The Village

[nikkan_hanil]

[quote name='Oik' date='Aug 29 2004, 12:15 AM'] I still liked it and i understnd why you didn't Nikkan. [/quote]
Because it was awful! It failed in both physical and psychological horror departments! Chick flick!

[White Knight]

At First I heard mixed reviews on the film, now later I hear nothing but terrible reviews from fans and critics.

[Socrates]

The movie was not a horror or slasher flick. It was not supposed to be! (Although the trailers would lead people to expect this, I guess). (Nikkan, I'm sorry this appears to have traumatized you so much! )

The movie was a philosophical fable about the nature of innocence and whether it can (or should) be preserved. The elders tried to create a world in which innocence would be preserved by protecting it from the evil without. The imaginary "monsters" proved to be real as the evil (original sin) invaded the Village from within, even in the most apparently "innnocent" of characters.

I think this is for more mature (in the sense of "grown up") audiences, than those going simply for monsters and gore, and being disappointed when the movie turned out to be something they weren't expecting.
(However, this is all a matter of opinion - If you haven't seen it, watch it and decide for yourself.)

[jmjtina]

sounds good enough for me! I'll go check it out!

[White Knight]

What is it a Supernatural thriller or something? if its not a Horror film then.

[MorphRC]

Opens Thursday Here. 2 more days

[CreepyCrawler]

i heard it was an allegory for the u.s. policies on anti-terrorism and the like. how they keep the public in a general state of alarm and fear and play off of them in order to control the general populace. but whatever. it was okay.

[MarieCecilia]

I liked it because it made you think ( i agree with whoever said this...sorry can't remember who).


Liked the love story to

[MorphRC]

Its open here.

[MorphRC]

I saw it and it semi-sucked! Bad ending, bad storyline

[Hermione]

Wow~ I actually thought the acting was brilliant~ That Bryce Dallas Howard is the best young actress I've seen in a while and I've always loved Joaquin Phoenix... I also thought that Adrien Brody was really consistent in his potrayal of the retarded kid... what didn't you like about it?

Also I think Shyamalan's intent in the film was to present the sociological aspects of a community, a study in social structure, and the elders' isolationist policy was to ensure there would be no contamination of the study from outside factors.

It shows how the 'powers that be' instill fear into the community to make sure they keep in line, which in a bigger scale, questions the basis of religion, where fear comes in the form of hell. The whole "forbidden color" thing was more like a question of reality. At the end of the show, you realize the concept had no real basis, but the community believed it to be real, and thus, it was. (Similarly, if Americans continue believing that terrorists attack them simply because of the fact that they represent freedom, they'll believe it to be the one and only true reason... and ignore the other factors that make more sense).

The ending of the movie took a different premise, however. Instead of an existential question, Shyamalan deals with the Nietzschean philosophy: "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?"

The Elders' experiment is now questioned. Though their intentions were pure in the beginning, they seem reluctant to let go of the project despite it being clear that it was not working out. They were trying to build an utopian society that shied away from capitalism and politics, but found themselves keeping up the lie of the monsters in order to secure what they had worked so hard to establish. In other words, it became personal and their motives became self-serving.

Also, as Socrates has explained, it's a preservation of innocence in an incorrupt world, and the love story between Bryce & Joaquin is therefore the representation of that.

The show is therefore not so much a horror/thriller/slasher flick, but rather a philosophical one. The reason it was not portrayed as such in the advertisements is so the audience won't be prepared for it and be desensitized. However, I do think that Shyamalan wasn't focused in his storytelling and thus people got confused.

[MorphRC]

Disappointing

[White Knight]

It sure is.

[MorphRC]

The first hr is awesome, then it goes downhill

[MarieCecilia]

for a scary movie it was disappointing...if you weren't expecting it to be scary then it wasn't as bad. I didn't know what to expect really so I wasn't that disappointed.