M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village strands a strong cast inside a premise that never earns its keep. The film runs 108 minutes and carries a tagline — “There is no turning back” — that promises more than the story delivers. It grossed $256.7 million worldwide and landed James Newton Howard a Best Original Score nomination at the 77th Academy Awards. Neither figure fixes what is wrong here.
Trailer, via Film at Lincoln Center.
Those We Do Not Speak Of
The Village is set in 19th-century Pennsylvania, in a remote hamlet ringed by watchtowers and tall poles topped with oil lamps. Beyond the perimeter live the creatures the villagers call “Those We Do Not Speak Of.” The color red is banned because it attracts them. The rules are simple, and the film leans on them hard:
- Watchtowers staffed around the clock
- Oil lamps on tall poles along the perimeter
- Red forbidden inside the village
- The woods off limits, always
It is a clean machine for dread. Shyamalan builds the fear of the woods with patience, and the first half moves on that fear alone.
Lucius Hunt and the Locked Boxes
The trouble starts with a death. A young villager dies of illness, and Lucius Hunt, played by Joaquin Phoenix, asks the elders for permission to cross the woods and bring back medical supplies from “the towns.” They refuse. His widowed mother, Alice, played by Sigourney Weaver, questions why he wants to go at all. The elders call the towns wicked.
Each elder keeps a locked black box. Nobody explains what is inside. Lucius goes into the woods anyway, then tells the elders it was safe. Skinned animal carcasses turn up. One night the creatures enter the village and leave red paint on the doors as a warning.
The cast is the film’s real asset. Bryce Dallas Howard plays Ivy Walker, Kitty’s visually impaired and empathic younger sister. Adrien Brody plays Noah Percy, a young man with an apparent developmental disability. William Hurt is Edward Walker, the elder who runs the village and its secrets. Brendan Gleeson, Cherry Jones and Celia Weston fill out the elders’ bench. Howard is the best thing in The Village, and the film knows it.
Noah Percy and the Knife
Kitty Walker wants Lucius. Lucius wants Ivy. Kitty marries someone else, which clears the way for Ivy and Lucius to become betrothed. Then Noah stabs Lucius out of jealousy and wounds him badly. The elders debate Noah’s fate while he sits locked in a small building.
Edward defies the other elders and sends Ivy through the forest with two young men to fetch medicine for Lucius. Before she goes, he tells her how his wealthy father was murdered, then admits the creatures are not what the village believes. That admission is the hinge the whole film hangs on, and it arrives too late to matter.
Ranking what The Village gets right:
- Howard’s Ivy, the one performance with a pulse
- The perimeter imagery — towers, lamps, the ban on red
- James Newton Howard’s score, the film’s sturdiest element
- The elders’ locked boxes, a mystery the film opens and never pays off
The reveal does not deepen the story. It deflates it. Once the audience knows what the woods really hold, the creatures lose their pull, and the film has nothing to put in their place. Shyamalan wrote, produced and directed, so the miscalculation is his alone.
What remains is a period thriller that mistakes withholding for depth. The Village withholds the boxes, withholds the towns, withholds the truth about the woods, and then spends its final act explaining itself in dialogue. A film this controlled in its first hour should not need a lecture to close.
The mixed reviews it drew were the right call. A $256.7 million gross and an Oscar nomination for the score do not make the case for the screenplay. The Village is worth watching for Howard and for James Newton Howard’s music, and worth remembering for how thoroughly a good premise can be spent.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
