THE VILLAGE

Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, Bryce Dallas Howard, Adrien Brody

So it's a new movie from the man who gave us The Sixth Sense (excellent!), Unbreakable (odd at first, but once you think about it and see it again, awesome!), and Signs (completely freaky but great!)...... thus you know what we have been trained to expect: eerie atmosphere, troubled characters, and of course, a twist ending or at least plenty of suspense.

Do we get that? Yep. But now that M. Night Shyamalan has his reputation of always having a twist ending, I found myself unable to just relax and watch the picture without trying to figure out what was the twist going to be, because he doesn't cheat in his films and you'll be able to see what's coming if you just look for it. And this was indeed the case. Now, I wasn't positive about the twist, but I actually did indeed guess what was going to happen and when it happened, I was surprised but not floored. I'll be the first to say that the Sixth Sense completely hoodwinked me and I was among the many in the theatre who saw the Sixth Sense and cried out when it was suddenly and completely obvious what was going on with Bruce Willis' character.

The Village takes place in the 19th century and concerns this village isolated from everything in the middle of some Pennsylvania woodland area. The townspeople are completely self-reliant, but not by choice: there be monsters in the woods surrounding the area, and a truce exists that if the residents don't go in the woods, the monsters won't go in the village and muck things up. Now, what kind of movie would this be if someone didn't go muck things up? Not a very interesting one! So of course, the perimeter is breached, and the citizens get a firsthand view of what happens when that happens. And when this does happen, it is indeed extremely spooky and suspenseful. M. Night can definitely work the scare factor - I'll never forget the scene in Signs with the alien in the Brazilian birthday party. Fucking frightening. Anyways, this is along those lines.

Now while you think the main star is going to be Joaquin Phoenix, you'd be wrong. He's not even the hero, although he does some heroic stuff. Nope, the hero is indeed Bryce Dallas Howard, Ron Howard's daughter, and she's amazing in this movie as the blind girl that Joaquin loves and who has no fear. It is her who makes the daring journey and is her who encounters the most nightmarish of things. And she can't even see it. I always love to see my girl Sigourney in a movie, and she of course is outstanding in this. She is so freakin' tall. William Hurt is also great as the town elder who tries to keep the Village calm during these disquieting events.

So, it's a good movie. There are elements of horror and fear that help move the plot along, but this movie really is a story of a girl who defies the odds and even falls in love. The twist is somewhat cheap, but the performances are anything but. I wonder what it will be like to see a movie from him without any twist whatsoever. Will there be rioting in the streets?

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