So my 66 year-old mother is visiting this week and since she doesn’t get to the movies much we like to watch movies on my big-screen from my big DVD collection.
I picked up The Village recently but haven’t had time to watch it. I of course know the twist ending already, know that there is a twist ending, and know the Shaymalan reputation.
Mother of course dosen’t keep up with pop culture and probably has not heard of this movie.
So, does this movie hold up as a good flick for someone going in blind with no preconceptions? Can she get into the story without waiting for the “twist” since she doesn’t know there’s one coming?
It seems this flick got a lot of grief because it had a lot of baggage before it was even released. People knew Shaymalan’s reputation and went just for the “twist”.
I went in suspecting the “twist”, but really it’s telegraphed so early and often that it’s not a twist (Or rather, neither of the *two *things that happen that are often called the “twist” are, in fact, twisty). It certainly doesn’t have a Sixth Sense like twist, which throws the whole movie into a different meaning entirely and yet holds up on review. I don’t really think it was intended to be a twist. I don’t think it needed a twist to be an entertaining, suspenseful movie.
And I’m the only Doper who liked it, so the rest of the thread will be full of hate.
No hate from me, but overall I found it to be rather lacking. Even without the ‘surprise twist ending’ I wasn’t that engaged by the movie. Your mother’s MMV, of course.
Yes, well, blind people aren’t entirely helpless, you know. They get around in cities with buses and schoolkids and curbs to trip over all the time, even without service animals. They chose her so she wouldn’t see pavement, cop cars or telephones and talk about it when she got back. Her problem was her tendency to panic, not her blindness.
Blind people are helpless. Og knows I know that! But generally blind people follow the same route every time, etc…and it’s not about the blind girl. It’s about the cruelty of a society who thinks THEY are the moral ones and yet they can condone and justify this particular cruelty. I can’t forgive it. It bothered me every second she was in the woods. And they are sending her to a completely brand-new place. As for not seeing any of it, that was stupid too - blind people haven’t lost all their senses, and I would think she would have heard it. When she meets the ranger, isn’t she walking on a paved road? Wouldn’t she wonder what it was, why it felt different?
I’ve heard this sort of excuse about a lot of writers and filmmmakers, but I don’t buy it. Even people whose reputation rests on stories with “twists” managed to produce quite a few before they started complaining that people were only watching for the “twist”. I started disliking Shyamalan’s flicks with his second big one, Unbreakable. I lovedThe Sixth sense, and I love Shyamalan’s directing, sense of style and place, and storytelling. But I hated Unbreakable, Signs, and The Village. I have to admit that my dislike of The Village is less than for the others (especially Signs), but Village’s premise isn’t all that great, and, as others have noted, it’s telegraphed well before the ending. You sort of hope there’s something else to it, because that can’t be the whole idea, right? Only it turns out that it is.
It’s not as if you can ignore the clever twist and comment on the rest of the movie – the rest of the movie exists simply to support and ultimately exploit that twist. You can’t extract it from everything else. And, just as in the case of Signs, the annoyance arises not from questions I’m, asking myself not because this is a Shyamlan film, but because they’re logical questions I’d ask of any filmmaker or writer who presented this situation. (They’re an isolated agrarian community with only their own resources,. Where the HELL are they getting all this oil to burn every night?)
Joaquim Phoenix is not the hero. He gets removed from the action halfway through. (Imagine it like this: What if in the first Die Hard, John MaClaine gets killed while he runs through the broken glass. The movie then focuses on his wife dealing with the terrorists. )
The monsters aren’t real but fabricated by the elders.
The village is in a nature preserve in modern day.
I really like the movie. I think it does ask you to accept some pretty outlandish things but overall it only strains credibility it doesn’t break it.
Were they burning petrolium-based lamp oil, or rendered pig or cow fat? How can you tell?
I’ve got the whole set of Foxfire books. I’ve also visited off-the-grid community living settlements and done rustic camping for weeks at a time. Isolated agrarians have a lot of technology. Some of it looks a little Gilligan’s Island, but it works.
Right, and those of us who’ve seen it have referenced two or three. So knowing about A twist doesn’t mean he knows all of them. It’d be nice to leave him a few surprises, IMHO.
Ah. Damn. I did misread the post. I thought the mom hadn’t seen it but knew there was a twist but the OP was looking for opinion on whether mom should even bother watching it still. Spoiler tag it away Mods.
I don’t care whether it was renderecd pig fat or petroleum, they were burning way too much of it for it to be credible.
I don’t put down 19th century enguineering at all – I;m a frequent visitor to Old Sturbridge Village and the like. It’s not a question of ingenuity – it’s a question of resources. Only the largest cities had regular streetlights back then, because only they had the resources of the entire countryside to call on. An individual village couldn’t support enough fuel to put up a bright light every 300 feet or so around the Village perimeter 365 days a year. I don’t buy it. And I seriously doubt if they would use up as precious a resource as any sort of edible oil for the purpose.
It was among the 3 or 4 stupidest movies I have ever seen. And I have seen a lot of stupid movies.
It was, itself, a kind of twist, that made you suddenly rearrange everything that came before it to make sense in the new context: it sucked so hard that some of the suck accrued retroactively to The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable.
I think it’s rather arrogant to think that someone going in blind couldn’t enjoy it or would guess the ending. You know what else? If you kind of think of it as the kind of short story you read in 11th grade English, it’s kind of entertaining.
Okay, it’s hard to defend the logic in this movie, but…
they didn’t send her totally alone. They sent two guys to go most of the way with her, and the guys chickened out.
I don’t like The Village as well as his other movies (haven’t seen Lady), but I enjoyed it. I am one of those people who is usually blindsided by the twist, but even I guessed this one immediately. It didn’t spoil the movie for me.
I am vastly entertained by the atmosphere of Shaymalan’s movies, and it doesn’t bother me that they often don’t make a lick of sense.
I liked it, too. I re-watched it recently, on DVD.
I also think too many people make too much of their judgement based on the so-called “twist”. The trailers kind of did this movie a bit of a disservice, making it look like it was going to be something it was not (namely, a war stirring up between villagers and creatures).
There was some quite good acting, especially from Bryce Dallas Howard. I enjoyed the cinematography – the scenes were beautifully shot. And it had some wonderful music scored to it as well. I love the musical theme that plays during the first major “tense” scene – the one ending with the villagers in the trapdoor cellars. I think there’s a lot to like about this movie – regardless of whether somebody figures out the so-called “twist” ahead of time or not.
I enjoyed it a lot. Even though I knew how it ended about a year ago. I was even fooled when Noah got a hold of one of the monster suits and was chasing her through the woods. I thought it was either a figment of her imagination or an elder trying to steer her in the right direction cause she was lost.
Mom thought it was interesting.
I’m not sure how I would have felt about it if I went into it blindly.