What a fab movie – M. Night Shyamalan right back on form! I really enjoyed The Sixth Sense (and no, I didn’t see it coming). Unbreakable I could take or leave, certainly an interesting concept. Signs left me pretty cold. The Village is another matter altogether, and I loved it!
The film is set in the 1850s, and follows the fortune of a group of people living in a village surrounded by woodland. In the woodlands dwell “Those We Don’t Speak Of” – creatures with whom the villagers have an uneasy truce. The villagers don’t go into the woods, the creatures don’t go into the village. This truce has held for many years, until, one night… It would be wrong to suggest that this film is about the creatures though – it is actually very much about the people who live in the village, there life and love, fears and hopes. And the woods and the creatures lurk as a background menace, threatening if the boundaries are ever crossed.
The other key concept in the film is colour – the safe colour and the bad colour. Which is interesting as one of the main characters is actually blind.
I managed to stop myself trying to antipcate The M Night Shyamalan Twist ™, which to be honest wasn’t too hard to spot, and I think would have spoilt my enjoyment of the film. Unlike The Sixth Sense, your whole understanding of the film doesn’t change in the light of the various revalations we see as the film goes on, and in that respect you’re much better off just enjoying the characters and story unfold. But it is food for thought, especially some of the difficult choices that the Elders have to make in the governance of the village.
For me it didn’t lose anything on DVD at all, definitely worth watching.