I Rewatched M. Night Shyamalan's The Village, Hoping To Like It This Time. And Well...

M. Night Shyamalan. Whether you love his movies or loathe them, he is a director who will evoke at least some emotion out of you if you’re a fan of motion pictures. The Village is no exception.

Personally, I…like his work. For the most part. I’ve seen all of his movies, and I think some of them are MUCH better than others. In fact, not too long ago, I wrote about how I rewatched Signs, which I always thought was just okay. But now, I think it’s one of his - dare I say? - masterpieces. This got me thinking. If I could be so wrong about Signs, could I also possibly be wrong about The Village?

I do know some people who think THAT’S his last masterpiece, even though I outright hated the movie upon release. So, was I wrong about The Village all this time? Well…

The Village, Unlike Signs, Unfortunately Doesn’t Get Better With A Rewatch

Okay, so do you want to know an M. Night Shyamalan movie that I think gets a bad rap (Well, besides After Earth?) Lady in the Water. Honestly, I think that’s Shyamalan’s hidden gem. The reason why I like it (and After Earth) so much is because it doesn’t pretend to be something it’s not. It’s a fantasy, and by the end of the film, the fantastical elements make sense because the rest of the film fulfilled that promise.

Promise, I say. That’s important, because The Village is not what it promises to be. From the onset, we are led to believe that there’s a community of people who live in a small village, and that the story is taking place in the past. This community has a legend that there are monsters (known as “Those We Do Not Speak Of”), and that they are attracted to the color red, which is why I suppose everybody wears yellow (I guess this is a community that favors mustard over ketchup).

Anyway, just as Moana is not allowed to go beyond the reef, the characters in this film are not permitted to go through the woods, even if it means there might be important medicine that can be found out there. However, after a child dies, Joaquin Phoenix's character, Lucius Hunt, disobeys the rule and actually goes into the woods, and that’s when the monster attacks arise.

That said, there are no monsters, which is fine. I’m not upset about that, as that alone would have been a clever swerve. The elders are trying to scare people not to leave their village, so they’re pretending to be the creatures. But, no. Shyamalan did NOT stop there, which I’ll get into next.

The “Twist” Honestly Makes This Movie Worse Upon A Second Viewing

The ending of The Sixth Sense is still honestly one of the greatest plot twists in cinema history. It’s a twist that truly solidifies that film as one of the best modern movies, and it helped make 1999 one of the best years for horror in general, as it was nominated for Best Picture, a rare feat for the medium. It’s a twist where once you know it, you rewatch the movie and search for any inconsistencies, only to find that there aren’t any. Shyamalan just got it completely correct.

You have to remember, after The Sixth Sense, Shyamalan kind of became the “twist” guy. Unbreakable (my favorite Shyamalan movie) had one, and I guess Signs had one as well, in that the aliens were allergic to water. So, when The Village came out, we were all expecting it to have a twist, too. And, boy, does it have one…whether it’s good or not, though, is debatable. In fact, when I saw this movie on opening weekend with my friends, my buddy leaned over to me and whispered, “I bet this is taking place in our time,” and I said, NO WAY.

But, yes, way, because that’s exactly what the twist is. Once you know that, it totally destroys the rest of the movie. All of the events leading up to that reveal feel meaningless when you are aware that it’s all a lie. Unlike Signs, where I now take great value in the deeper meanings of faith and guilt found in the film, I get none of that with The Village.

All of the effort that went into creating this setting feels wasted, and it’s actually pretty frustrating. Even so…

It’s Not All Bad, Though. The Acting Is Actually Much Better Than I Remember It Being

Another thing I remember when I first saw this movie was being unimpressed by Bryce Dallas Howard, who I hadn’t seen in anything prior to this film. She plays a visually impaired woman, and I remember thinking that she wasn’t pulling it off very well. However, upon a rewatch, she’s actually very good. It’s the little things that I didn’t catch upon my first viewing, like how her distant stare really does give the impression of visual impairment that I guess I overlooked the first time. So, that’s my bad.

The other acting is excellent as well. Adrien Brody plays a man with a developmental disability, and when he ends up stabbing Lucius with a knife, you feel both upset by his actions but also sad for his character. It’s mostly all in the eyes. Joaquin Phoenix, as always, gives an earnest performance, and you get a sense that he genuinely believes he’s doing the right thing by disobeying the elders, which includes his mother (Sigourney Weaver).

Speaking of the elders, William Hurt and Brendan Gleeson do a superb job of showing the lengths they would go through to maintain the lie, and I think that if anything, this movie is even more infuriating because the acting in it feels like it goes to waste once the truth is revealed.

So, in that way, if this one movie has any highlights, it’s definitely the performances.

All The Same, I Think The Village Signaled The End Of Shyamalan’s Hot Streak

You can try to tell me otherwise, but I was there, man. I remember. The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs were the talk of the town when they came out, but The Village? Well, it kind of fell flat. Sure, it made A LOT of money ($256.7 million worldwide, which was down from the $408 million that Signs made), but I remember audience reception being not as rosy as it was for the other three films.

Then we got Lady in the Water (which again, I like!). Then The Happening (Oh, God!), followed by The Last Airbender (Great mother of mercy!). So, in a lot of ways, The Village signaled the beginning of the end for Shyamalan. That’s not to say that he hasn’t made a well-received film since. In fact, Shyamalan is fascinating in that every time you think he’s done for, he pops up with The Visit, or Split, or even Trap, which I actually like a lot. That said, The Village definitely seemed like the movie that cooled the red-hot streak that he’d been on.

Which is why I really hoped that a rewatch would change that perception for me, but nope. I still feel the same, and might actually dislike it more going into it knowing the twist. Is it a bad movie? No. It’s perfectly competent. But, is it a masterpiece like The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, or Signs? Not even close.

Still, if he keeps making movies, I’ll keep seeing them. His next one is based on an idea by Nicholas Sparks and is titled Remain, so we’ll see how that goes.

Are you a fan of The Village? I’d love to hear your thoughts.