NOTE: this review contains extensive spoilers. You’re welcome.
I had the severe misfortune to witness this travesty in a theater, upon its initial release. And staying to watch the entire thing is still one of my life’s greatest regrets. I had such high hopes for this film, based on the strength of M. Knight Shyamalan’s previous projects: The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable. For that reason, I had given him a pass on his ridiculous War of the Worlds rip-off, Signs -- assuming at the time it was just a creative blip on his radar.
I’m sure you remember Signs, right? The one with that sweet twist ending where all the aliens turned out to have severe water allergies, resulting in their evil plan being thwarted by a light rain. Pure genius. A bunch of highly advanced, interstellar alien invaders with Wicked Witch of the West-level hydration issues decide to invade a planet, the surface of which is 70% water. In retrospect, I should have seen the signs….
But Signs, as it turns out, was an Albert Einstein thesis compared to this vacuous turd. The Village can be described in three words: aggressively, insultingly, stupid. It’s the type of experience that makes you crave a shower after you’ve finished. It was heavily marketed as a thriller about monsters terrorizing a small village, but the film’s only similarity to that concept was in me being terrorized by that monster, M. Knight Shayamalan. Did I mention what a turd this movie was?
In a nutshell: the monsters turn out to be villagers dressed in porcupine costumes, the 19th Century turns out to be the 21st Century, and the wise village elders turn out be selfish, disaffected billionaires who have essentially trapped their offspring in a pastoral Hell – with no Internet or healthcare – through the constant threat of being brutally butchered at any moment (by the aforementioned porcupine people). And if this doesn’t fill your quota of asinine, don’t worry. There’s still plenty of downhill left from there.
After the village idiot stabs one of the elders’ sons (the by-product of a creepy Amish love triangle), these geniuses suddenly realize they don’t have a hospital. Or a doctor. Or even a bottle of hydrogen peroxide laying around. At this point, any one of these elders could’ve just acted like a reasonable adult and taken the kid to a hospital (a fact you know because I’ve already spared you the painful disappointment of waiting for the big plot twist), but that would mean giving up their stupid, stupid dream of living in an isolated pig farm. Or would it? If one of these jackasses made a run for medical supplies, how would that ruin the illusion for the rest of the brainwashed dolts? As these moronic villagers have stayed put for their entire lives based only on a vague porcupine threat, it seems likely that the elders could have easily explained away a few band-aids.
Instead, in their infinite wisdom, they decide to send a blind girl tramping through the woods – which she believes is brimming with spiny monsters – to find a first-aid kit. In the solitary enjoyable moment in the film, she does end up killing the village idiot, who conveniently found one of the porcupine costumes. In the end, she climbs over a big wall, wanders into the street, and gets help from a forest preserve guard. Plot Twist Alert!!! Turns out the billionaire elders somehow paid for the preserve to be a no-fly zone so they could continue to dupe their children. Mind Blown! Also blown: $15 for a movie ticket to this shit-show.
J.Bear’s Rating: 0 Well-worn Ass-Craters in my Couch Cushions.
Pros: Adrian Brody’s character gets hilariously killed.
Cons: Literally everything else about this ridiculous waste of time. In addition to its insulting plot and even insulting-er plot twist, The Village is one the most maddeningly motivated films I haver seen. In Sedentological terms, we refer to a movie like this as an oxymoron – as it is a complete waste of our wasted time. Denianetics’ un-motivational lifestyle thrives on a lack of effort, a concept that this movie spits on for 108 minutes. Every concept in this film is maddeningly motivated: from the elders elaborate plan to terrify their children into submission, to their even more elaborate plan to keep their village isolated, to the super-human effort they force a blind girl to endure. As a movie-goer, I was insulted. As a Sedentologist, I was offended. As a sentient human being, I was permanently scarred.
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