The Village

I by no means claim that The Village is M. Night Shyamalan's best film, but I like it the most. Emotionally, it may resonate with me more than the acclaimed The Sixth Sense. In one of Švankmajer's films, the heroine says: "You have to close your eyes, or you won't see anything." In the case of The Village, it is not necessary to close your eyes but to embrace the director's game and let your imagination carry you away. The film doesn't function as a thriller or even as a horror, and anyone who thinks in terms of traditional genres will inevitably be disappointed. However, The Village, despite many contrary claims in the reviews, offers a range of very good acting performances, directorial ideas, and above all, atmosphere. Overall impression 90%. (2006-06-13)

Even if my 5 stars were only for the incredibly gradual and at times literally refined atmosphere, technical perfection, and magical music (the "stupidity" of the story is overlooked; after all, I didn't find the story stupid at all, just reacting to some of the reviews here, hence the quotation marks), this film deserves them. I watch every other Shyamalan effort with anticipation and expectation of a greater or lesser dose of the mystery I found satisfying to say the least in The Village. It should also be noted that the film as such has a rather interesting idea and the moment the viewer gets the point and the pieces of the puzzle are connected, he/she sees the whole film from a completely different angle and perceives the individual characters differently as well (at least it felt that way to me). (2009-11-06)

An unexpectedly decent mystery and thriller in the end. I like movies about closed communities of people who are afraid of the outside world, who is there, what is there, what do they want. The decent direction and the awesome ensemble cast only adds to the experience, but the ending comes to an end much like Lost, with a lot of unanswered questions, which annoyed me, so I'm knocking off one star. 70% (2014-08-25)

The Village is a bad film, and a second viewing only deepened that feeling. The first time I was disappointed because I expected something great, the second time I just saw the overly crazy plot that practically begs to be parodied. That village is not a place you want to return to. The horror elements are excellent, but there are only about three minutes of them. That's not enough for such a long runtime and you have to prepare yourself for a long romantic drama with incredibly caricatured characters. (2014-03-12)

A splendid study into the life of a strange, closed community. Nothing special in acting terms and, from Adrien Brody, a perfect parody on acting performances. As usual, Shyamalan has everything firmly in his grasp in terms of directing, but the screenplay slipped through his fingers this time round. Because he was trying too hard to live up to viewer expectations and forcibly grafted on his traditional tension-rising-toward-a-climax element. If he had revealed this “shocking" event right at the beginning, the end result could have been much better. This is a great shame, because some moments suggest that The Village held great potential that unfortunately was exploited terribly little. (2004-10-02)