I went into The Village with high expectations and two double Bacardi and cokes. I left the theater with expectations surpassed and two empty cups.

Part love story, part horror movie, part ’50s science-fiction theatre, M. Night Shyamalan’s latest picture looks at a late nineteenth-century community isolated from the outside world by the menacing forest that envelops them. The woods are filled with monsters—“those we do not speak of.” The elders do their best to protect their fellow villagers. They hide the “forbidden color,” prevent villagers from traveling into the monsters’ domain, and hope to satiate the sylvan beasts with offerings of animal flesh. But the woodland creatures encroach upon their living space, mutilate livestock, and appear before the simple folk in a most frightening form. When circumstances compel a villager to travel through the woods to “the towns,” the monsters beyond the village are finally confronted.

Joaquin Phoenix, Sigourney Weaver, William Hurt, Bryce Dallas Howard (Ron Howard’s daughter), and Adrien Brody turn in great performances, but the star of The Village is the man listed as “Writer, Director, and Producer”—who also makes another Hitchcockian cameo. As was the case with The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable (buy them here on DVD), theatergoers watch one film but learn that they were actually watching a very different film. The Village’s twist ending is more thought provoking than Shyamalan’s earlier offerings, but beyond that little can be said without spoiling the movie—other than to quote Bunny from Platoon: “Do The Village.”

Nothin better than the "village".. except maybe the Indy 500!

Now that i've seen the movie, i'm curious about what the original ending was...I mean the twist was cool...I didn't expect it, but the way it ended...I don't want to spoil it for anyone, but it just leaves me wondering what was changed, if something truly was changed...

Against my better judgment I will post since I carried on such a film diatribe on this site earlier.

I just got back from seeing The Village and all I will say is that imitation may be the highest form of flattery but it is the lowest form of art. MNS is like a Rich Little compared to Alfred Hitchcock.

All the capital MNS had built up with me over his last three films (his first was miserable as well) has been completely squandered. This was by far the most dissapointed I have ever been coming out of a theater. I really don't want to talk or write about it. Maybe in a few weeks when the anger and disappointment wear off.