It Takes a Village

This has been a pretty heavy work week for me, actually. I subbed for Mrs. C on Monday and for Mrs. B on Tuesday. I actually had a Thursday off for the first time in forever, so I used my free afternoon to go see M. Night Shyamalan's The Village.

I'd been hearing bad buzz about the film on AICN for a while, but I don't always trust the particular reviewer who buzzed badly. (After all, anyone who claims not to "get" Babylon 5 is obviously not going to share the same sense of quality as I do.) Before I went to the theater, though, I also heard some second hand bad reviews from Garin the Comic Shop Guy. He'd not seen it yet, but had several customers who had told him it was incredibly predictable and that they'd walked out of it due to it being so bad.

Even with that knowledge, I was going in anyway. I've loved Shyamalan's last few films and feel that he's more than earned my movie watching dollar even if it turned out to be a turkey. Plus, I haven't walked out of a movie for being bad in 15 years, though Lord knows I probably should have with some. (I did fail to finish watching the DVD of Made I rented last week because Vince Vaughn's character was making me crazy.)

So I went.

My non-spoiler review of it is that I don't think it was a turkey at all. In fact, I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's not Shyamalan's best, but it was enjoyable for what it was. The trick is to go into it with no expectations, though. The movie is being mis-marketed as a horror movie filled with frights and chills. However, while there are a few spooky moments, it is NOT a horror movie nor do the scares live up to the marketing. I think that's why some people may be disappointed with it. They went in for cake and were given whole-wheat bread.

As to the predictability of it, I did figure out what the big twist ending was going to be within the first half hour. However, I don't really think this was the fault of the film itself. I think it's my own fault as a viewer who's seen too many M. Night Shyamalan movies and that I knew there was going to be a twist coming and deduced it. I just asked myself, "Hmm. If I was going to put a twist ending on this film given the story presented thus far and the fact that it is more than likely set in Pennsylvania, as Shyamalan almost always does, what would be the most twisty ending that could come up?" I turned out to be right on the money. I didn't have all the specifics nailed down, but I had the broad brush strokes spotted well in advance.

There were still a lot of surprises to be had. The story itself bobs and weaves around common expectations pretty well. And given some of the major dramatic shifts in the story, I also found it ironic that Sigourney Weaver had been in the cast.

Overall I think this movie would have been received far better by viewers had it been Shyamalan's first film rather than his 5th. It would be a good one to take a Shyamalan newbie to.