Village

Year: 2004

Grade: C+

Country: USA

Director: Shyamalan

Review

not as good sixth sense in any way. it’s less scary, the ending is less shocking, and the relationships are less intense. but that’s what shyamalan gets for having such a great debut film. on its own the village is a fine film. it’s shot well, tells a fairly compelling story, and the acting is up to snuff. i found a lot of correlation between the village and america in a post-9/11 world. view the film with that in mind and i think you’ll understand what i mean. i’m not saying that the film is allegorical, but it is applicable to our current state. stylistically the film was more interesting than i remember his others being. color played a big role and part of that was the fact that he limited the use of certain colors (specifically red). as a result when red was used it really popped. the camera did a lot of moving in and out of a scene. i’d venture a guess that 75% of the camera movement was in three-dimensional space i.e., forward and backwards instead of left to right or up and down. when the camera takes on a subjective point of view this sort of movement is normal, but otherwise it’s not done that frequently. in the village shyamalan employs this movement quite a bit and i think that it’s an attempt to bring us into the story a little bit more. the first shot is of a funeral and the camera is looking over the shoulders of the townspeople. in this shot we are observing, but slowly the camera brings us into the action with the forward motion and this movement is used liberally throughout the film, i think, for this same purpose. technically a good film, but not as compelling as some of shyamalan’s other work.

Watched in theater