The Village

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. (10/02/2004)

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). (11/06/2009)

Mysterious atmosphere, suspense, great performances (Bryce Dallas Howard, Joaquin Phoenix, Adrien Brody) and an original theme. This film had its light and dark moments, which were about in balance, but I still have to say I haven't seen anything like it before. (12/03/2009)

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. (03/12/2014)

What the fuck is going on here? Mr. Shyamalan, don't be mad at me, but I don't buy this. The Sixth Sense and Signs were good, hats off to you for that, but I feel you've been wandering in a vicious circle ever since. The Village is just awful – but you know what I mean. It makes me so angry to think how I wasted 100 minutes of my life. And yet, the premise made me expect that there would at least be something happening, that there would be something frightening, that I would see a bold and unconventional movie. Bollocks. Despite the presence of all those great actors, this is one of the biggest and most painful disappointments I've ever seen in a film, and one of the biggest screenwriting screw-ups. It seems it has impressed some people, but there was nothing that impressed me. In the beginning, you can feel some atmosphere, but as the time drags on, when nothing happens at all and only insanely lame dialogues are on the agenda, any glimmer of tension inexorably disappears and you have to accept that the director is either crazy and taking the piss, or he’s completely stupid and the mystery of this film has failed to reveal itself. So I guess I'm a fool, but the moment the mystery of the ghostly apparitions was revealed, I got up and walked away from the TV. I really couldn't be bothered with this, I just couldn't stand one more minute of such an uninteresting piece of garbage. And why I’m giving it that 1* then? For Phoenix, simply. For him and for the other poor actors who had to endure it far worse than I did. (02/05/2013)