exactly as he wants to make them and doesn’t take notes from anyone. If you see a new film with his name on it, it’s exactly the film he wanted to make. There aren’t many people willing to put their money where their mouth is but by investing in himself that’s exactly what he does. I don’t always love everything he comes up with but I’m always happy to give them a try. He has a unique cinematic voice and I admire the hell out of him for using his resources to tell stories the way he wants to.

I don't follow him so did not know the financing structure of his pictures. My guess was he makes certain types of pictures because they best serve him in the marketplace. If he has self-financing his pictures that's great. I would much prefer to see a director do what he wants to do rather than having what he/she does dictated to them.

I've seen a lot of his pictures and I generally always appreciate what he is trying to do. I root for him to succeed but his choices seem questionable. He went on a decade long run of pictures that were trashed by critics and audiences before attempting to turn Unbreakable into a trilogy. Which probably was a good idea based on where the market is. His only issue with that is his trilogy of Unbreakable films were not part of the Marvel or DC universe and so don't attract that large audience.

I've not seen Old yet so don't know how that tuned out. I like and respect that he does his own original pictures and enjoy that he does this.

I don't love everything he does either. I see the flaws but often look past them. The Happening was horribly trashed but I liked it as a sort of Hitchcock tribute. He remains to me a director of note, he just has not made very many good films.
 

Malcolm R

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If he's sole producer and financier on his recent films, he's been raking it in as they've all done pretty well at the worldwide box office (far right column) compared to budgets (middle column):

1654018152937.png


He usually has producing "partners" and distribution by Universal, so I'm not sure what agreements he has with them for fees or box office split, but he seems to be doing well by betting on himself.
 

Mikael Soderholm

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That took quite some time to get to.

Probably the biggest mystery about this picture to me is why it has never appeared on Blu-ray anywhere.

This to me stands as the last good picture that Shyamalan made and from here his career really just went off a cliff. It has been sort of an epic crash and burn since he was once touted as a new Spielberg.

It was really also the last picture he made that had buzz prior to the release. Since then his pictures have generally been greeted with indifference or just the mild interest of "What happened to this guy?"
Surely Glass and Split were a return to form, no? The ones before them, since The Village, went from bad to worse, last I saw was the horrible Lady In The Water, and then I didn't watch any more, but Glass and Split caught my attention again, and I quite liked them. Maybe because I have always held Unbreakable as one of his best.
 

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