The Village

Apparently this movie from M Night Shyamalan (The 6th Sense, Signs, Unbreakable) is very scary. The trailer looks pretty cool… :sunglasses:

I’m a huge M. Night fan. I can’t wait for this one. Signs is my favorite movie among the ones he has done, followed by Unbreakable and TSS. Someone back in the U.S. told me there is somewhat of a strange feeling to the movie, as in it seemed like a love story masquerading as a horror/thriller. But she tends to be overly analytical, so… :loco: :laughing: :stuck_out_tongue:

I just saw The Village last night. It was really really good. I would venture to say it is M. Night Shyamalan’s best movie yet.

I liked most of Signs but I was disappointed in the ending. I’m thinking Night might be better at marketing than movie-making.

Plus, I guessed the ending to Sixth Sense about 45 minutes into it. I hate that.

For instance, recently the SciFi channel in the US aired a 3-hour, fake ‘docudrama’ about Night, one in which he was both an active participant and a contributor. The fake docudrama turned out to be little more than a promo for Village. It was actually pretty entertaining, though. I watched it and although it was obvious it was total BS, it was also pretty fun and creepy. Funny, even, in spots.

Because this article requires registration, I’ll reprint the relevant part here:

[quote=“Miami Herald”]…There was also the Sci-Fi Channel’s three-hour special, The Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan, which purported to reveal a dark incident from the director’s past. The network hawked the clever, but largely fictional, promotional stunt as a documentary, leading news organizations like the Associated Press to report on it as if it were real.

‘‘I really like those people at Sci-Fi,’’ Shyamalan says of the mini-controversy the special created. ``They’re very creative and willing to take chances, and they had a very cool idea. If they erred, they erred on the side of enthusiasm.’’

The controversy did help in one regard: It allowed Shyamalan to talk about The Village without really talking about The Village. (’‘This project is very difficult to sell,’’ he says wearily.) The most shocking thing about the movie, though, may be that it implies Shyamalan is losing interest in the suspense/thriller genre that has made him a brand name. …[/quote]

Anyone know when this releases in Taiwan?

View The Village as a post 9/11 allegory and it will really be enjoyable.

I saw the trailers in a theatre and laughed my ass off at the hokiness of it all. OOH! Don’t go there! You are so brave. It’s Little Red Riding Hood meets the Werewolf.

I’ve read some pretty panning reviews so given that I see about 4 movies a year The Village is not likely to get me out of Mucha.

Spoiler: Don’t read this if you are planning to see the movie.

[spoiler]The Village leads the viewer to believe there are dangerous creatures living in the woods surrounding all sides of a 19th century town. Only the town elders know the real secrets of the creatures and control the rest of the villagers through their will and knowledge of color coded customs.

The creatures turn out to be false manipulations by the elders to maintain control over an idyllic village they created in the 1970’s to protect their families from the evils of society. The elders on occasion bring out the creatures ( clawed costumed elders) to frighten the younger townsfolk from wanting to venture beyond the woods. The elders use their knowledge to manipulate the rest of the town to suit their own purposes[/spoiler]

This can be seen as a reflection of post 9/11 America where a small group of people with access to information unavailable to the rest of the people use a color coded system to frighten the masses into submission without ever revealing thier secrets under the guise of protecting them from outside evils. Those with access to the information can easily weild it against frightened people.

For this it makes it a great post 9/11 film

That spoiler didn’t bother me too much. It’s what I guessed from the previews and what I’ve read about it. If there was a way to watch movies fot free :wink: I’d probably do that.

Good flick. Although, I think that more time should have been spent on the mythos of the monsters of the woods instead of the love story. I think the audience would have been less dissappointed as a result and the one particular revelation concerning the monsters would have been much more powerful as well.

But as an allegory, it is damn good IMO. How to keep a perfect society intact. Wow. Screw the critics. I still think M. Night is a damn good writer.

It was a stupid movie.

Kind of interesting, and I’d still say go see it if you like this sort of thing, but it’s stupid.

Brian

Sounds very similar to a children’s book I read this summer except there was no love story (although the heroine had a physical disability too) and…

(highlight for spoiler for both The Village and Lois Lowry’s Gathering Blue…note to maowang and others on how to hide spoilers: =>spoiler here<=)

[spoiler]In Gathering Blue, the imaginary beasts were probably known by the elders as a way to keep the people from venturing into other towns although they released their unwanted and dead into a field where the unwanted people who had been previously released would come and rescue those who were still alive. Kira, the heroine in the story, believes her father was killed by one of these beasts as the men told her mother before she was born. The truth is, her father was killed by one of the men who was competing with him for a seat as an elder. She finds this out when her father returns from the other town to give her the color blue for her embroidery.
This story is similar to The Village (and perhaps was the source for the Village, but I’m not pointing fingers…just scratching my chin on this one) where the elders use a story to keep their followers from leaving their town and discovering the way life is outside as a kind of protection. In the Village, it’s a utopia artificially created by people who had lost a close family memeber to violent crime and wanted to get away from society. In Gathering Blue, it’s an apocalyptic era where people treat others with suspicion, build cages to contain their children, and there is abject poverty. In both stories there is murder that leads each woman to the life that she leads, for Ivy, it’s the murder of her grandfather that makes her father think of creating their town. In Gathering Blue, it’s Kira’s father’s murder that forces her mother to always struggle to keep her home and enough food for the two of them and ultimately to her being used for her gifts for weaving.
In the Village, it’s medicine that brings Ivy into the outside world. In Gathering Blue, it’s needing the color blue to mend an important artifact that brings Kira into contact with the outside world. In Gathering Blue, it’s a boy from the poor side of the town who brings Kira a flower that is blue. In the Village, it’s a retarded boy who brings red berries.

Dammit, I was going to say something profound about the two, but now I am beginning to suspect that this movie was totally a rip-off of Gathering Blue. [/spoiler]

Oh well.

The movie was quite different than what I expected but it turned out to be one of the most emotional movies I’ve ever seen! Bryce Dallas Howard and Jaoquin Phoenix were brilliant!! Awesome movie!

While it had some scenes that made you jump (just like Signs and the Sixth Sense did), I found it was hardly a thriller. Again, another M. Night Shymalan where I knew the ending before seeing the movie, thanks to a poorly hidden spoiler. I don’t think I would have enjoyed it more, though, even without knowing the twist.

I have heard the 9/11 allegory thing before and I just don’t see it…

Unlike the Bush administration, the protecting of the people’s children is done solely to protect them and bring them up in a world where there is no violent crime. With the Bush administration, there is obviously some power involved and the monsters that they warn us about are ones we have seen…unless the person who is implying the connection is saying that the monsters are indeed the Bush administration or whomever and have caused these tragedies to keep people in perpetual fear and completely reliant on the government to protect them from fictional monsters or monsters whose stories have been altered to hide their true nature (like the arming Osama Bin Laden against the Russians thing) to make people more loyal to the government who is supposedly protecting them from these people. But ah well, it’s damn near 6am and I haven’t gone to bed yet so what am I talking about?

By the way, maowang, no offense for not hiding the spoiler. I guess I was never meant to watch the really good Shyamalan movies without the ending revealed…at least you’re in the company of the TV Guide and the idiotic Hollyweird actor who was quoted in their magazine as saying,
Bruce Willis was so realistic in that movie, I called him to make sure he wasn’t really dead.”

Not much point in watching the movie after that.